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Journal Articles Management Science Year : 2019

Malleable Lies: Communication and Cooperation in a High Stakes TV Game Show

Abstract

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.

Dates and versions

hal-02110662 , version 1 (25-04-2019)

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Uyanga Turmunkh, Martijn van den Assem, Dennie van Dolder. Malleable Lies: Communication and Cooperation in a High Stakes TV Game Show. Management Science, 2019, 65 (10), ⟨10.1287/mnsc.2018.3159⟩. ⟨hal-02110662⟩
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