PSYC 217 Assignment Xiaoyi Huang 46378741 Introduction to Psychological Research Articles: "Can Classic Moral Stories Promote Honesty in Children?" 1. Lee, K., Talwar, V., McCarthy, A., Ross, I., Evans, A., & Arruda, C. (2014). Can classic moral stories promote honesty in children? Psychological Science, 25(8), 1630-1636. doi: 10.1177/0956797614536401 2. I found the article on the UBC Library website. I logged in the website and searched the full title of this article. 3. The reason of conducting this study is that the researchers of this study noticed the classic moral stories have been used extensively to teach children about the consequences of lying and the virtue of honesty. However, despite their widespread use, there is no evidence whether these stories promote honesty in children (Talwar, 2014). 4. There are two studies presented in the article. One is whether classical moral studies promote honesty, the other is how would the positive or negative consequences of the classical moral story influence the effectiveness on promoting honesty in children. 5. I chose this article at first is because I find the title of it is quite intriguing. After reading the article, I found that the topic of the study is quite meaningful in the real life and it's somewhat related to my own experiences. The article is aimed to discuss whether
classical moral stories promote honesty in children. The stories they used in the study are quite famous and are the stories that I have read when I was younger, therefore I'm interested in this particular article. 6. The study I chose is an experimental design. In this study all the participants are randomly assigned in to manipulated conditions and one controlled condition. In addition, the study is discussing about whether classical moral stories promote honesty in children. 7. i) In the first experiment, the independent variable (IV) is the story which is read to the participants. In the second experiment, the independent variable (IV) is the different consequences in the study of "George Washington and the Cherry Tree". ii) The independent variable is manipulated in each condition. For the first experiment, in the control condition, the control story "The Tortoise and the Hare" is presented to the participants. In the treatment condition, one of the classical moral stories "Pinocchio", "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "George Washington and the Cherry Tree" is presented to the participants. In the second experiment, the IV is manipulated into two conditions which is either a positive or a negative consequence of the story "George Washington and the Cherry Tree" is presented to the participant. iii) The dependent variable (DV) in the two experiment are identical which is Whether the participants are honest about their behavior.
iv) The DV is measured through a modified temptation-resistance task. In this task, participants were asked to play a guessing game which they are probably to cheat, and they will be tested in whether they confess on their behavior. 8. In classical moral stories telling, emphasizing the positivity of honesty may be