The power of the lens: Filming increases honesty in children as young as five

Abstract

As early as 5 years of age, children begin to manage their reputations strategically. We investigated whether the reputation concern elicited by filming affected children's mental cheating, which is a form of cheating that cannot be detected even if someone else is watching. During the test, the experimenter was in the room with children, and we operationalized reputational cues as whether the video camera was actively recording or not. We compared the self-reported accuracy of a filmed group versus a non-filmed group in a mental cheating game, under two motivational contexts: self-interest and other-interest. A total of 320 children aged 3 to 6 years played a mind game in which they were asked to predict the outcome of a dice roll and to report whether their prediction was correct. We found that 5- to 6-year-olds were less likely to cheat for their self-interests when being filmed than when not being filmed. However, filming did not reduce 5- to 6-year-olds' other-interested cheating. Furthermore, we found that filming did not influence the self-interested or other-interested cheating of 3- to 4-year-old children. This study highlights how reputation concern elicited by filming motivates children to appear honest to others, even in purely mental cheating scenarios. Additionally, our results suggest that young children are sophisticated in their early reputation management and that prosocial justifications can alleviate concerns about dishonesty.