Young children with higher verbal intelligence are less likely to cheat

Cheating is a pervasive unethical behavior. Existing research involving young children has mainly focused on contextual factors affecting cheating behavior, whereas cognitive factors have been relatively understudied. This study investigated the unique role of verbal and performance intelligence on young children’s cheating behavior (N = 50; mean age = 5.73 years; 25 boys). Bootstrapping hierarchical logistic regression showed that children’s Verbal IQ scores were significantly and negatively correlated with their cheating behavior above and beyond the contributions of age, gender, and Performance IQ scores. Children with higher Verbal IQ scores were less inclined to cheat. However, neither children’s Performance IQ nor their Total IQ scores had a significant and unique correlation with cheating. These findings suggest that intelligence plays a significant role in children’s cheating but that this role is limited to verbal intelligence only. In addition, this study highlights the need for researchers to go beyond the contextual factors to study the early development of cheating behavior.