Journal
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
Volume 65, Issue 10, Pages 4795-4812Publisher
INFORMS
DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2018.3159
Keywords
deception; lying aversion; game show; prisoner's dilemma; communication; cooperation; cheap talk
Funding
- Economic and Social Research Council via the Network for Integrated Behavioural Sciences [ES/K002201/1]
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [452-16-011]
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We investigate the credibility of nonbinding preplay statements about cooperative behavior, using data from a high-stakes TV game show in which contestants play a variant on the classic Prisoner's Dilemma. We depart from the conventional binary approach of classifying statements as promises or not, and propose a more fine-grained two-by-two typology inspired by the idea that lying aversion leads defectors to prefer statements that are malleable to ex-post interpretation as truths. Our empirical analysis shows that statements that carry an element of conditionality or implicitness are associated with a lower likelihood of cooperation, and confirms that malleability is a good criterion for judging the credibility of cheap talk.
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