Why Don’t People Lie More? Truth Is (Wrongly) Believed To Be More Persuasive

Is truth believed to be more persuasive than falsehood? This paper explores this question using a series of experiments. First, a survey experiment reveals that participants consistently believe the persuasive power of truthful messages is higher than that of lies. Second, two laboratory experiments, in which senders record truthful and false video messages about news events, show that senders mistakenly believe their truthful messages will be more believable. Even when incentivized to lie, most senders choose to tell the truth—if tasked with persuading receivers. If not, however, most senders follow the incentives and lie.