The good, the bad and the ugly thing to do when sharing information: Revealing, concealing and lying depend on social motivation, distribution and importance of information

Research on information sharing in group decision-making has widely assumed a cooperative context and focused on the exchange of shared or unshared information in the hidden profile paradigm (Stasser and Titus, 1985 and Stasser and Titus, 1987), neglecting the role of information importance. We argue that information sharing is a mixed-motive conflict setting that gives rise to motivated strategic behavior. We introduce a research paradigm that combines aspects of the traditional information sampling paradigm with aspects of a public good dilemma: the information pooling game. In three experiments, we show that information sharing is strategic behavior that depends on people’s pro-social or pro-self motivation, and that people consider information sharedness and information importance when deciding whether to reveal, withhold, or falsify their private or public information. Pro-social individuals were consistently found to honestly reveal their private and important information, while selfish individuals strategically concealed or even lied about their private and important information.