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Color me Honest! Time Pressure and (Dis-)Honest Behavior

Last registered on November 08, 2018

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Honesty, Time Pressure and Gender
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0003115
Initial registration date
July 25, 2018

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
July 30, 2018, 1:47 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
November 08, 2018, 6:03 AM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
ETH Zurich

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2018-07-30
End date
2018-11-22
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Everyday life offers ample opportunities to gain an advantage through misreporting.
The aim of this research project is to investigate lying behavior by focusing on two specific characteristics: time pressure and gender.
As far as time pressure, existing literature is rather controversial as it is reported to both increase honesty
and decrease it.
We would like to argue that these opposing findings may well be the result of a methodological flaw. Most studies use the dice-in-the-cup paradigm to measure honesty.
However, a lot of people have a readily available default for this situation: claiming a roll of 6.
In order not to trigger this automatic response, we propose a variant of the dice-in-a-cup paradigm where regular dice pips are replaced with colors.
As opposed to regular dice with pips, we expect that the participants do not have a default response with respect to which color to report.
The very same channel, namely that lying under time pressure is driven by experience, may as well be able to explain gender differences in lying.
We would like to argue that since men gamble more often than women, they accumulate more experience with rolling the dice and by extension, misreporting their rolls. Under time pressure, an intuitive answer formed by experience is triggered and so we expect when using regular dice, average reports by men are higher than those by women.
By contrast, when using dice with colors, gender differences are expected to vanish under time pressure.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Hausladen, Carina Ines and Olexandr Nikolaychuk. 2018. "Honesty, Time Pressure and Gender." AEA RCT Registry. November 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3115-2.0
Former Citation
Hausladen, Carina Ines and Olexandr Nikolaychuk. 2018. "Honesty, Time Pressure and Gender." AEA RCT Registry. November 08. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3115/history/36958
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Combinations of time pressure and various dice types are used as a means to elicit the natural proclivity to lying in male and female adults.
Intervention Start Date
2018-07-30
Intervention End Date
2018-11-22

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Inferred lying rate at the group level.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The distributions of reported outcomes by treatment group are compared to a uniform distribution: If all participants reported honestly, each of the six different outcomes should be reported with the same probability as a fair six sided die will be used.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Mouse movement, die recall, payoff association recall, time pressure perception, decision automaticity.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Mouse movement is used as proxy for the underlying reasoning processes.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Participants privately roll a die and subsequently report the outcome of their roll on a computer screen in order to determine their payoff.
The die is rolled with the help of a dice tower in order to ensure randomization.
The type of die used as well as time dimension for reporting results are varied between participants.
Four different combinations are planned: colored dice and time pressure, colored dice and no time pressure, numbered dice and time pressure as well as numbered dice and no time pressure.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
The draw of a ball from an urn determines the computer seat. Each computer seat has either treatment assigned to it. All treatments are run concurrently.
Randomization Unit
Individual.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Four treatments; between-subject.
Sample size: planned number of observations
200 participants altogether.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
50 participants in each of the 4 treatment groups, with an equal share of males and females.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials