Keeping them honest: Promises reduce cheating in adolescents

People frequently engage in dishonest behavior at a cost to others, and it is therefore beneficial to study interventions promoting honest behavior. We implemented a novel intervention that gave participants a choice to promise to be truthful or not to promise. To measure cheating behavior, we developed a novel variant of the mind game-the dice-box game-as well as a child-friendly sender-receiver game. Across three studies with adolescents aged 10 to 14 years (N = 640) from schools in India, we found that promises systematically lowered cheating rates compared with no-promise control conditions. Adolescents who sent truthful messages in the sender-receiver game cheated less in the dice-box game and promises reduced cheating in both tasks (Study 1). Promises in the dice-box game remained effective when negative externalities (Study 2) or incentives for competition (Study 3) were added. A joint analysis of data from all three studies revealed demographic variables that influenced cheating. Our findings confirm that promises have a strong, binding effect on behavior and can be an effective intervention to reduce cheating.