title: Young children with a positive reputation to maintain are less likely to cheat.
abstract: The present study examined whether having a positive reputation to maintain makes young children less likely to cheat. Cheating was assessed through a temptation resistance paradigm in which participants were instructed not to cheat in a guessing game. Across three studies (total N = 361), preschool-aged participants were randomly assigned to either a reputation condition, in which an experimenter told them that she had learned of their positive reputation from classmates, or to a control condition in which they received no such information. By age 5, children in the reputation condition cheated less often than those in the control condition even though nobody was watching and choosing not to cheat conflicted with their personal interest. These findings are the first to show that informing children that they have a positive reputation to maintain can influence their moral behavior.
authors: Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, PR China.
authors: Genyue
authors: G
authors: Fu
authors: Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, PR China.|Department of Psychology, University of California San Diego, USA.
authors: Gail D
authors: GD
authors: Heyman
authors: Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, PR China.
authors: Miao
authors: M
authors: Qian
authors: School of Education, Guizhou Normal University, PR China.
authors: Tengfei
authors: T
authors: Guo
authors: Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, PR China.|Dr Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, Canada.
authors: Kang
authors: K
authors: Lee
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005607:Fraud / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D012919:Social Behavior; D012928:Social Desirability