The role of theory of mind and social skills in predicting children’s cheating

Highlights

• The relation between children’s socio-cognitive skills and cheating was examined.

• Children with higher theory-of-mind and social skills were less likely to cheat.

• The social skill of responsibility emerged as a unique predictor of cheating.

• The combined development of high theory-of-mind and responsibility was important.

Abstract

The current study investigated the relation between children’s (3- to 8-year-olds) cheating behaviors and their sociocognitive development, including theory-of-mind (ToM) understanding and social skills. A total of 295 children completed a temptation resistance paradigm where they were asked not to peek at a toy in the experimenter’s absence (measure of cheating). Children completed first- and second-order ToM measures, and parents completed the Social Skills Improvement System (SSiS) Rating Scales questionnaire as an assessment of their children’s social skills. Results indicated that ToM and total SSiS scores were unique predictors of children’s cheating, such that with increased ToM and SSiS scores children were significantly less likely to cheat. In particular, children’s responsibility scores (subscale of SSiS Rating Scales) emerged as a unique predictor of cheating. Children’s performance on both scales were examined together and demonstrated that only children who had high levels of both ToM and responsibility were significantly less likely to cheat compared with children who were low on both measures. These findings demonstrate that children’s sociocognitive development affects their cheating behaviors, likely through an understanding of the importance of maintaining positive social relationships.

Introduction

A core component of social development is learning social norms and expectations. For example, children learn that some social behaviors are encouraged (such as sharing), whereas others are discouraged (such as fighting). One social behavior that children are encouraged to do is to follow the rules (Harris and Nunez, 1996, Piaget, 1965, Turiel, 1983). Adhering to rules is an important component of parent–child and teacher–child relationships and can also be an important aspect of child–child relationships because children often engage in game play around established rules. Although adhering to rules is positively valued, high rates of cheating (a form of rule breaking) continue to occur, especially among children. In fact, experimental research has established that children as young as 3 years engage in high rates of cheating behavior and that this behavior continues at a high rate throughout childhood (e.g., Evans et al., 2011, Talwar et al., 2007, Talwar and Lee, 2002).

Children’s cheating behaviors are often examined using versions of a temptation resistance paradigm (TRP; Fu et al., 2015, Lewis et al., 1989, Polak and Harris, 1999, Talwar and Lee, 2002). In the TRP, during a game (or test) children are asked not to touch or peek at a toy (or test answer) in the experimenter’s absence. Children’s behavior when left alone is then observed via hidden cameras. Typically, about 75% of children cheat by breaking the rule and peek at the forbidden object. However, several methods have been found to significantly reduce children’s cheating, including manipulating children’s social reputation (Fu et al., 2015, Zhao et al., 2017) and social obligations (Evans et al., 2018, Heyman et al., 2015). For example, Fu et al. (2015) found that 5-year-olds who were told that they had a positive reputation among their classmates were significantly less likely to cheat compared with children in a control condition (who were not told information about their reputation), indicating that heightening children’s awareness of their positive reputation encourages children to act in accordance with that reputation (by not peeking). In addition, Heyman et al. (2015) demonstrated that asking children to verbalize a promise not to cheat (“I promise I will not peek at the card”) significantly reduced cheating rates for 5- to 7-year-olds. It was argued that the verbal commitment placed children under a stronger social obligation to the experimenter that encouraged rule following. These findings demonstrate that children’s cheating is a social behavior that can be manipulated by social contexts. Beyond external social factors, children’s cheating may be influenced by individual differences such as social-cognitive skills; however, our understanding of how social-cognitive development relates to cheating is limited. Two skills that may be particularly important are children’s theory-of-mind (ToM) understanding and social skill development.

Research examining children’s cheating has proposed that a child’s ToM development may help to reduce cheating (Ding et al., 2014, Kochanska et al., 1997, Kochanska et al., 1996, Talwar et al., 2007). ToM is the ability to understand others’ mental states and perspectives. An aspect of ToM that may be particularly relevant for deceptive behaviors is false-belief understanding—the ability to understand that other people can hold different beliefs in their mind regardless of whether this belief is actually true or false (Gopnik, 1993). False-belief understanding is constructed in two stages: first-order and second order. First-order false belief is the ability to understand another person’s beliefs (e.g., “She thinks …”), and typically develops between 3 and 5 years of age (for reviews, see Liu et al., 2008, Wellman et al., 2001). At around 6 or 7 years of age, children develop second-order false-belief understanding, where they understand a person’s belief about another person’s belief (e.g., “She thinks that he thinks …”; Perner and Howes, 1992, Sullivan et al., 1994). Within a cheating context such as the TRP, increased false-belief understanding may improve children’s awareness of how their self-directed cheating could give them an unfair advantage in the game and mislead the experimenter, which involves understanding that the experimenter can hold a false belief by not knowing that cheating occurred. Furthermore, with increased ToM, children may be more aware of the consequences of peeking (e.g., if they peek at the toy and reveal the toy’s true identity when the experimenter returns, then the experimenter would know that they cheated), which may deter cheating behaviors. Despite this, many studies have failed to find a relationship between ToM and cheating (Ding et al., 2014, Evans et al., 2011, Talwar and Lee, 2008, Talwar et al., 2007). Ding et al. (2014) proposed that this may be due to the nature of the cheating paradigm (TRP) or to a lack of variability in the ToM measures. As such, continued research is needed with larger sample sizes of larger age ranges to further examine this relationship.

