CeDEx Brown Bag Seminar - Rafael Nunes Teixeira

Title: Sex, Lies, and Punishment: Gender Punishment Gap After Suspected Dishonesty

Abstract:

The punishment gap refers to minorities and underprivileged groups facing more severe punishment for mistakes or transgressions compared to other groups. Untangling the reasons behind the punishment gap is challenging due to the complex interplay of various factors. In an effort to investigate such situations, we analyzed gender differences in receiving punishment for suspected dishonesty within a controlled experiment, using a sender-receiver game. Our results show that males engage in selfish lies more frequently than females and are more likely to be punished for such lies. We also explored individuals' beliefs about dishonesty, considering empirical expectations, normative expectations, and gender-based causal attribution as potential explanations for the observed behaviors. To capture this causal attribution, we developed a new methodology to incentivize the investigation of how people perceive the same behavior differently when it is done by males or females. The findings suggest that empirical expectations might explain the observed behavior, as males are expected to lie more often. The results also suggest that participants perceive lying behaviors to be less socially acceptable than honestly disclosing a selfish outcome. Additionally, lies are often attributed to motives involving `rational calculations,' with females showing higher levels of such attributions compared to males.