It's an interesting hypothesis, but without some sort of experimentation, there's no way to know if it's true. It's quite possible that the Elf on the Shelf has the opposite effect. I'm sure if we were to have had an Elf on the Shelf when we were kids, we would have soon discovered the limits of his powers.
That said, we were just talking about the Elf on the Shelf last night, and I joked that we should expect a leak of the Elf on the Shelf files soon.