The DOI matches its Crossref record; 62 of the 62 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Unmasking Moral Hypocrisy: How Preschoolers Perceive and Judge Moral Hypocrites
Open accessAbstract
Many previous studies indicate that children are highly sensitive to the immoral behavior of others, preferring prosocial over antisocial characters. Accordingly, children avoid transgressors from a very early age. A special kind of transgressor is the moral hypocrite, who not only acts immorally but also acts in contrast to what they preach. There are very few studies establishing whether children recognize moral hypocrisy and if it impacts their moral judgment. We ran three studies with preschoolers aged 4 to 6 years on whether children recognize moral hypocrisy and how children assess moral hypocrisy. In Studies 2 and 3, we also tested false‐signaling theory as an explanation of the more negative assessments of moral hypocrites. In Study 1 (N = 133), we showed that children indeed assess moral hypocrites more negatively than nonhypocritical moral transgressors. In Study 2 (N = 115), we initially demonstrated that the assessment of moral hypocrites results from their inconsistency between words and deeds. Study 3 (N = 159) replicated the results of Studies 1 and 2 and, by excluding an alternative explanation, explained that moral hypocrites are perceived as less moral and liked less due to the false signals that they send.
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Social evaluation by preverbal infants
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Cited by
Zhunapinng, Zhou, J., Wang, Y. G., & Li, Y. (2026) · Child Development · doi:10.1093/chidev/aacag204
Metadata
- Authors
- Myślińska Szarek, K., & Baryła, W.
- Affiliations
- Department of Psychology University SWPS Warszawa Poland
- Uniwersytet SWPS (PL)
- Venue
- Developmental Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2024-10-16
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- e13580-e13580
- ISSN
- 1363-755X (ISSN-L)
- 1467-7687
- OpenAlex
- W4403499083
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1
- FWCI
- 0.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Developmental Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Keywords
- moral hypocrisy, preschool children, moral judgment, social perception, prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, social evaluation
- MeSH terms
- Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Humans, Judgment, Male, Morals, Social Perception
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- Myślińska Szarek, K., & Baryła, W. (2025). Unmasking Moral Hypocrisy: How Preschoolers Perceive and Judge Moral Hypocrites. Developmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13580
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
