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A fault confessed is half redressed—Confessions and punishment

Verena Utikal
- 01 Jan 2012 - 
- Vol. 81, Iss: 1, pp 314-327
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In this paper, the willingness to punish harmful failures depends on how the harmed party has learned about the outcome via random detection or self-report by the performer, and they found that confessions are a powerful instrument: punishment for confessed failures is less likely than for randomly detected failures.
Abstract: 
Confessions after failures are socially desirable. However, confessions also bear the risk of punishment. In a laboratory experiment I examine how confessions work. I analyze whether the willingness to punish harmful failures depends on how the harmed party has learned about the outcome. The harmed party can learn about the outcome via random detection or self-report by the performer. There are two major findings: first, confessions are a powerful instrument: punishment for confessed failures is less likely than for randomly detected failures. Second, confessions are much more likely to occur if there is no punishment.

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Learning and Peer Effects
Verena Utikal
Research Paper Series
Thurgau Institute of Economics and Department of Economics
at the University of Konstanz
No. 60 october 2010
A fault confessed is half redressed
- Confessions and Punishment
Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS)
URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-opus-125099
URL: http://kops.ub.uni-konstanz.de/volltexte/2010/12509/
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         
        
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              
             
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            
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              
      
            
           
          

          
              
         


           
  

 




3

          

     
  
    
       
         
          
            
 


  

           


           


           


            

          
    
             

 
          


4
 
          
        
          
 
 


       
 
        
         

            

       
       
             
  
          
 
             

      

        
 

            


         
          
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Regulatory adaptations for delivering information: the case of confession

Daniel Sznycer, +3 more
- 01 Jan 2015 - 
TL;DR: Sp spontaneous confession to a victim is studied, finding that offenders are more willing to confess when the benefit of the offense to them is high, the cost to the victim is low, and the probability of information leakage is high.
Journal ArticleDOI

Common knowledge, coordination, and the logic of self-conscious emotions

Kyle A. Thomas, +2 more
- 01 Dec 2017 - 
TL;DR: The use of he or sh sions can quickly become unwieldy or ambiguous (Pinker will consistently refer to a hypothetical actor using a mas hypothetical onlookers using feminine or plural pronouns) as discussed by the authors.
Posted Content

Intentions Undercover -- Hiding Intentions is Considered Unfair

Tim Friehe, +1 more
- 27 Feb 2015 - 
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore whether people hide their unfair intentions from others and how hiding intentions is itself perceived in fairness terms, and they present a typology of punisher types and show that hiding unkind intention is treated differently than unkind intentions, possibly establishing a behavioral category of its own.
Journal ArticleDOI

Punishing liars-How monitoring affects honesty and trust.

Sascha Behnk, +2 more
- 10 Oct 2018 - 
TL;DR: It is found that high honesty levels persist under such punishment mechanism even when the detection probability is significantly reduced, and the relationship between monitoring and honesty does not follow a linear trend, as a moderate monitoring level proves to be less effective in enhancing honesty than high or very low levels.
Journal ArticleDOI

An Apology for Lying

Keiko Aoki, +2 more
- 26 Apr 2013 - 
TL;DR: The authors investigate the effects of three main variables: burden of guilt based on the difference of stakes to be earned from lying and those from telling the truth (large vs. small), socio-economic background (students vs. non-students), and social distance (anonymity vs. face-to-face).
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments

Urs Fischbacher
- 07 Feb 2007 - 
TL;DR: Z-Tree as mentioned in this paper is a toolbox for ready-made economic experiments, which allows programming almost any kind of experiments in a short time and is stable and easy to use.
Journal ArticleDOI

A theory of fairness, competition and cooperation

Ernst Fehr, +1 more
- 01 Aug 1999 - 
TL;DR: This paper showed that if some people care about equity, the puzzles can be resolved and that the economic environment determines whether the fair types or the selesh types dominate equilibrium behavior in cooperative games.
Journal ArticleDOI

A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation

Ernst Fehr
- 01 Mar 1998 - 
TL;DR: This article showed that if a fraction of the people exhibit inequality aversion, stable cooperation is maintained although punishment is costly for those who punish, and they also showed that when they are given the opportunity to punish free riders, stable cooperations are maintained.
Journal ArticleDOI

ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition

Gary E. Bolton, +1 more
- 01 Mar 2000 - 
TL;DR: The authors demonstrate that people are motivated by both their pecuniary payoff and their relative payoff standing, and demonstrate that a simple model, constructed on the premise that people were motivated by either their payoff or their relative standing, organizes a large and seemingly disparate set of laboratory observations as one consistent pattern, which explains observations from games where equity is thought to be a factor, such as ultimatum and dictator, games where reciprocity is played a role and games where competitive behavior is observed.
Posted Content

Strategic Information Transmission

Vincent P. Crawford, +1 more
- 10 Dec 2010 - 
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a model of strategic communication in which a better-informed Sender (S) sends a possibly noisy signal to a Receiver (R), who then takes an action that determines the welfare of both.