Believing a supernatural agent watches reduces cheating in children and adults

Evidence

In one experimental study of cheating, Jared Piazza, Jesse Bering, and Gordon Ingram instructed children not to look inside a box, and then left them alone in the room with it. Those who were previously told that a fictional supernatural agent, Princess Alice, was watching were significantly less likely to peek inside the forbidden box. Another related study found a similar effect among university students. Participants who were randomly assigned to a condition in which they were casually told that the ghost of a dead student had been spotted in the experimental room cheated less on a rigged computer task. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 136

Categorization

• DEFINE: Empirical anchor for the watchful-gaze mechanism that the reader’s analysis applies to fumi-e and Big God theory.
• XREF: Direct experimental evidence for Norenzayan’s Big God surveillance mechanism and the invisible-watcher effect.
• QUESTION: The ghost-of-a-dead-student effect suggests any supernatural witness works, not only moralizing gods — is it the mere percept of being watched, or specifically a moral authority?