A must lie situation – avoiding giving negative feedback

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

We examine under what conditions people provide accurate feedback to others. We use feedback regarding attractiveness, a trait people care about, and for which objective information is hard to obtain. Our results show that people avoid giving accurate face-to-face feedback to less attractive individuals, even if lying in this context comes at a monetary cost to both the person who gives the feedback and the receiver. A substantial increase of these costs does not increase the accuracy of feedback. However, when feedback is provided anonymously, the aversion to giving negative feedback is reduced.

Original languageEnglish
JournalGames and Economic Behavior
Volume102
Pages (from-to)445-454
Number of pages10
ISSN0899-8256
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2017
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • Feedback, Laboratory experiment, Lying, Overconfidence, Updating

ID: 210838532