We examine strategic communication in sender-receiver games where senders can only transmit information using verifiable statements. Applying the method of Hagenbach, Koessler, Perez-Richet [Ecta14], we represent players’ incentives by a graph mapping which type of a sender would like to be believed as which other type, the masquerading graph. In theory, when this graph is acyclic, the receiver can deter the use of any vague message by attributing it to a type that no potential sender of this message would like to be. If receivers make such skeptical inferences, full revelation of information obtains in equilibrium. On the contrary, when the masquerading graph is cyclic, the use of vague messages is harder to discourage and full disclosure more difficult to sustain. This paper investigates the relevance of this graphical distinction in the lab. Our experimental design involves sender-receiver games with various payoffs and allows examining how subjects use and interpret evidences for the different resulting graphs. We show that information is more often revealed in games whose graph is acyclic than cyclic, and that receivers interpret vague evidences skeptically in most cases. While senders understand well when their type should be identified, they however fail using vague messages to fool receivers as finely as they could. 

