Lying politicians have greater likelihood of gaining office, study finds

Politicians who lie more may have a greater chance of gaining office, a study suggests.

While the public may value candidates’ trust and legitimacy most highly among their character traits, these factors could prevent a candidate from jumping through the hoops required in some existing electoral systems.

A lab-based election experiment involving 308 people was undertaken by economists at the University of Bath in the UK and the University of Konstanz in Germany, found candidates who progress in politics are those “most prepared to renege on their electoral promises.

In the study, the economists designed a game-theory experiment to test the importance of trustworthiness and to see how individuals react when faced with various different election scenarios.

There were two stages to an election process which first involved the individual candidates vying against each other to win their party's candidacy - similar to the process in the US where the Democratic and Republican parties choose their leaders.

They then asked these “candidates” in the experiment how much they would invest (on a scale of 100) as a measure of how eager they were to gain selection, on three measures: money, time and effort, which together they would put in to get through the selection phase.

Those who invested the most had the highest probability of getting through to round two.

If selected to stand for office, candidates next had to choose how much money they would promise to voters in an election, attempting to win over an undecided public.

This could reflect campaign promises on tax and spending, for example.

Finally, if elected, politicians had to decide how to actually make decisions outside the election race, choosing how much they would transfer to voters or whether to change their minds and renege on their earlier promises.

The researchers’ findings highlight that those most likely to make it through the selection process because of their high investments in the first stage were those who then reneged on their promises most once they were elected into office.

In other words, those who had been most eager to be selected were also those most likely to deviate from what they had promised.

Lead researcher from the University of Bath's Department of Economics Dr Maik Schneider said: “Our study highlights why it may not be too surprising to find candidates on the campaign trail who lie.

“This should concern us all given the low levels of trust in politics.

"There is a clear paradox here in terms of an electorate which says what's missing in politics is greater trust, yet results which indicate that candidates who lie more, somehow still have a higher chance of gaining office.”

He added: “From a game theory perspective the reason why this is the case is clear, but these results should serve as a reminder about the importance of challenging untruths among candidates and, more broadly, increasing and improving transparency in the system.”

The researchers stressed that it is also the case that honest individuals invest time and resources to making it into office, however from these results they were unable to cut through in the same number as their more dishonest rivals.

The team behind the study suggested that to improve trust, much more robust fact-checking, transparency around campaign finances and public scrutiny of campaign promises would help.

They also said schemes to reduce the incentive for dishonesty could include new mechanisms to make campaign promises binding.

In the study, when the first stage of the election process was transparent, they found the correlation between “lie size” when in office and how eager a candidate had been to be selected disappeared.

The research is published in the Economic Journal.