Title: Asymmetric Peer Effects in Lying

Speaker: Zou Wenbo

Abstract: People's lying behaviors are documented to be influenced by their peers. If peer effects in lying are asymmetric, that is, dishonesty is more contagious than honesty, then it means the honesty norm would be easy to degenerate but difficult to recover. In this paper, I find experimental evidence that asymmetry exists in peer effects among senders in a sender-receiver game, in which they can lie for material gains. I investigate three potential mechanisms underlying the asymmetric peer effects: motivated belief updating, motivated interpretation of reality, and motivated judgement of morality. Experimental results are not consistent with motivated belief updating, but provide suggestive evidence for the other two explanations---when observing others acting honestly, participants probably justify their own lying behavior by deeming the selected sample less representative, or by relying less on social norms in making moral judgement of themselves.

Zou Wenbo：Zou Wenbo，Ph.D., Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis, 2016, is currently a lecturer at the National Economic Strategy Institute of Nankai University. His research interests are behavioral and experimental economics, and development economics. Published a paper in the international journal World Development.

Date: November 15, Thursday, 2018

Time: 13:30-14:45 PM

Location: Room 608, Academic Hall, CUFE