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Comment by mingfu | Hacker News Reader

Something interesting I think the article did not mention is that given the difference between the two sets of experiments, where you roll once vs you roll 3 times.

As a participant I'd feel more inclined to lie about my first roll if I rolled a higher number in my second or third attempt.

I'd be very interested in the results if n was not 76 but instead 7600.

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From the paper (http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/s.shalvi/bestanden/Shalvi%20et...), page 5-6: "Shalvi et al. (2011a) asked participants to roll a die under a paper cup with a small hole at the top allowing only them to see the outcome, and earn money according to what they reported rolling (1=$1, 2=$2, etc.). As participants’ rolls were truly private, the authors assessed lying by comparing the reported distribution to the distribution predicted by chance (Fischbacher & Heusi, 2008). Participants were asked to roll three times but to report only the outcome of the first roll. Although all three rolls were private, the distribution of reported outcomes resembled the distribution of choosing the highest of the three observed rolls. Modifying the task to allow participants to roll only once reduced lying. Participants clearly found value in being able to justify their lies to themselves. The authors concluded that observing desired counterfactuals, in the form of desired (higher) values appearing on the second or third (non-relevant for pay) rolls, modified participants’ ethical perceptions of what they considered to be lying. Observing desired counterfactual information enabled participants to enjoy both worlds: lie for money, but feel honest."

Shalvi et. al. (2011a) is: Shalvi, S., Dana, J., Handgraaf, M. J. J., & De Dreu, C. K. W. (2011a). Justified ethicality: Observing desired counterfactuals modifies ethical perceptions and behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 115, 181-190.

Appreciate the link. I'm going to read up. I had an inclination this would be the case but definitely interesting to see it in actual research.

Yes, that is interesting and true. The Economist article is a bit lame.

76 was enough to convince me that the effect isn't all publication bias (P<.01, and it's intuitively plausible). I would rather see a more diverse population (than college freshmen) than larger numbers.

The call for larger sample sizes isn't always appropriate. It can often lead to spurious inferences.

As Jacob Cohen (famous statistician) has said, "all null hypotheses, at least in the two tailed forms, are false".

That is, with nearly any hypothesis about differences between groups, given a large enough sample size, you're likely to find a significant difference.

i think the difference here is between the two different experiments (one with three rolls of the dice and one with a single roll) and not a difference between the groups. You could choose to use the exact same group of participants for both experiments.

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