Heads I win and tails you lose: When flip of a coin predicts politicians' honesty

What are the chances that a politician is honest — or dishonest? Most might think the odds are so equal that it may as well be decided at the flip of a coin.

As there is no data about politicians’ propensity to lie about that factor and much more, some young researchers in Spain had decided to test the honesty of 816 mayors by getting them to toss a coin, call heads or tails, and then reveal whether they ‘won’ or ‘lost’ the toss.

The result was along expected lines: rather than conforming to the 50:50 statistical chance that the coin landed head up or tail up, 68% of the mayors claimed it was the former because that would earn them a reward.


Of course, it is heartening that the result indicates not all mayors lied, but the added information that those affiliated to major political parties showed a higher inclination to fudge than those from smaller parties or independents is worrisome.

A comparison of subgroups also revealed that women were as likely to lie as the men, and those who were most eager to know the results of the toss were also mostly the ones who had lied.

The real bombshell, however, was the negative relationship between truth-telling and the mayors’ re-election in the next elections. More research certainly needs to be done to prove empirically what many know anecdotally: that dishonesty probably pays at the hustings.