White Lies

In this paper we distinguish between two types of white lies: those that help others at the expense of the person telling the lie, which we term altruistic white lies, and those that help both others and the liar, which we term Pareto white lies. We find that a large fraction of participants are reluctant to tell even a Pareto white lie, demonstrating a pure lie aversion independent of any social preferences for outcomes. In contrast, a...