When given a range of possible truths, people don't lie more; they simply feel 'honest' reporting whichever possible number pays them the most.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
Reporting under Imperfect Information
SSRN · 6502478
The Takeaway
This behavioral study shows that uncertainty acts as a moral loophole for greed. Instead of inventing lies, people use 'plausible deniability' to pick the best-case scenario within a fuzzy range of facts, allowing them to maximize their income while still viewing themselves as honest actors.
From the abstract
We experimentally study how uncertainty about the true state shapes reporting behavior when payoffs increase in the reported outcomes. In a chip-draw experiment, subjects report the number on a randomly drawn chip. In one treatment they observe the number directly, while in the other they observe only a signal that restricts the set of possible values without identifying the true number. We find that imperfect information substantially reshapes the distribution of reports: when the true state is