Moral pride promotes honesty in preschoolers

The present study investigated the role of pride in promoting honesty among children aged 3-6. Children ( N = 247; 125 boys, 122 girls; middle-income Chinese families) participated in a temptation resistance paradigm, instructing them not to peek at a toy when unsupervised. Subsequently, children were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: a moral pride condition, induced through a compliance task; a nonmoral pride condition, induced through a success task; a happiness condition, induced through exposure to a comedy video; or a baseline condition, with no emotion induction. Children in the moral pride condition were significantly less likely to lie about peeking than those in the other three conditions. The nonmoral pride and happiness conditions did not differ in lying rates from the baseline condition. These results suggest that fostering moral pride can enhance honesty in young children, offering important insights for parenting and educational practices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)

Dishonesty · Happiness · Honesty · Lying · Moral development · Pride · Socialization · Temptation · Child and Animal Learning Development · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Forgiveness and Related Behaviors