Two boys sat side by side at a desk. Both are dressed as office workers, wearing shirts and ties. One is fitted to a homemade, pretend lie detector. He has an upturned colander on his head, with wires connected it to a decorated cardboard box. A long strip of paper with a red polygraph line drawn on is emerging from the box. The other boy is wearing a suit jacket to make him look more like an authority figure and has a pen in his hand and is recording the results in a notebook.

Omission impossible: Many staff prefer selective truths or silence to a direct lie

It is commonly said that honesty is the best policy. But what if dishonesty is more rewarding? 

Many would argue that when lying offers clear benefits, without any risk of detection, the rational choice would be to deceive others. 

Yet even under such circumstances, people are surprisingly unwilling to lie. 

Behavioural scientists attribute this to the psychological cost of lying, even when it does not harm other people. This includes the unease you might feel from deceiving someone, influencing them against their interests, or being perceived as a liar. 

However, most previous studies focused exclusively on direct lies. These are explicit false statements that are intended to deceive others. 

For example, a manager might tell an employee they have supported their application for a raise when they have not. 

We have been exploring the use of subtler and more ambiguous forms of deception, such as selective truths, feigning ignorance, or even refraining from answering a question. 

This would be akin to the manager stating that they had a meeting with HR yesterday in the hope that the employee will incorrectly fill in the blanks. 

Alternatively, the manager might give vague and elusive answers to any questions about the application, or divert the discussion elsewhere.

Testing whether honesty is the best policy

We conducted a series of experiments involving a total of 3,615 participants, who took part in a two-player incentivised game. 

One player, dubbed the sender, was shown a wheel which would be spin to choose one of twenty coloured segments. 

The wheel was most likely to stop on red segments, followed by blue, and finally segments in which the colour was concealed.  

The other player, the receiver, did not know the outcome of the wheel spin, but was given a message by the sender about which colour segment the wheel stopped on. 

The receiver then guessed the colour of the segment, and their guess determined how much each player was paid at the end of the experiment.  

The sender would earn twice as much, if the receiver guessed the segment was red, regardless of what colour it actually was. 

The receiver, on the other hand, would earn more if they guessed correctly. 

What are the alternatives to telling the truth?

Therefore, if the spinner landed on a blue segment, the sender had to make a choice. They could tell the truth about the colour, in which case they could expect to earn £1. Or they could try to trick the receiver into guessing the colour was red, in which case they would earn £2. 

We conducted two experiments, each with four distinct groups of senders.  

For those in the first group, the only alternative to telling the truth was a direct lie (that the segment was red, even if it was blue). 

The remaining three groups were each assigned a single form of evasion as their only alternative to the truth. 

One could feign ignorance by saying: “I don’t know the colour of the segment”. One could answer with a selective truth, saying: “The segment is more likely to be red than blue”. The final group had to choose between the truth and remaining silent.

Do we prefer a selective truth to a direct lie?

Our findings suggest that people are more willing to engage in indirect forms of deception than direct lies. We found that 46 per cent of senders chose a direct lie over the truth. 

By comparison, 56 per cent chose a selective truth, 54 per cent chose silence, and 51 per cent feigned ignorance. 

Around six per cent more senders deceived their partner when they could use evasion rather than a direct lie. This is no small increase, given that a substantial number of people will tell the truth under almost any circumstances. 

This pattern indicates that moral flexibility increases when people can justify their deception through less explicit means. 

Senders were also less likely to lie or avoid the truth if we told them the receiver would discover their deceit, even if this was a complete stranger they would never meet. Simply being reminded of the possibility of being exposed reduced the desire to deceive others. 

However, even in this case, selective truth was still chosen more frequently than direct lies. 

Indirect deception can lead us to make wrong decisions. Receivers were more likely to choose red if they heard a selective truth than if they received feigned ignorance or silence. 

Indirect deception or evasion is also less easy to detect than direct lies. It is harder to identify that deception has actually occurred, and even harder to prove it.  

How managers can stop staff misleading them

So how can business leaders uncover and even prevent deception?

One strategy is to communicate expectations clearly and require staff to outline what they plan to do for a specific task in advance. Removing ambiguity leaves less room for deception. 

Moreover, evasion is easier to detect when there is a clear expectation for a direct answer. Consider how suspicious we are when politicians attempt to avoid giving a direct answer to a direct question. 

Create environments that minimise opportunities for evasive responses. During job interviews, this could involve asking candidates direct questions that require evidence rather than allowing ambiguous answers. 

For example, don’t ask: "Do you have any experience with a particular software platform?" 

Instead, ask candidates to demonstrate their proficiency by explaining how they've used specific features, or by sharing content they created with the platform in question. 

Remove factors that encourage deception

Establish protocols that reduce “wiggle room” for evasion. These could include transparent reporting structures, regular accountability meetings with supervisors, and clear documentation.

Our study shows that silence can also indicate deception. The omission of crucial information, incomplete reports, or the inability to respond to a question warrants further investigation. 

Research has shown that people are particularly poor at recognising the implications of missing information.  A good rule of thumb is that if information is withheld, it is likely because the communicator believes they would not benefit from others having that information.   

Above all, business leaders should cultivate a culture founded on transparency and integrity, where honesty receives recognition and mistakes become learning opportunities. 

This can alleviate the pressure employees feel to deceive, encouraging them to openly discuss errors or challenges with supervisors rather than concealing them.

Further reading:

Why do people give fraudsters a second chance?

Five steps to change company culture, inspired by WBS alum Maro Itoje

Is bias causing business leaders to make mistakes?

The Consistency Trap: How to make better decisions

 

Daniel Read is Professor of Behavioural Sciencel. He teaches Behavioural Science for the Manager and Negotiation Theory and Practice on the Global Online MBA and Executive MBA. He also teaches on several Undergraduate and Master's programmes.

Despoina Alempaki is Associate Professor of Behavioural Science and lectures on Strategic Games: Thinking rationally about business, policy, and real life on the BSc Management, BSc International Management, and BSc Accounting and Finance.

Learn to leverage better behaviour and decision-making in your organisations with the three-day Executive Education programme Behavioural Science in Practice at WBS London at The Shard.

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