Unmasking Moral Hypocrisy: How Preschoolers Perceive and Judge Moral Hypocrites

Abstract

Many previous studies indicate that children are highly sensitive to the immoral behavior of others, preferring prosocial over antisocial characters. Accordingly, children avoid transgressors from a very early age. A special kind of transgressor is the moral hypocrite, who not only acts immorally but also acts in contrast to what they preach. There are very few studies establishing whether children recognize moral hypocrisy and if it impacts their moral judgment. We ran three studies with preschoolers aged 4 to 6 years on whether children recognize moral hypocrisy and how children assess moral hypocrisy. In Studies 2 and 3, we also tested false-signaling theory as an explanation of the more negative assessments of moral hypocrites. In Study 1 (N = 133), we showed that children indeed assess moral hypocrites more negatively than nonhypocritical moral transgressors. In Study 2 (N = 115), we initially demonstrated that the assessment of moral hypocrites results from their inconsistency between words and deeds. Study 3 (N = 159) replicated the results of Studies 1 and 2 and, by excluding an alternative explanation, explained that moral hypocrites are perceived as less moral and liked less due to the false signals that they send.