How can you tell if someone's lying? The answer is, they're probably not. Traditional economics says that people are rational beings who will lie if it's to their advantage. A recent university study has shown that, actually, we're pretty honest  --especially when we're  at home. Researchers in Germany  phoned  people at home and asked them to toss  a coin. There was a strong  financial  incentive  to fake the result: if the coin landed tails-up, the participants  would receive money or a gift ticket, while if the coin landed heads-up, they would get nothing. Because they were  on the phone, they knew there was no risk of getting caught if they lied. And yet people told the truth.Over hundreds of tosses, a coin will land tails-up roughly 50% of the time. In this study 0ver half the people asked (55.6%) said that the coin landed heads-up, which meant they would receive nothing. Previous studies had found that people were more dishonest. In those laboratory studies, 75% of people reported a winning coin and claimed a reward. So the research team thinks it's being in our own homes which makes us play fair, although it's not yet clear why. In fact both types of study show people are surprisingly reliable. Even in the laboratory, 25% of people  turned down a reward by telling the truth. The researchers say this is because honesty is highly  valued in human society.We care about our  reputation and our sense of ourselves as respectable people. So lying has a psychological  cost and it seems this cost is more important than the financialbenefits of lying  . Under what circumstance were the participants more dishonest?
On the phone On the street In their homes In those laboratory studies