The Power of Reverse Psychology: Fostering Honesty in Children Without Direct Instruction

Recently, Geng's academic fraud-exposing actions have received widespread attention from all sectors of society. Although the perpetrators have been punished accordingly, this phenomenon still makes one wonder: have all these years of moral education been ineffective? Is there a more effective way to reduce people's dishonest behavior?

A study published in Nature's subsidiary journal Nature Human Behaviour may provide a brand new perspective to answer these questions.

Unsubstantiated erroneous assumptions

Dishonest behavior manifests in many ways: from small acts like forging a parent's signature on a failing exam paper, to cheating on exams and engaging in academic dishonesty, and even escalating to illegal activities such as telecom fraud.

To this end, people are racking their brains to reduce dishonest behavior:

In families, parents tell their children moral stories, hoping they will learn from them;

In schools, moral education courses are offered, and before exams, students are required to sign an integrity pledge, while during exams, teachers proctor and real-time electronic monitoring are used to curb dishonesty.

In society, various departments increase the cost of dishonesty by establishing regulatory systems, setting up credit blacklists, and implementing social punishments.

These practices have proven effective and are backed by empirical evidence from fields such as moral psychology. For instance, psychological research has found that measures including signing integrity pledges, publicly committing to honesty (Peer et al., 2024), increasing the presence of observers, and applying social rewards and punishments can all significantly reduce dishonest behavior in individuals.

However, these measures seem to be based on a premise that assumes people are naturally inclined to be dishonest and unable to be spontaneously honest without self-imposed or external constraints, much like saying that if children are not strictly disciplined and the importance of studying is not repeatedly emphasized, they will inevitably perform poorly and exhibit problem behaviors.

So, is this premise true then? (You can take a pause to think for 1-2 minutes first)

The answer is that this premise is likely to be incorrect. Firstly, self-imposed or external constraints are not necessarily effective - one study found that many classic moral stories have almost no effect on reducing dishonest behavior.

The reason is that these stories often focus on the negative consequences of dishonesty, rather than emphasizing the positive consequences of honesty (Lee et al., 2014). More importantly, people can actually be spontaneously honest without relying on external constraints.

Many people resort to external forces to impose restraint, but in fact, apart from this approach, there is another way, and this way is easier and brings a greater sense of happiness. This approach is called - spontaneous honesty!

In the past, relying on external constraints, equivalent to forcing children to learn, not only resulted in poor academic performance, but also potentially led to more psychological problems. In contrast, relying on self-motivated honesty - or what can be called internal construction, self-growth, and self-healing - can not only eliminate the aforementioned negative side effects, but also bring about unexpected positive outcomes.

This approach resembles the hierarchy laid out in the Tao Te Ching: Tao, virtue, benevolence, righteousness, and propriety. Tao encompasses virtue; one who grasps Tao will naturally embody virtue. Spontaneous honesty, in this light, may itself be a deeper solution rooted in some form of Tao—a more viable path forward.

Are you willing to take this path? If so, let's begin with a study to explore its feasibility.

The Way to Eliminate External Constraints

According to the practice of external constraints, the best way to make children honest in exams is to have teachers proctor the exams and verbally remind them not to cheat. However, there is a scenario where there are no teachers proctoring the exams and no message is conveyed that "cheating is not allowed", yet the rate of cheating among children decreases spontaneously. This is the story told by an experiment (Zhao et al., 2024).

In a kindergarten, an experimenter led children to a testing room for a counting test, asking them to help carry important items along the way. Upon arriving at the testing room, the experimenter expressed gratitude to the children and told them that next time, if there were important things that needed help, they would be asked first, conveying the message that their help was trusted. The children were then given test papers.

The first four questions on the test were very easy, but the fifth question was extremely difficult, and children could not complete it without looking at the answers. After distributing the test, the experimenter would tell the children that they had something to attend to in a nearby office and, before leaving, would place the test answers on a desk within the children's view. The experimenter would then express trust in the children's honesty, telling them not to cheat by looking at the answers, thus conveying a message of "trust that they will not cheat".

In Experiment 1, an experimental group and a control group were set up: the experimental group children participated in helping to fetch items and received two types of information, "trust in their help" and "trust that they will not cheat"; the control group did neither. The results found that the experimental group children exhibited significantly less cheating behavior.

This result is closer to the hypothesis of external constraint, after all, the experimenter expressed related information of "do not cheat".

However, the experimenters wanted to more accurately determine whether it was the information "believing it wouldn't cheat" that led to this result. To this end, they added experiments 2 to 4 to examine what factors led to the reduction in cheating.

Experiment 2 found that whether or not children helped their teacher with errands had no effect on reducing cheating. This result is highly intuitive, as "helping with errands" and "not cheating on exams" are essentially unrelated.

It seems that the idea of external constraints is unshakeable.

New Channels for Promoting Integrity

However, the experimenters still maintained a rigorous attitude and conducted experiments 3 and 4, and it was precisely these two experiments that revealed a new path before us.

Since it was not possible to convey trust in children's assistance without them actually providing help, children in both Experiment 3 and Experiment 4 engaged in real helping behavior, with the sole difference being the type of information they received.

In Experiment 3, neither group of children received a message about being trusted not to cheat—only a message about being trusted to help. The results showed that children who received the trust-to-help message cheated at a significantly lower rate than those who did not.

This result is counterintuitive - being trusted to help others can actually reduce one's own cheating. Two things that seem completely unrelated are unexpectedly connected.

But external constraints won't concede so easily: if signals of "trust in their honesty" also reduce cheating among children, that only suggests both factors are at play, and neither can be directly dismissed.

Good! Then let external constraints concede total defeat.

This means that without a teacher invigilating or a warning not to cheat, children can still be spontaneously honest.

Methods to make children honest can be achieved without mentioning "honesty" at all.

Eliminate the secondary, return to the primary, one lamp extinguished, ending a thousand years of darkness

No text to translate.

Being and non-being give rise to each other, difficulty and ease complete each other. —— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

There was once an ordinary student from a second-tier university who happened to save a drowning child, was thanked by the child, and was reported by the media. More than a year later, society had already forgotten about the incident. However, by chance, someone conducted a second interview with him, and the result showed that the university student had transformed from his original aimless and idle state, where he would often skip class, to someone who studied diligently every day, earned a first-class scholarship, and strived to find meaning in his life.

This example is similar to the aforementioned research: what guides college students and children towards a bright personality and a path of positive growth is not repeatedly telling them to "study hard" or "be honest", but rather content that seems entirely unrelated to learning or honesty.

In conclusion

Be utterly humble, can you be like an infant? —— Tao Te Ching

Perhaps we need to firmly believe in our hearts that people can be spontaneously honest and spontaneously grow, and thus gradually put aside the assumption of "external constraints" that comes with negative costs.

Where should moral education go in the future? Perhaps we can draw more inspiration from children - after all, they often bring us many unexpected truths about the world.