Moreover, although there has been a lack of support for the relation between cheating and ToM, studies have found a relation between ToM understanding and another form of dishonesty—lie-telling (Ding et al., 2015, Polak and Harris, 1999, Talwar and Lee, 2008), supporting the relationship between ToM and deceptive behaviors more generally. Of note, the established relation indicates that with increased ToM children are more likely to lie and more likely to maintain their lies. Although lie-telling and cheating both are deceptive, they are distinct social behaviors that may be motivated by different factors. It is possible that ToM plays a variant role at different stages of deception, such that increased ToM may aid in avoiding the initial transgression (because of increased awareness that the children may get caught) but that increased ToM may aid in successfully concealing this act after the transgression has occurred (because of the cognitive complexity of verbal deception). Continued research is needed to untangle the role of ToM in deceptive cheating behaviors.

In addition to the potential role of ToM, social skill development may influence social behaviors such as cheating. Social development research has demonstrated that social skills aid in the expression of socially acceptable behaviors (e.g., Asher and Renshaw, 1981, Ladd, 1981, Sanson et al., 2004). Moreover, evidence from social skill training programs shows that improved social skills help to foster children’s positive relationships and improve peer acceptance (Asher and Renshaw, 1981, Bierman and Furman, 1984, Bierman, 1986, Bierman et al., 1987, Ladd, 1981). Thus, improved social skills may be related to lower rates of cheating given that this is a deceptive behavior that creates distrust with others and can harm relationships (Lewis and Saarni, 1993, Schweitzer et al., 2006).

Although no research to date has studied the relation between social skills and cheating, Lavoie, Yachison, Crossman, and Talwar (2017) found a relationship between social skills and lie-telling. Lavoie and colleagues found that children (4- to 14-year-olds) who told an antisocial lie (a lie to conceal cheating) had higher social skill scores on a parent-completed questionnaire (Social Skills Improvement System [SSiS] Rating Scales) compared with children who told the truth about cheating. The authors noted that this contrasts with previous social development research that would suggest that children with greater social development would be more likely to behave honestly because these social skills would encourage socially sanctioned behaviors. On the other hand, Lavoie et al. (2017) proposed that the children with superior social skills were better able to conceal their lies by successfully navigating through social interactions, thereby encouraging future lie-telling. These findings provide evidence that social skills can play a role in shaping deceptive behaviors; therefore, we aimed to further examine this relationship within the context of children’s cheating.

Given that children develop a variety of social skills, it is important to understand whether the development of social skills in general is related to social behaviors such as cheating or whether there are particular social skills that are important. Understanding the specific social skills that are related to cheating can help to develop intervention programs that promote positive social behaviors. Although Lavoie et al. (2017) did not find any unique relationships between lying and specific social skills (i.e., SSiS subscale scores of cooperation, assertion, self-control, and responsibility), we are not aware of any research that has examined the relation between particular social skills and cheating.

Two social skills that may be important when examining cheating behaviors are responsibility and cooperation. First, responsibility is grounded in notions of trust given that a key component of this skill involves taking ownership for your own actions and showing that you can be held accountable for a given task (Such & Walker, 2004). Thus, children with superior responsibility skills may be better able to follow through with requested behaviors and may be more motivated to fulfill given commitments such as the request to not peek at a toy. Furthermore, given that increasing children’s social obligation to be honest reduced cheating (Evans et al., 2018, Heyman et al., 2015), and those who are more responsible may be more sensitive to fulfilling obligations, the social skill of responsibility may play an important role. Second, cooperation often involves promoting fair and harmonious interactions. Cooperative behavior is other-oriented because the goal is to not only promote a positive experience for the self but also create a positive experience for others so that this may be reciprocated (Olson and Spelke, 2008, Slavin, 1985). Cheating, on the other hand, is more self-motivated and typically does not provide benefits for others; therefore, higher levels of cooperation may be related to lower rates of cheating to benefit the self. Given that there is no current evidence for any relationships between specific social skills and deceptive behaviors among children, the current study sought to examine whether responsibility and cooperation influence cheating.

The current investigation examined the relation between cheating, ToM, and social skills among 3- to 8-year-olds. Children’s cheating behavior was assessed using the TRP where children were asked not to peek at a toy in the experimenter’s absence (based on Lewis et al., 1989, Polak and Harris, 1999, Talwar and Lee, 2002). To address potential limitations in previous studies where there was a lack of variability in ToM measures, children completed multiple measures of first- and second-order ToM understanding. In addition, parents completed the SSiS Rating Scales (Gresham & Elliott, 2008) as a measure of children’s social skills (including seven social skills: cooperation, communication, assertion, responsibility, empathy, engagement, and emotional self-control).

Given that cheating is a behavior that is not socially sanctioned, children with greater sociocognitive development may be better able to resist the temptation to fulfill this self-motivated act. Specifically, we predicted that as ToM scores increased, children would be significantly less likely to cheat. Similarly, it was predicted that children would be significantly less likely to cheat with increased social skill scores on the SiSS Rating Scales (Bierman and Furman, 1984, Bierman et al., 1987, Bierman, 1986, Ladd, 1981). In addition, we predicted that the SiSS subscales of responsibility and cooperation would explain unique variability in children’s cheating behavior over and above the other subscales, such that children with higher responsibility and cooperation scores would be less likely to cheat.