Emotion Matters in Early Polite lies: Preschoolers’ Polite Lie-telling in Relation to Cognitive and Emotion-related Abilities

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

Most prior studies on children’s polite lie-telling focused on its cognitive correlates but tended to neglect its relationship with emotion-related abilities. While both verbal and nonverbal displays matter in politeness contexts, few studies examined children’s performance of polite lie-telling in relation to other abilities. The current study was the first to examine children’s lying choice and performance in polite contexts in relation to both cognitive (inhibitory control, false belief understanding) and emotion-related abilities (emotional theory of mind, affective empathy). Moreover, we focused on preschoolers, since preschool age is a key period for both the emergence of polite lie-telling and the development of abilities related to polite lie-telling.
We adapted the disappointing gift paradigm (Popliger et al., 2011; Talwar et al., 2007; Williams et al., 2016) and measured 115 Chinese preschoolers’ polite lie-telling (52 boys, Mage= 54.91 months, SD = 9.78, range 32-72 months). We coded children’s performance based on five dimensions: facial expressions, vocal intonations, verbal responses, behavioral responses, and contradictory performances (Hudson & Jacques, 2014). We also measured children’s inhibitory control with the day/night Stroop task, and their false belief understanding with the Sally-Ann task and Unexpected Content task. Besides, we measured children’s emotional ToM with the Belief-Emotion task and Real-Apparent Emotion task, and their affective empathy with the Empathy Measure for Preschoolers (EMP).
After receiving a disappointing gift, 53 (46.1%) children told a polite lie. Polite lie-tellers showed more positive facial expressions, vocal intonations, verbal responses, and behavioral responses than truth-tellers, as well as more contradictory performances. More specifically, polite lie-tellers can show successful disguise on their verbal and behavioral responses. However, it was hard for them to control facial expressions, and their vocal intonations were the most likely to betray them (see Figure 1). Children’s tendency to tell polite lies was found positively predicted by their emotional ToM (see Figure 2). Additionally, children’s contradictory performances were positively predicted by their inhibitory control and emotional ToM (which was marginally significant). These findings suggest the importance of emotion-related abilities in early polite lie-telling.
Unexpectedly, our results show that preschoolers’ polite lie-telling decreased with age. About 35 percent of 5- to 6-year-olds lied, whereas about 50 percent of 3- to 4-year-olds lied. This may be explained by the development of preschoolers’ evaluation of lie-telling versus truth-telling. Four-year-olds did not give a higher moral evaluation to truth-telling than lie-telling, whereas 5- and 6-year-olds evaluated lie-telling as more negative in both transgression and politeness contexts (Bussey, 1999; Vendetti et al., 2019). We also found that older truth-tellers showed more positive facial expressions than younger truth-tellers, which suggest a compromising way for older preschoolers to avoid lying and make the situation less embarrassing concurrently. These findings suggest that preschoolers can tell polite lies but they still have a long way to go to tell mature polite lies like adults.

Authors

• Yiyi Wang, Peking University
  Presenting Author

• Skylar Hong
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meng Pei
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yanjie Su, Peking University
  Non-Presenting Author