When kindergarteners are tempted to deceive: A study of factors predicting lie-telling for personal gain

•Children's lie-telling for personal gain was examined using a computerized task.•Behavioral self-regulation was associated with a child’s likelihood to tell a lie.•A relation was found between theory of mind and a child's likelihood to tell a lie.•Inhibition moderated the relation between theory of mind and child's lie-telling.•Age and gender were also correlated with children's lie-telling for personal gain. The current study examined the relations between children’s cognitive and emotion abilities with their likelihood to tell a lie for personal gain in a tempting situation. These relations were examined using behavioral tasks and questionnaires. A total of 202 Israel Arab Muslim kindergarten children participated in this study. Our results showed that behavioral self-regulation was positively associated with children’s likelihood to tell a lie for personal gain. Children with higher behavioral self-regulation actually tended to lie more for their own gain, suggesting that the likelihood to tell a lie might be related to children’s ability to mobilize and integrate their cognitive abilities to self-regulate their behavior. In addition, through exploratory analysis, we found a positive relation between theory of mind and children’s likelihood to tell a lie, which was moderated by inhibition. Specifically, only among children with low inhibition was there a positive correlation between their theory of mind and the likelihood to lie. Moreover, age and gender were related to children’s lie-telling; older children tended more to lie for their own gain, and this likelihood was higher for boys than for girls.