Deception, Social Preferences, and Friendship

We investigate the interaction between friendship, social preferences, and deceptive behavior. We implement a sender- receiver game, in which senders choose from a distinct set of allocations that embodies a multi-dimensional set of potential lies. A novelty of our design is that it directly distinguishes between lying aversion and outcome oriented social preferences without the need for explicitly eliciting social preferences. We consider a “strangers” treatment and a “friends” treatment. Results show that subjects are less likely to lie to friends than to strangers; that they have different degrees of lying aversion, and that they lie according to their social preferences. Pro-social individuals appear more lying averse. If they do lie, they are equally likely to do so with friends as with strangers.