It appears that children’s behavior differs from their beliefs and evaluations of story characters’ behaviors in
hypothetical appeal and punishment scenarios.
In Wagland and Bussey’s (2005) study, where children gave evaluations of hypothetical stories,
appeals were effective in eliciting the truth only when punishment was expected.
It should be noted that in their study, few children predicted lying across the no punishment conditions (i.e., a floor effect). This may have been because the character in the story had not committed a transgression himself
or herself but rather was reporting on another’s transgression.
The current study found that expected appeals to tell the truth were effective
even when there was no punishment expected and that expected punishment only served to lessen the effect of appeals to tell the truth.
These results highlight a discrepancy in some contexts among how we believe we will behave,
how others should behave, and how we actually behave