Detection Biases in Bluffing - Theory and Experiments

People may be better at recognizing lies than truths or better at recognizing truths than lies. Such detection biases are analyzed theoretically and experimentally. The detection bias shrinks the equilibrium set to a unique non-pooling equilibrium, in which, the better a player is to detect lies the more often will the opponent player lie. In the experiment, subjects were telling the truth too often according to standard predictions. Other findings were a significant positive correlation between self-rated bluffing ability and actual bluffing performance. Furthermore, the subjects were more prone to lie to a woman than to a man.