NEWS RELEASE: Telling children they succeed because they are “smart” can nearly double cheating, study finds
TORONTO, Canada and HANGZHOU, China Telling young children they succeeded because they are smart can make them substantially more likely to cheat when they later face a difficult problem, according to new research published in the Journal of Educational Psychology.
Researchers from OISE and Hangzhou Normal University studied 378 five- and six-year-olds across three experiments. After successfully completing a mathematics task, children were told they had done well because they were smart, had worked hard, were lucky, or had faced an easy task. A comparison group received no explanation.
Among children whose success was attributed to being smart, 64.3 per cent cheated on a later test. That compared with 35.7 per cent after effort feedback, 38.1 per cent after luck feedback, 21.4 per cent after task-ease feedback, and 35.7 per cent with no explanation.
“Calling a child ‘smart’ can make looking smart more important than learning honestly,” said Professor Kang Lee, OISE faculty in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, and a co-author of the study.
The new paper is the third in a series examining how adult messages about intelligence affect children’s honesty. In a 2017 study in Psychological Science, three- and five-year-olds praised with “You are so smart” cheated more than children given performance praise or no praise. A 2018 Developmental Science study found the same pattern when children were told that teachers and classmates regarded them as “a smart kid.”
The new study extends those findings by showing that adults do not have to praise children directly or give them a reputation. Simply explaining success by saying “You succeeded because you are smart” was enough to increase later cheating.
“Across all three papers, the pattern is remarkably consistent: when ‘smart’ becomes an identity, honesty can suffer when the work gets hard,” said Lee.
What adults say after success matters
Children first completed a mathematics task designed to produce success or failure. They then received an adult’s explanation for the outcome before taking a more difficult test. During that test, an answer sheet was left accessible while the experimenter stepped away, giving every child the same opportunity to peek and copy.
The increase in cheating appeared specifically after success was attributed to ability. In contrast, explaining failure in terms of low effort, bad luck, or difficult questions did not significantly change cheating.
“A few words after success can change what children feel they have to protect,” said Li Zhao, professor at Hangzhou Normal University and lead author. “The risk comes when success is tied to a fixed identity.”
What parents and teachers can do
The researchers stress that the lesson is not to stop praising children. Instead, adults can focus feedback on strategies, improvement, learning, and integrity rather than on fixed personal labels. The new study also found that generic effort feedback did not reduce cheating below the no-feedback baseline, so simply replacing “You’re smart” with “You tried hard” may not be enough.
“Focus feedback on what children did and learned, not on who they are,” Zhao said.
Examples include: “You found a good way to solve that problem,” “You’re getting better at these problems,” or “You learned something new today.”
About the study
The study, “When ‘You Are Smart’ Backfires: Adult Ability Attributions of Young Children’s Success Increase Test Cheating,” by Li Zhao, Junjie Peng, Yingying Li, Nan Wang and Kang Lee, was published online August 20, 2026, in the Journal of Educational Psychology. The paper reports three studies involving 378 children aged five to six; Studies 2 and 3 were preregistered. DOI: 10.1037/edu0001062.
Related research in the series
- 2017: “.” Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797617721529.
- 2018: “.” Developmental Science. DOI: 10.1111/desc.12585.
- 2026: “.” Journal of Educational Psychology. DOI: 10.1037/edu0001062.
Media contacts
OISE, University of Toronto
Sim Kapoor, Director, Office of Advancement, Communications, and External Relations
sim.kapoor@utoronto.ca
oiseut .communications @utoronto.ca
Hangzhou Normal University
Yi Zheng, Jinghengyi School of Education
zhengyi@hznu.edu.cn