Episode 5: Prosocial lies: When Deception Breeds Trust Article to Audio

Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long asserted that deception harms trust. We challenge
this claim. Across four studies, we demonstrate that deception can increase trust. Specifically, prosocial
lies increase the willingness to pass money in the trust game, a behavioral measure of benevolence-based
trust. In Studies 1a and 1b, we find that altruistic lies increase trust when deception is directly experienced and when it is merely observed. In Study 2, we demonstrate that mutually beneficial lies also
increase trust. In Study 3, we disentangle the effects of intentions and deception; intentions are far more
important than deception for building benevolence-based trust. In Study 4, we examine how prosocial
lies influence integrity-based trust. We introduce a new economic game, the Rely-or-Verify game, to measure integrity-based trust. Prosocial lies increase benevolence-based trust, but harm integrity-based
trust. Our findings expand our understanding of deception and deepen our insight into the mechanics
of trust.