School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK.
Faculty of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Child Dev. 2024 Jan-Feb;95(1):16-23. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13952. Epub 2023 Jun 12.
Cheating is harmful to others and society at large. Promises have been shown to increase honesty in children, but their effectiveness has not been compared between different cultural contexts. In a study (2019) with 7- to 12-year-olds (N = 406, 48% female, middle-class), voluntary promises reduced cheating in Indian, but not in German children. Children in both contexts cheated, but cheating rates were lower in Germany than in India. In both contexts, cheating decreased with age in the (no-promise) control condition and was unaffected by age in the promise condition. These findings suggest that there may exist a threshold beyond which cheating cannot be further reduced by promises. This opens new research avenues on how children navigate honesty and promise norms.
作弊对他人和整个社会都是有害的。有研究表明，承诺可以提高儿童的诚实度，但它们在不同文化背景下的有效性尚未进行比较。在一项针对 7 至 12 岁儿童（N=406，48%为女性，中产阶级）的研究（2019 年）中，自愿承诺减少了印度儿童的作弊行为，但没有减少德国儿童的作弊行为。两个国家的儿童都有作弊行为，但德国的作弊率低于印度。在两个国家的控制组（无承诺组）中，随着年龄的增长，作弊行为减少，而在承诺组中，年龄对作弊行为没有影响。这些发现表明，可能存在一个阈值，超过这个阈值，承诺就无法进一步减少作弊行为。这为研究儿童如何在诚实和承诺规范之间做出选择开辟了新的途径。
