This suggest that even 3-year old children are responsive to reputational cues in their morally relevant behavior. In contrast, telling children that they have a reputation for being smart results in more lying in 3–5-year-olds in a guessing game ( Zhao et al., 2018). They are less likely to cheat in a guessing game, if they are told that they have a positive reputation to maintain, even if nobody is watching them and if not to cheat conflicts with their personal interest ( Fu et al., 2016b). They share more and steal less when they are being watched by a peer than when they are alone ( Engelmann et al., 2012 Yazdi et al., 2020). Research suggests that 5-year old children behave more prosocially in the presence of others ( Engelmann and Rapp, 2018). While a host of studies has investigated children’s lying for selfish and prosocial reasons ( Talwar and Crossman, 2011), little is known about children’s use of lying as a strategy to manage their reputation. The current study is a first step in investigating whether children also use lying as a strategic behavior to manage their reputation, for example when being asked by peers about their generosity.
Young children engage in strategic behaviors to manipulate the impressions others form of them. Introduction Reputation Management in Childhood Findings suggest that by 5years of age, children use lying as a strategy to manage their reputation. Results revealed that children stated to peers to have donated more than their actual donation, with no differences between conditions and no difference toward ingroup and outgroup members. Group members asked the participant how many stickers she, or her group, had donated. Participants then met ingroup and outgroup members, established through a minimal group design, via a pre-recorded, staged Skype call. Then, they played a mini dictator game in which they could share privately any number of their or their group’s stickers with an anonymous child. Five-year old children ( n=55) were randomly assigned to an individual reputation condition or a group reputation condition. The current study investigated whether young children also lie in order to manage their, or their group’s, reputation in front of ingroup and outgroup members. Research suggests that even young children engage in strategic behaviors to manipulate the impressions others form of them and that they manage their reputation in order to cooperate with others. Department of Psychology and Human Movement Science, Developmental Psychology, Institute for Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
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