We study the effect of entitlement on the willingness to lie. We set up a model of lying where individuals feel more or less entitled to their endowment depending on how they earned it. When given the opportunity to lie to keep their endowment, individuals who feel more entitled are encouraged to lie while others are discouraged. To test the model predictions we use a laboratory experiment where we compare the lying behavior of participants endowed with a high endowment and participants endowed with a low endowment. In one treatment, the allocation of the endowment is decided by participants’ performance, and in the other, it is determined by a random draw. Our study shows that deservingness influences lying in an intuitive direction: when participants performance determines income, those who earn less money lie less than those who earn more. We do not find differences in lying when participants perform the same task but lie to keep windfall endowments.

我们研究了权利对撒谎意愿的影响。我们建立了一个说谎的模型，在这个模型中，个人会根据自己的赚钱方式或多或少地感到自己有权获得捐赠。当有机会撒谎以保持自己的天赋时，会鼓励那些更有资格的人撒谎，而其他人则灰心。为了测试模型预测，我们使用了一个实验室实验，在实验中我们比较了被赋予高end赋的参与者和被赋予低low赋的参与者的说谎行为。在一种治疗方法中，the赋的分配由参与者的表现决定，而在另一种方法中，by赋的分配由随机抽取决定。我们的研究表明，应得性的影响在一个直观的方向上：当参与者的绩效决定收入时，赚钱少的人比赚钱多的人撒谎。