Emotional elements matter: Stories about a protagonist’s guilt over lying promote honesty in early elementary school children but not in preschool children

Abstract

Previous research has documented the effectiveness of positive moral stories in promoting children’s honesty; however, the impact of negative moral stories, particularly those incorporating different emotional elements, remains underexplored. The current studies investigated how guilt- and sadness-inducing narratives in moral stories influence children’s honesty. In Study 1, we randomly assigned 166 children (aged 6–7 years) to one of four conditions: control (neutral story), negative moral story, negative moral story with sadness, or negative moral story with guilt. Using a mathematics test paradigm in which children self-reported their performance, we found that whereas a simple negative moral story did not significantly affect honesty compared with control (40.54% vs. 48.84%), incorporating guilt significantly increased honest behavior (74.42%). The negative story with sadness showed an intermediate effect (66.67%). In Study 2, we employed a card-guessing game with 85 younger children (aged 3–6 years) to test the effectiveness of guilt-inducing narratives given the higher potential to promote honesty in Study 1. The results revealed no significant difference in honest behavior between the guilt-inducing story and control conditions (38.71% vs. 50% honest reporting among peekers). The age-dependent pattern propounds that the effectiveness of guilt-based moral stories emerges during early elementary school, coinciding with children’s understanding of complex moral emotions. The findings highlight the role of guilt and sadness in promoting ethical behavior among early elementary school children and have significant implications for moral education strategies.