Victoria Talwar, ECP, Publishes Paper in Developmental Psychology on Children's Honesty Promotion Techniques
Victoria Talwar, ECP Professor, Faculty of Education Interim Dean, and Lab Director of the , recently published a in Developmental Psychology that investigates the effects of honesty promotion techniques on children of different ages.
This study examined four honesty promotion techniques, including reading moral stories about honesty, increasing self-awareness, promising to tell the truth, and informing children about the positive effects of being honest. Techniques chosen to promote truth-telling by enhancing a child’s self-awareness and social obligation to honesty.
To promote preschool-aged children’s honesty, increasing self-awareness and a combination of modelling honesty and positive consequences were equally effective. In seven- to eight-year-old children, promising to tell the truth, modelling honesty, and positive consequences of honesty were all successful in promoting honesty. Notably, a combination of modelling truth-telling and observing positive consequences of being honest effectively reduced lie-telling across all ages.Â
“It may be that for younger children seeing themselves in the mirror reminded them of the adults’ expectations [for] their honesty and heightened their awareness of what they were doing,” Talwar explained.Â
