Confidence signalling aids deception in strategic interactions

When two people are motivated solely to coordinate their actions, but one is better informed than the other about how best to achieve this, confidence signalling can facilitate mutually rewarding choices, and the use of this so-called confidence heuristic has been confirmed in experiments using coordination games. To investigate whether confidence signalling can also be used deceptively, we investigated behaviour in strategic games in which the better-informed player can benefit selfishly by misrepresenting confidence signals deliberately. We manipulated the relative quality of information provided to members of 55 dyads who discussed, under incomplete and asymmetric information, a series of problems in which they had to decide which of two shapes was closest in size to a target shape. Monetary incentives were structured according to the Deadlock game. We found that players with superior information felt greater confidence and attempted on a substantial minority of trials to deceive the other player, mainly by withholding the correct answer at the start of the discussion. We conclude that confidence signalling, even without lying, is sometimes used to deceive.