Self-efficacy and cheating among young children

This research, comprising three preregistered studies, investigated the link between self-efficacy and cheating on an academic test in 5- and 6-year-old children. Study 1 assessed children's general self-efficacy and found it to be unrelated to their cheating behavior. Study 2 assessed task-specific self-efficacy, which was not found to be associated with cheating. In Study 3, children were randomly assigned to either an experimental group, which received brief positive feedback on task-specific self-efficacy, or a control group, which received no feedback. The experimental group demonstrated significantly less cheating. These findings, for the first time, identify a specific connection between young children's self-efficacy and academic dishonesty and suggest that positive feedback on task-specific efficacy could be a simple effective strategy for fostering academic integrity early on.