Luck or Cheating? A Field Experiment on Honesty with Children
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 signifi cantly larger than 50%, uniformly across age groups. This suggests that some children cheat when cheating is profi table 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 signifi cantly more in girls.
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| Length: | 10 pages |
| Date of creation: | Nov 2008 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Handle: | RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0828 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Phone: (+45) 35 32 30 10 Fax: +45 35 32 30 00 Web page: http://www.econ.ku.dkEmail: More information through EDIRC
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