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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Punishing liars - how monitoring affects honesty and trust
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Sascha Behnk
  • Iván Barreda-Tarrazona
  • Aurora García-Gallego
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title PLoS ONE
Publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 1932-6203
Volume 13
Number 10
Page Range 1 - 30
Date 2018
Abstract Text Previous experiments have shown that the possibility to punish liars does not per se increase honesty in principal-agent relationships. In this study, we first establish a punishment mechanism that substantially enhances honest behavior and trust in a sender-receiver game: the possibility to impose severe sanctions that are cost-free for enforcers. Adopting this effective mechanism, we investigate how variations in the probability of detecting lies affect sender and receiver. We find that high honesty levels persist under such punishment mechanism even when the detection probability is significantly reduced. Furthermore, the relationship between monitoring and honesty does not follow a linear trend, as a moderate monitoring level proves to be less effective in enhancing honesty than high or very low levels. The punishment mechanism has an even more robust effect on receivers, showing similarly high levels of trust independently of the detection probability. Our analysis of subjects’ beliefs provides further insights into the mechanics behind these behavioral patterns.
Free access at DOI
Official URL https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0205420
Digital Object Identifier 10.1371/journal.pone.0205420
Other Identification Number merlin-id:16833
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