People frequently engage in dishonest behavior at a cost to others, and it is therefore beneficial to study interventions promoting honest behavior. We implemented a novel intervention that gave participants a choice to promise to be truthful or not to promise. To measure cheating behavior, we developed a novel variant of the mind game—the dice-box game—as well as a child-friendly sender-receiver game. Across three studies with adolescents aged 10 to 14 years (N = 640) from schools in India, we found that promises systematically lowered cheating rates compared to no-promise control conditions. Adolescents who sent truthful messages in the sender-receiver game cheated less in the dice-box game and promises reduced cheating in both tasks (Study 1). Promises in the dice-box game remained effective when negative externalities (Study 2) or incentives for competition (Study 3) were added. A joint analysis of data from all three studies revealed demographic variables that influenced cheating. Our findings confirm that promises have a strong, binding effect on behavior and can be an effective intervention to reduce cheating.

中文翻译：

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保持诚实：承诺减少青少年的作弊

人们经常以他人为代价从事不诚实的行为，因此研究促进诚实行为的干预措施是有益的。我们实施了一种新颖的干预措施，让参与者可以选择承诺是真实的还是不承诺的。为了衡量作弊行为，我们开发了一种全新的思维游戏变体——骰子游戏——以及一款适合儿童的收发器游戏。在对来自印度学校的 10 至 14 岁青少年（N = 640）进行的三项研究中，我们发现与无承诺控制条件相比，承诺系统地降低了作弊率。在发送者-接收者游戏中发送真实信息的青少年在骰子游戏中作弊较少，并承诺在两项任务中减少作弊（研究 1）。当添加负外部性（研究 2）或竞争激励（研究 3）时，骰子游戏中的承诺仍然有效。对所有三项研究数据的联合分析揭示了影响作弊的人口统计变量。我们的研究结果证实，承诺对行为有很强的约束力，可以成为减少作弊的有效干预措施。