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Trusting young children to help causes them to cheat less

Nature Human Behaviour volume 8, pages 668–678 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Trust and honesty are essential for human interactions. Philosophers since antiquity have long posited that they are causally linked. Evidence shows that honesty elicits trust from others, but little is known about the reverse: does trust lead to honesty? Here we experimentally investigated whether trusting young children to help can cause them to become more honest (total N = 328 across five studies; 168 boys; mean age, 5.94 years; s.d., 0.28 years). We observed kindergarten children’s cheating behaviour after they had been entrusted by an adult to help her with a task. Children who were trusted cheated less than children who were not trusted. Our study provides clear evidence for the causal effect of trust on honesty and contributes to understanding how social factors influence morality. This finding also points to the potential of using adult trust as an effective method to promote honesty in children.

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Fig. 1: Experimental materials.
Fig. 2: Experimental setup.
Fig. 3: Cheating rates across conditions and studies.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available at https://osf.io/yqdhp/.

Code availability

We used R software (version 4.3.1) to perform the binary logistic analyses. We estimated Bayes factors using the Bayesian loglinear regression models with mixture Dirichlet priors and performed generalized estimating equations using SPSS (version 26). The code for all analyses that support the findings of this study is available at https://osf.io/yqdhp/.

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Acknowledgements

The present research was supported by funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 32171060) and the Major Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research of the Ministry of Education of China (grant no. 22JZD044) to L.Z., and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to K.L. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the paper.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Li Zhao, Haiying Mao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zhejiang Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory for the Development and Care of Infants and Young Children, Hangzhou, PR China

    Li Zhao

  2. Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, PR China

    Li Zhao & Haiying Mao

  3. Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Haiying Mao

  4. Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Paul L. Harris

  5. Dr Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Kang Lee

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Contributions

L.Z. and K.L. designed the studies. H.M. collected the data. L.Z., K.L., P.L.H. and H.M. analysed the data and wrote the paper. L.Z. managed the project.

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Correspondence to Li Zhao.

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Zhao, L., Mao, H., Harris, P.L. et al. Trusting young children to help causes them to cheat less. Nat Hum Behav 8, 668–678 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01837-4

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