Why Don’t People Lie More? Truth Is (Wrongly) Believed to Be More Persuasive (with Uri Gneezy)
- Date: May 12, 2025
- Time: 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Marta Serra Garcia (UC San Diego)
- Room: Ground Floor
Is truth believed to be more persuasive than
falsehood? This paper explores this question using a series of experiments.
First, a survey experiment reveals that participants consistently believe the
persuasive power of truthful messages is higher than that of lies. Second, two
laboratory experiments, in which senders record truthful and false video
messages about news events, show that senders mistakenly believe their truthful
messages will be more believable. Even when incentivized to lie, most senders
choose to tell the truth—if tasked with persuading receivers. If not, however,
most senders follow the incentives and lie.