In the current study, the expectation of punishment for the transgression and appeals for internal
versus external motivations for honesty were varied to examine children’s truth-telling behavior.
The study used a 2 (Punishment: punishment or no punishment expected)
3 (Appeal: no appeal, internal appeal, or external appeal)
between-participants design, resulting in six conditions.
Children received verbal instructions varying along these two dimensions prior to being confronted with the question of
whether they had peeked at the toy.
Observing children’s lie-telling behavior allowed us to assess the influence of appeals to tell the truth and expected punishment on children’s honesty.