I don’t think there is much reason to lie. You would expect that people would be willing to pay based on how much they value their friendship and how much they value money. Thus, rich people who value the marginal dollar less would pay more. There’s something else going on here.
Two possibilities I came up with are that people are signalling that they are capable of taking care of themselves and don’t need charity, and people are signaling that their friendship is genuine and they’re not in it for the money.
I feel like the second one is kind of silly. Friends help each other out. If you try to signal that you’re friendship is genuine by not accepting any kind of help from each other, then you’ve removed the entire point of friendship.
If lying is a problem, then don’t bother explicitly stating income. If someone doesn’t want to pay, they don’t have to. If multiple people want to pay, they can split the bill.
I guess that’s where it comes from. The richest, most generous guy not to pay won’t want to look as poor and selfish as everyone else, so they’ll pay too. Anyone who’s concerned enough about money probably isn’t going to bother eating out.
What I really don’t get is why they pool the bill in the first place. If you’re not going to just have the richest guy pay it, why not have everyone pay for their own meal?
I don’t think there is much reason to lie. You would expect that people would be willing to pay based on how much they value their friendship and how much they value money. Thus, rich people who value the marginal dollar less would pay more. There’s something else going on here.
Two possibilities I came up with are that people are signalling that they are capable of taking care of themselves and don’t need charity, and people are signaling that their friendship is genuine and they’re not in it for the money.
I feel like the second one is kind of silly. Friends help each other out. If you try to signal that you’re friendship is genuine by not accepting any kind of help from each other, then you’ve removed the entire point of friendship.
I think plenty of people would believe that paying less is “much reason to lie”.
If lying is a problem, then don’t bother explicitly stating income. If someone doesn’t want to pay, they don’t have to. If multiple people want to pay, they can split the bill.
I guess that’s where it comes from. The richest, most generous guy not to pay won’t want to look as poor and selfish as everyone else, so they’ll pay too. Anyone who’s concerned enough about money probably isn’t going to bother eating out.
What I really don’t get is why they pool the bill in the first place. If you’re not going to just have the richest guy pay it, why not have everyone pay for their own meal?
I think it’s to speed things up. It would cost much more time to have everyone pay for themselves, and waiters would hate you.