Dishonest Behavior: Sin Big or Go Home

Abstract Economic agents face many different types of economic incentives when making financial and moral decisions. We provide experimental data from a population that uniquely responds to incentives to lie compared to previously studied populations. We conduct a standard 6-sided die rolling lying study within a population that believes that God has knowledge of all their actions. Within this population, we find that those who attend church frequently appear to refrain from lying while those who attend less frequently do lie, but without any attempt to disguise their lies as seen in more secular populations. Our results complement recent theoretical work on lying.