Observability, Honesty, and the Social Image Costs of Lying

Abstract

We study the role of social image in influencing lying behavior through a pre-registered within-subject experiment embedded in the 2020 wave of the German SocioEconomic Panel Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS). By exogenously manipulating the observability of lying across two tasks, we explore how individuals respond to increased image costs of lying. By exploiting the rich comprehensive socio-demographic and psychological data from the SOEP-IS, we study how this response varies across substrata of the population. Our findings indicate that men and former citizens of East Germany (GDR) display a stronger aversion to lying under observable conditions. These results highlight the variability in image costs across demographic groups and underscore the importance of historical and cultural contexts in shaping ethical behaviors.