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Clever enough to tell the truth
Journal article

Clever enough to tell the truth

Abstract

We conduct a field experiment on 427 Israeli soldiers who each rolled a six-sided die in private and reported the outcome. For every point reported, the soldier received an additional half-hour early release from the army base on Thursday afternoon. We find that the higher a soldier’s military entrance score, the more honest he is on average. We replicate this finding on a sample of 156 civilians paid in cash for their die reports. Furthermore, the civilian experiments reveal that two measures of cognitive ability predict honesty, whereas general self-report honesty questions and a consistency check among them are of no value. We provide a rationale for the relationship between cognitive ability and honesty and discuss its generalizability.

Authors

Ruffle BJ; Tobol Y

Journal

Experimental Economics, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 130–155

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Publication Date

March 1, 2017

DOI

10.1007/s10683-016-9479-y

ISSN

1386-4157
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