Children’s Belief in Santa Claus and Moral Behavior: A two-wave longitudinal study of children’s prosocial behavior during Christmas.

Children are told that Santa Claus is a real agent who can observe them, judge them, and reward them. Famously, Santa makes a list (and checks it twice) of children who are ‘naughty’ and ‘nice’. Our goal was to determine which factors, if any, influence whether belief in Santa or other traditions associated with the Christmas Festival, would influence a child’s moral development. Over three studies executed in 2019, 2021, and 2022, and including over 400 participants, we asked parents to report on their child’s (4 to 9 years) behavior at two timepoints: up-to six weeks prior to Christmas and for the week preceding Christmas Day. We constructed and refined a tool for parental report of everyday behaviors of children that broadly covers positive/prosocial behavior and negative/antisocial behaviors. We find that a child’s belief alone is insufficient to predict positive behaviors, but that the presence and intensity of ritual behaviors associated with Christmas (such as Christmas Trees and other decorations, songs and other forms of media, and different kinds of foods and other patterns of behavior) influence positive behavior, and specifically influence unprompted behaviors in the children. Further, a parent’s aspiration to model Christmas relevant behaviors (measured by a modified CREDs scale) indirectly affects the child’s behavior. Other potential predictors of behavioral improvements were ruled out, including parents’ mood, whether parents’ explicitly reminded their children of Santa, the amount of free-time and family-time a child has during the Christmas period, and various aspects of religiosity (though our sample was highly secular). We report, for the first time, that a child’s behavior actually improves as Christmas Day approaches, and though the effect is small it is reliably observed, and is primarily attributable to participation in yuletide rituals. These results have practical and theoretical implications for the evolution of moralizing religions in our species.