Lying during childhood is a common concern for caregivers. Lee et al. (2014) showed that a moral story and instruction implying reinforcers for honesty produced statistically significant improvements in children admitting a transgression. We evaluated the influence of this moral story and instruction on the consistency of honest reports when reinforcement favored lying in the context of reporting answers to math problems. The moral story and instruction produced temporary, inconsistent, or null effects across participants. However, reinforcing accurate reports produced consistent improvements in telling the truth.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.