Self-serving dishonesty: The role of confidence in driving dishonesty

Abstract

Ambiguity and uncertainty as an explanation for ethical blind spots is well-documented. We contribute to this line of research by showing that these blind spots arise even when there is naturally occurring uncertainty—that is, when individuals are simply uncertain of the truth they “fill-in” this uncertainty in a self-serving way. To examine self-serving dishonesty, we asked a sample of U.S. car owners to respond to an auto insurance underwriting questionnaire that affects their price of insurance (i.e., premium), and investigated how financial incentives affect the honesty of their responses. We find, consistent with the current literature, that people have a strong preference for truthfulness, but only when they are confident of the objective truth. However, when people are not completely certain of the objectively correct answer, significant dishonesty occurs in a self-serving manner. We also find that reports of confidence do not depend on incentives and thus self-serving dishonesty is not strategic.