Do I care if others lie? Current and future effects when lies can be delegated

In this study we want to find out how people behave in a situation where they can themselves lie or they can share the responsibility for lying with others. To answer this question we study a sender-receiver game followed by a dictator game. It is possible to delegate the act of lying in the sender-receiver game and take pro-social actions in the subsequent dictator game. We examine how delegation affects the outcomes of current and future ethical decisions. We find that a non-trivial fraction of participants delegate their decision and delegation is associated with higher transfers in the subsequent dictator game.