Future of Work Decision-Making & Analytics
EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOUR
I t is commonly said that honesty is the best policy. But what if dishonesty is more rewarding? Many would argue that when lying offers clear benefits, without any risk of detection, the rational choice would be to deceive others. Yet even under such circumstances, people are surprisingly unwilling to lie. Behavioural scientists attribute this to the psychological cost of lying, even when it does not harm other people. This includes the unease you might feel from deceiving someone, influencing them against their interests, or being perceived as a liar. However, most previous studies focused exclusively on direct lies. These are explicit false statements that are intended to deceive others. For example, a manager might tell an employee they have supported their application for a raise when they have not. We have been exploring the use of subtler and more ambiguous forms of deception, such as selective truths, feigning ignorance, or even refraining from answering a question. This would be akin to the manager stating that they had a meeting with HR yesterday in the hope that the employee will
incorrectly fill in the blanks. Alternatively, the manager might give vague and elusive answers to any questions about the application, or divert the discussion elsewhere. We conducted a series of experiments involving a total of 3,615 participants, who took part in a two-player incentivised game. One player, dubbed the sender, was shown a wheel that would be spun to choose one of 20 coloured segments. The wheel was most likely to stop on red segments, followed by blue, and finally segments in which the colour was concealed. The other player, the receiver, did not know the outcome of the wheel spin, but was given a message by the sender about which colour segment the wheel stopped on. The receiver then guessed the colour of the segment, and their guess determined how much each player was paid at the end of the experiment. The sender would earn twice as much if the receiver guessed the segment was red, regardless of what colour it actually was. The receiver, on the other hand, would earn more if they guessed correctly. Therefore, if the spinner landed on a blue segment, the sender had to
make a choice. They could tell the truth about the colour, in which case they could expect to earn £1. Or they could try to trick the receiver into guessing the colour was red, in which case they would earn £2. We conducted two experiments, each with four distinct groups of senders. For those in the first group, the only alternative to telling the truth was a direct lie (that the segment was red, even if it was blue). The remaining three groups were each assigned a single form of evasion as their only alternative to the truth. One could feign ignorance by saying: “I don’t know the colour of the segment.” One could answer with a selective truth, saying: “The segment is more likely to be red than blue.” The final group had to choose between the truth and remaining silent. Our findings suggest that people are more willing to engage in indirect forms of deception than direct lies. We found that 46 per cent of senders chose a direct lie over the truth. By comparison, 56 per cent chose a selective truth, 54 per cent chose silence, and 51 per cent feigned ignorance. Around six per cent more senders
An honest living? Prevent your team from deceiving you
by Despoina Alempaki & Daniel Read
Warwick Business School | wbs.ac.uk
wbs.ac.uk | Warwick Business School
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