Luck or Cheating? A Field Experiment on Honesty with Children

TY - UNPB

T1 - Luck or Cheating?

T2 - A Field Experiment on Honesty with Children

AU - Bucciol, Alessandro

AU - Piovesan, Marco

N1 - JEL classification: C93; J13

PY - 2008

Y1 - 2008

N2 - We ran an experiment with children to study the development of honesty with age. We asked each child to toss a fair coin in private and to record the outcome (white or black) in a paper sheet. We rewarded only those who reported white. We found a fraction of reported whites significantly larger than 50%, uniformly across age groups. This suggests that some children cheat when cheating is profitable and they are not observed. In a second treatment we told children not to cheat. This reminder reduced the probability of reporting white by 18% on average, and significantly more in girls.

AB - We ran an experiment with children to study the development of honesty with age. We asked each child to toss a fair coin in private and to record the outcome (white or black) in a paper sheet. We rewarded only those who reported white. We found a fraction of reported whites significantly larger than 50%, uniformly across age groups. This suggests that some children cheat when cheating is profitable and they are not observed. In a second treatment we told children not to cheat. This reminder reduced the probability of reporting white by 18% on average, and significantly more in girls.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - honesty

KW - field experiment

M3 - Working paper

BT - Luck or Cheating?

PB - Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

ER -