DP15711 Communication and social preferences: an experimental analysis

Author(s):	Antonio Cabrales, Francesco Feri, Piero Gottardi, Miguel A. Meléndez-Jiménez
Publication Date:	January 2021
Keyword(s):	cheap talk, Conflicts of interest, Deception, Experiments, social preferences
JEL(s):	C72, D83, G14
Programme Areas:	Labour Economics, Public Economics, Financial Economics, Industrial Organization
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=15711

This paper reports on experiments regarding cheap talk games where senders attempt deception when their interests are not in conflict with those of the receiver. The amount of miscommunication is higher than in previous experimental findings on cheap talk games in situations where senders' and receivers' interests are not in conflict. We obtain this even though, as in previous literature, some participants appear to feature a cost of lying. We argue our findings could be attributed to distributional preferences of senders who lie to avoid the receiver getting a higher payoff than herself.