Disguising Selfishness

In this project, we conduct an economic experiment to study the role of communication on the decision to disguise selfish behavior in front of others. To this end, we apply a modified dictator game in which dictators may shift the responsibility for an "unfair" allocation to the outcome of a random draw. In two treatments, we vary whether disguising selfishness is possible through action only, or requires an additional explicit lie. We find that the frequency of disguised selfishness as well as overall giving behavior is unaffected by communication. Moreover, as inferred from the differences in subjects’ response times between treatments, the decision to disguise selfishness seems to be psychologically easier with than without communication. Hence, neither decisions nor decision process measures hint at psychological costs of explicit lying when people decide whether to disguise selfish behavior in order to appear fair-minded in front of others.