Doctoral Dissertation Research: Does priming honesty elicit truthful disclosures from children regarding adult wrongdoing?

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Children are often involved in the legal system as maltreatment victims, and their disclosure of adult wrongdoing is necessary to initiate effective legal responses and protect them from continued abuse. Current techniques for promoting children's honesty rely on explicit or direct requests that children tell the truth, such as eliciting a promise to tell the truth. However, the effectiveness of these techniques has differed across research studies. The proposed study will test the benefits of priming honesty (indirectly or non-consciously activating the goal of honesty) on children's disclosure of an adult's minor act of wrongdoing. Children (ages 6-9) will individually participate in a first aid/safety event during which an adult (parent or stranger) will engage the children in play with forbidden puppets, supposedly "break" a puppet, and request that children keep it a secret. Before responding to event-related questions, children will be (1) primed for the goal of honesty by hearing a story laden with words about honesty, (2) asked to promise to tell the truth, or (3) reassured that many children play with the puppets and disclose the truth when asked. Then, children will be asked different types of questions about the event. Results will inform legal practitioners about whether priming, a simple, yet theoretically-based and novel technique for promoting children?s honesty, encourages children's true disclosures of adult wrongdoing. Results will also advance theory concerning children?s willingness to disclose wrongdoing committed by parents versus strangers, an important practical consideration.