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Updated: Oct 15, 2025

The Modified Temptation Resistance Task: A Paradigm to Elicit Children's Strategic Lie-telling
Published on: April 6, 2018
Children strategically conceal selfishness
Gorana Gonzalez1, Richard E Ahl1, Sara Cordes1
1Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract:
Can children exploit knowledge asymmetries to get away with selfishness? This question was addressed by testing 6- to 9-year-old children (N = 164; 81 girls) from the Northeastern United States in a modified Ultimatum Game. Children were assigned to the roles of proposers (who offered some proportion of an endowment) and responders (who could accept or reject offers). Both players in the Informed condition knew the endowment quantity in each trial. However, in the Uninformed condition, only proposers knew this information. In this condition, many proposers made "strategically selfish" offers that seemed fair based on the responders' incomplete knowledge but were actually highly selfish. These results indicate that even young children possess the ability to deceive others about their selfishness.
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