Does happy mood increase dishonesty in the cheap talk sender-receiver game?

English This study was based on recent findings by Tan & Forgas (2010) were mood affected selfishness and fairness in the dictator game. We tested whether mood manipulation would have similar effects on Gneezy’s cheap talk sender-receiver game, to discover whether mood affected lying. We found that a happy mood increases lying in the cheap talk sender-receiver game. Abstract-Icelandic Þessi rannsókn er byggð á nýlegum niðurstöðum Tan og Forgas (2010) þar sem skap virtist hafa áhrif á sanngirni og heiðarleika í einráðsleik (dictator game). Markmið þessarar rannsóknar var að kanna hvort að skap hefði svipuð áhrif á mælgi-leik (cheap talk senderreceiver economic game) Gneezy, hvort að skap hefði áhrif á lygar. Niðurstöður rannsóknarinnar voru þær að glaðlyndi jók lygar í mælgileiknum. DOES HAPPY MOOD INCREASE DISHONESTY 4 Content Foreword . 2 Abstract-English . 3 Abstract-Icelandic . 3 Method . 7 Participants and procedure . 7 Mood induction . 7 Cheap talk game . 7 Results . 8 Mood validation . 8 Mood effects on dishonesty . 8 Discussion . 10 References . 12 Figure 1. Percentage of participants that lied or told the truth after being induced into a happy or a sad mood. 8 Figure 2. Percentage of participants who agreed or disagreed about having lied to their receivers with a message that contained a lie. 9 Figure 3. Justifications for why participants lied to their receivers. 10 DOES HAPPY MOOD INCREASE DISHONESTY 5 Does happy mood increase dishonesty in the cheap talk sender-receiver game? Acting in an honest way is considered to be the correct behaviour, but in real life there are circumstances where people seem to be willing to act dishonestly if it is rewarding to them (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008; Tan & Forgas, 2010). If you could make extra money by telling a lie to another person without any consequences, would you do it? Does mood influence such a decision to lie? In everyday life people face the choice between being selfish or being true. From an evolutionary perspective an interesting question is why people make decisions that conflict with their self-interest (Garcia-Retamero, Takezawa, & Galesic, 2010), for example, when telling the truth (Gneezy, 2005). Concern with fairness is thought to be a human characteristic that influences intrapersonal strategies (Bolton, Katok, & Zwick, 1998; Camerer & Thaler, 1995; Forgas & Tan, 2013). The influence of mood on an interpersonal strategy like telling the truth has not been investigated previously. This is even, in spite of its affect being a primary force that drives interpersonal behaviour (Joseph P. Forgas, 2002; Zajonc, 1980). Tan and Forgas (2010) were, however, the first to demonstrate, using a basic allocation task, that mood influenced selfishness in a simple dictator game. Their results were that happy persons were more selfish than sad ones. Based on the proposition that telling someone a lie for the chance to make some more money is selfish, it is hypothesised that mood will effect lying in Gneezy’s (2005) cheap talk economic game, such that happy persons will be more likely to lie than sad persons. Economics games have been used to study interpersonal strategies such as fairness (Bolton et al., 1998; Camerer & Thaler, 1995), selfishness (Tan & Forgas, 2010), trust (Thielmann & Hilbig, 2014), cooperation (Deck, 2009), and dishonesty (Gneezy, 2005). For example, in the dictator game, the “dictator” has the power to allocate a scarce resource such as money or raffle tickets between herself and another person. In the game researchers are DOES HAPPY MOOD INCREASE DISHONESTY 6 able to study selfishness in a minimalistic context (Tan & Forgas, 2010). But pay-off games like Gneezy’s (2005) cheap talk sender-receiver game are a bit different. The game’s foundation is based on communication between two people, where one player (sender) has the information and the other one (receiver) has to process the given information from the sender in to action. The action taken by the receiver dictates monetary rewards to the players of the game. According to Gneezy (2005) the sender is more interested in the reward and less concerned with the other participant. That is understandable, since the sender has a guarantee from the experimenter that the receiver will never know her identity. Therefore, as in some other studies, there is no need for the sender to play honestly to protect her social appearance (Crawford & Sobel, 1982). Forgas has spent years exploring, how affect may influence interpersonal decisions (J. P. Forgas, 1999; Joseph P. Forgas & Bower, 1987; Joseph P. Forgas, 1998, 2002; Tan & Forgas, 2010). According to him, affect may have an effect on interpersonal strategies by selectively priming access to mood-consistent information as well as influencing how people process information as well as influencing how people process information. It appears that a negative mood promotes an accommodative, externally focused processing style of thinking and a positive mood promotes an internally focused, assimilative style. Therefore, a happy mood promotes a more selfish strategy and a negative mood a more fair one (Tan & Forgas, 2010). What all this means for Gneezy’s cheap talk game (2005), as it did for the dictator game (Tan & Forgas, 2010), is that there may be a conflict between being selfish when internally focused and being fair when externally focused. Thus happy persons will be more likely to lie than sad ones. DOES HAPPY MOOD INCREASE DISHONESTY 7 Method Participants and procedure The experiment was conducted in Reykjavik University with 143 undergraduate students; 73 female, 67 male, 3 of the students not reporting gender. Most students (78%) were under the age of 24. Students were approached and asked to participate in a decision making study which was run in a computer lab. Students were informed of what to expect and seated in front of twelve partitioned computers used in the study. All students were instructed to write down their name and e-mail address to ensure that they all would receive payment according to the result of the game.