The dosage of deception: How frequency and type influence trust evaluations

Abstract

Leading negotiation scholars have recommended that individuals never lie to their counterpart. This advice is based on negotiations research that has examined the interpersonal costs of deception through studies where a target is categorized as being deceptive or honest without consideration of the relative frequency of the deception. For example, prior work has broadly categorized individuals who lie once in a single-issue negotiation and individuals who lie once in a five-issue negotiation as liars. Consequently, it is hard to disentangle how many of the theoretical and prescriptive claims pertain to using deception sparingly, frequently, or only being deceptive. Across five preregistered studies (N = 4003), I examine contexts where individuals negotiate over multiple issues and disentangle the effects of being sparingly, mostly, or exclusively deceptive. Examining diverse deception strategies (e.g., lies by commission, dodging, paltering, deflection), I find that the economic and interpersonal consequences of deception are significantly different depending on the relative frequency with which individuals use it, underscoring the need to not only understand the effects of deception, but also the dosage. Although individuals punish deception, they also reward honesty, and are forgiving of counterparts who use deception sparingly. Combined, these findings deepen our understanding of deception and trust and advance our theoretical and prescriptive understanding of negotiations.