Good person, but bad friend: Children's developing evaluations of tattling

People strive to be good people and good friends. Sometimes it's easy to know what it means to be both: Helping a friend is clearly the morally right thing to do and makes one a good friend. But life is not always so simple. What happens when a friend commits a moral transgression? Previous research demonstrates adults see this dilemma as a tradeoff-turning in an immoral friend makes the informant appear moral, but as a pretty crummy friend (Berry et al., 2024). The inverse is also true. Not turning in that friend is immoral, but is a sign of being a good friend. In three studies (N = 363 4- to 9-year-olds), we find that by age 6, children make similarly nuanced evaluations of those who tattle on their friends who have disclosed a moral transgression to them in confidence. Children think a person who tattles on a friend's transgressionis moral, but not a good friend (Studies 1-3). They also think that a person who does not tattle on a friend's transgression is not very moral, but a good friend (Study 2). Taken together, this work informs our understanding of children's views of friendship and morality more broadly. Children think that good friends provide unwavering support for each other, which can mean putting morals aside to protect a friend from punishment. Thus, even 6-year-old children believe that when our friends tell us about their transgressions, we are confronted with a difficult tradeoff: be a good person or a good friend.