Gender differences in lying in sender-receiver games: A meta-analysis

• Published in: Judgment and Decision Making Vol. 13; no. 4; pp. 345 - 355
• Main Author: Capraro, Valerio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tallahassee Society for Judgment and Decision Making 01.07.2018; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: Altruism; Analysis; Deception; Gender differences; honesty; Husbands; Lying; Meta-analysis; Sex differences (Psychology); sex differences.NAKeywords; Wives; deception; honesty; gender differences; sex differences; lying
• ISSN: 1930-2975; 1930-2975
• DOI: 10.1017/S1930297500009220

Whether there are gender differences in lying has been largely debated in the past decade. Previous studies found mixed results. To shed light on this topic, here I report a meta-analysis of 8,728 distinct observations, collected in 65 Sender-Receiver game treatments, by 14 research groups. Following previous work and theoretical considerations, I distinguish three types of lies: black lies, which benefit the liar at a cost for another person; altruistic white lies, which benefit another person at a cost for the liar; and Pareto white lies, which benefit both the liar and another person. The results show that: males are significantly more likely than females to tell black lies (N=4,173); males are significantly more likely than females to tell altruistic white (N=2,940); and results are inconclusive in the case of Pareto white lies (N=1,615). Furthermore, gender differences in telling altruistic white lies are significantly stronger than in the other two cases.