Do Not Tell Me More; You Are Honest: A Preconceived Honesty Bias
Name
fpsyg-12-693942.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
242.32 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
bdcc6e4c0c4886730ca513cb33d6355d
Author(s)
Pascual-Ezama, David
Muñoz, Adrián
Prelec, Drazen
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Citation
Pascual-Ezama, David, Muñoz, Adrián and Prelec, Drazen. 2021. "Do Not Tell Me More; You Are Honest: A Preconceived Honesty Bias." Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
According to the previous literature, only a few papers found better accuracy than a chance to detect dishonesty, even when more information and verbal cues (VCs) improve precision in detecting dishonesty. A new classification of dishonesty profiles has recently been published, allowing us to study if this low success rate happens for all people or if some people have higher predictive ability. This paper aims to examine if (dis)honest people can detect better/worse (un)ethical behavior of others. With this in mind, we designed one experiment using videos from one of the most popular TV shows in the UK where contestants make a (dis)honesty decision upon gaining or sharing a certain amount of money. Our participants from an online MTurk sample (N = 1,582) had to determine under different conditions whether the contestants would act in an (dis)honest way. Three significant results emerged from these two experiments. First, accuracy in detecting (dis)honesty is not different than chance, but submaximizers (compared to maximizers) and radical dishonest people (compare to non-radicals) are better at detecting honesty, while there is no difference in detecting dishonesty. Second, more information and VCs improve precision in detecting dishonesty, but honesty is better detected using only non-verbal cues (NVCs). Finally, a preconceived honesty bias improves specificity (honesty detection accuracy) and worsens sensitivity (dishonesty detection accuracy).
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/FPSYG.2021.693942
