George Washington trumps Pinocchio in instilling honesty among kids

A new study suggests that a moral story that praises a character's honesty is more effective at getting young children to tell the truth than a story that emphasizes the negative repercussions of lying.

The findings suggest that stories such as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "Pinocchio" may not be effective cautionary tales when it comes to inspiring honest behavior in children.

Stories have long been employed to instill moral and cultural values in young children, but there is little research exploring the effectiveness of such stories.

"We should not take it for granted that classic moral stories will automatically promote moral behaviors," lead author Kang Lee of the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study at the University of Toronto said.

"As parents of young children, we wanted to know how effective the stories actually are in promoting honesty," study co-author and researcher Victoria Talwar of McGill University said.

"Is it 'in one ear, out the other,' or do children listen and take the messages to heart?" Talwar added.

To find out, Lee, Talwar, and colleagues conducted an experiment with 268 children ages 3 to 7. Each child played a game that required guessing the identity of a toy based on the sound it made. In the middle of the game, the experimenter left the room for a minute to grab a book, instructing the child not to peek at a toy that was left on the table. For most children, this temptation was too hard to resist.

When the experimenter returned, she read the child a story, either "The Tortoise and the Hare," "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," "Pinocchio," or "George Washington and the Cherry Tree." Afterward, the experimenter asked the child to tell the truth about whether he or she peeked at the toy.

Contrary to the researchers' expectations, "Pinocchio" and "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" - which associate lying with negative consequences, such as public humiliation and even death - were no more effective at promoting honest behavior than a fable unrelated to honesty, in this case "The Tortoise and the Hare."

Only the apocryphal tale about a young George Washington seemed to inspire the kids to admit to peeking: Children who heard the tale in which the future first president is praised for confessing his transgression were three times more likely to tell the truth than their peers who heard other stories.

The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.