Individual Preferences for Truth-Telling

Contrary to the traditional economic view that individuals misreport private information to maximize material payoffs, recent evidence highlights robust preferences for truth-telling among many decision-makers. Theoretical models that align with aggregate behavioral patterns posit that these preferences arise from an intrinsic motivation to be honest and a desire to be perceived as honest. We propose a novel incentivized measure to independently capture these two motives at the individual level. We study the measure’s internal validity experimentally and show that it predicts (dis)honest behavior in other commonly used paradigms. Our approach reveals systematic heterogeneity among individuals and fairly stable type distributions across different samples. Additionally, we propose an experimentally validated 2-minute survey module that proxies both motives and predicts behavior in a typical reporting paradigm. Including this module in a large panel, we offer initial insights into how early-life experiences may shape preferences for being and being seen as honest.