Deciding whether to deceive: Determinants of the choice between deceptive and honest communication

Even when considered purely as strategic choices, decisions about deceptive communication are unusually complex and difficult to predict or analyze. The costs and benefits of deceptive and honest communication options may lie in very different domains, making direct comparison cognitively challenging. In this study, we use everyday scenarios to assess people's sensitivity to various aspects of such choices, including the probability that a deception will be detected and the costs and benefits associated with successful or failed deception. Factor analysis yields three composite determinants, which we interpret as sensitivities to (1) justifiability of deception, (2) benefit of successful deception, and (3) personal utility of honesty. We show that the relative strengths of these determinants differ in loss- vs. gain-facing scenarios: decision makers facing a probabilistic or certain loss take account of all three factors, while those facing a gain do not appear to make significant use of information about the magnitude of the potential benefit from deception. We discuss several potential explanations for this asymmetry.