On the Origins of Dishonesty: From Parents to Children

Abstract

Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research. This study takes an economics approach to explore the propensity of individuals to act dishonestly across different economic environments. We begin by developing a simple model that highlights the channels through which one can increase or decrease dishonest acts. We lend empirical insights into this model by using an experiment that includes both parents and their young children as subjects. We find that the highest level of dishonesty occurs in settings where the parent acts alone and the dishonest act benefits the child rather than the parent. In this spirit, there is also an interesting effect of children on parents' behavior: in the child's presence, parents act more honestly, but there are gender differences. Parents act more dishonestly in front of sons than daughters. This finding has the potential of shedding light on the origins of the widely documented gender differences in cheating behavior observed among adults.

Understanding the development of honesty in children through the domains‐of‐socialization approach

“…In certain situations, parents may even knowingly demonstrate dishonesty to their children. Although Houser et al (2015) found that parents were less likely to cheat in a game to gain a prize when their children were present, there were parents who chose to cheat in front of their children, especially sons. Altogether, parents generally try to model honesty in front of their children but may model deceptive behaviours when they see fit.…”

“…Indeed, parents actively model honest behaviours to their children. For example, parents were more likely to refrain from cheating in a game when their children watched them play (Houser, List, Piovesan, Samek, & Winter, 2015). Likewise, Malloy et al (2019) found that parents of children with disruptive behaviour disorders reported more truth-telling than parents of typically developing children, suggesting that they may be modelling truth-telling more frequently to foster truth-telling tendencies in their children who are prone to using deception.…”

How Experiments with Children Inform Economics

“…Examining the interaction of children and parents in decision-making, Houser et al (2015), using children from CHECC, experimentally examine the effect of having a child present when parents make a decision whether to cheat. They find that in the presence of girls -but not of boys -parents are less likely to cheat when their child can observe their behavior, especially when the gift is for the child.…”

“…A popular approach in economics is to forge partnerships with schools and contact parents through these schools to invite participation (see, e.g., Angerer et al, 2015a;2015b;List and Samek, 2015;Houser et al, 2015;. A major benefit of such an approach is that schools have large lists of eligible children, and parents may be more likely to participate if they receive the information from a trusted source.…”