Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
LEE and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain.
PLoS One. 2018 Oct 10;13(10):e0205420. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0205420. eCollection 2018.
Previous experiments have shown that the possibility to punish liars does not per se increase honesty in principal-agent relationships. In this study, we first establish a punishment mechanism that substantially enhances honest behavior and trust in a sender-receiver game: the possibility to impose severe sanctions that are cost-free for enforcers. Adopting this effective mechanism, we investigate how variations in the probability of detecting lies affect sender and receiver. We find that high honesty levels persist under such punishment mechanism even when the detection probability is significantly reduced. Furthermore, the relationship between monitoring and honesty does not follow a linear trend, as a moderate monitoring level proves to be less effective in enhancing honesty than high or very low levels. The punishment mechanism has an even more robust effect on receivers, showing similarly high levels of trust independently of the detection probability. Our analysis of subjects' beliefs provides further insights into the mechanics behind these behavioral patterns.
先前的实验表明，惩罚说谎者本身并不能增加委托代理关系中的诚实度。在这项研究中，我们首先建立了一种惩罚机制，这种机制大大增强了发件人-收件人游戏中的诚实行为和信任：对执行者来说是免费的实施严厉制裁的可能性。采用这种有效的机制，我们研究了谎言检测概率的变化如何影响发件人和收件人。我们发现，即使在检测概率显著降低的情况下，这种惩罚机制也能保持高诚实度。此外，监控与诚实之间的关系并不遵循线性趋势，因为适度的监控水平在增强诚实度方面不如高或非常低的水平有效。惩罚机制对接收者的影响更为显著，无论检测概率如何，接收者都表现出类似的高度信任。我们对受试者信念的分析进一步深入了解了这些行为模式背后的机制。
