Promising to tell the truth makes 8‐ to 16‐year‐olds more honest

Abstract

Techniques commonly used to increase truth-telling in most North American jurisdiction courts include: requiring witnesses to discuss the morality of truth-and lie-telling and to promise to tell the truth prior to testifying. While promising to tell the truth successfully decreases younger children's lie-telling, the influence of discussing the morality of honesty and promising to tell the truth on adolescents' statements has remained unexamined. In Experiment 1, 108 8-to 16-yearolds were left alone in the room and were asked not to peek at the answers to a test. The majority of participants peeked at the test answers and then lied about their transgression. More importantly participants were 8 times more likely to change their response from a lie to the truth after promising to tell the truth. Experiment 2 confirmed that the results of Experiment 1 were not solely due to repeated questioning or the moral discussion of truth-and lie-telling. These results suggest that while promising to tell the truth influences the truth-telling behaviors of adolescents, a moral discussion of truth and lies does not. Legal implications are discussed.Promoting truth and honesty within the justice system has been the focus of many studies over the past decade (e.g

Young children’s understanding that promising guarantees performance: The effects of age and maltreatment.

“…Eliciting some sort of commitment from the child appears to be valuable, given the research demonstrating that children who promise to tell the truth are more likely to do so (Evans & Lee, 2010; Lyon & Dorado, 2008; Lyon et al, 2008; Talwar et al, 2002, 2004). Most of these studies took steps to ensure that children understood the terms used to elicit their commitment.…”

Interviewing Children

“…Reassuring children that they will not get in trouble with the interviewer has had positive effects on children (Lyon & Dorado 2008), but interviewers must be careful not to specify the suspected transgression, as this can be suggestive (Lyon & Dorado 2008). Eliciting a promise from children to tell the truth has been found to increase children's willingness to disclose self-transgressions (Evans & Lee 2010;Talwar et al 2002Talwar et al , 2004 and joint transgressions (Lyon & Dorado 2008 and to decrease children's willingness to provide a coached false report . Most recently, we have found that children are more likely to disclose a transgression if they are told, without any specific details, that the suspect told the interviewer everything that happened and that the suspect wants the child to tell the truth, an approach called the putative confession ).…”

Eliciting Maltreated and Nonmaltreated Children's Transgression Disclosures: Narrative Practice Rapport Building and a Putative Confession

“…Reassurance may reduce children's fears that the recipient of their disclosure will react negatively to their report. Asking children to promise to “tell the truth” also increases children's willingness to disclose transgressions (Evans & Lee, 2010; Talwar et al, 2002, 2004), and does so without increasing false reports (Lyon et al, 2008). “The truth” has different meaning to different children, implying a transgression only to children who have committed one.…”

“…Moreover, theory of mind understanding and children's moral evaluations are themselves related; Smetana and colleagues (2012) found that children's flexibility in moral judgment was related to their theory of mind abilities. Finally, some research has found that children's tendency to lie declines by 10 years of age or so, both with respect to the transgressions of strangers (Pipe & Wilson, 1994), and with respect to self-transgressions (Evans & Lee, 2010), possibly because older children have internalized norms against lying (Bussey, 1992, 1999) or because they view laboratory transgressions as less serious than younger children (Pipe & Wilson, 1994). …”