Do I care if others lie? : current and future effects of delegation of lying

The aim of this study is to find out why people are telling the truth: is it a desire to respect trust, to avoid losses for others, or a mere distaste for lying per se? To answer this question we study a sender-receiver game where it is possible to delegate the act of lying and where it is possible to take pro-social actions in a subsequent dictator game. We examine how delegation affects the outcomes of people's current and future ethical decisions. We find that a non-trivial fraction of participants delegate their decision. However, delegation is associated with higher transfers in the subsequent dictator game