Does It Matter What People Lie About?

We investigate whether people’s moral judgments of lies in pre-contractual negotiations differ from their views on whether such lies should give the deceived party a legal right to rescind the contract, and whether these judgments depend on the content of the lie. In a vignette study with 832 German students and 885 participants from Germany, Italy, and the United States, respondents evaluated a range of common negotiation lies. Across samples, participants were generally more likely to deem a lie immoral than to believe it should justify rescission, but the size of this gap varied depending on the lie’s subject. Lies about the subject matter of the contract or the reservation price tended to elicit similar moral and legal assessments. In contrast, lies about product availability or alternative offers were frequently judged immoral yet not seen as warranting rescission. These findings contribute to psychological research on normative beliefs and inform legal debates about the normative foundations of contract law.