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Giving children trust to help others can make them more honest. This study shows that trusting young children to assist with a task reduced their cheating behavior, highlighting trust as a tool for promoting honesty.

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Moral Psychology
  • Social Psychology

Background:

  • Trust and honesty are fundamental to human interactions.
  • Philosophical traditions suggest a causal link between honesty and trust.
  • While honesty elicits trust, the reciprocal effect of trust on honesty remains under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To experimentally investigate whether trusting young children influences their subsequent honesty.
  • To determine if trust can causally promote honest behavior in children.

Main Methods:

  • Five studies were conducted with a total of 328 kindergarten children (168 boys, mean age 5.94 years).
  • Children's cheating behavior was observed after they were entrusted by an adult to assist with a task.
  • A control group not given trust was used for comparison.

Main Results:

  • Children who were trusted to help exhibited significantly less cheating behavior compared to those not trusted.
  • The findings provide clear experimental evidence for a causal effect of trust on honesty.

Conclusions:

  • Trust can causally increase honesty in young children.
  • Leveraging adult trust offers a potential strategy for fostering honesty in children.
  • This research contributes to understanding the influence of social factors on moral development.