Children’s moral understanding of antisocial and prosocial lying and their actual lying behaviors

• In Event: Lying, cheating and fairness: The knowledge-behavior gap in development

Abstract

Lying is a normal aspect of typical child development. However, for some children, lie-telling becomes problematic and atypical. For children with severe conduct problems, lying is one of the most common presenting symptoms, which can be pervasive through to adolescence. Despite this, very little is known regarding why children with conduct problems lie more often than typically developing children (Zanette et al., 2020). One potential factor attributing to this difference is children’s moral understanding of lying. Research with typically developing samples has demonstrated that children’s moral evaluations of antisocial and prosocial (“white”) lies are somewhat related to children’s actual lying behaviors. For example, children who give more favorable ratings of prosocial lies are more likely to tell prosocial lies themselves (Xu et al., 2010). However, while studies have shown that children’s evaluations of antisocial lying can be related to their own antisocial lying behaviors, children often tell antisocial lies despite considering them to be morally wrong (Talwar et al., 2002; 2004). The current study examined the relation between moral evaluations of truth- and lie-telling and actual antisocial and prosocial lying behaviors among children (N=390, 6-12 years-old) with and without conduct problems.

Participants were recruited through an intervention program for children with conduct problems and from the community. Using 4 vignettes, children evaluated the honest and deceptive statements of a child protagonist told in transgression and politeness contexts using a 7-point scale (-3=very very bad, +3=very very good). In the antisocial lying paradigm, children were tempted to peek at a forbidden object (minor transgression) and were later asked if they had peeked. In the prosocial lying paradigm, children were asked if they liked a disappointing gift that was given to them.
Despite evidence that children with conduct problems exhibit underdeveloped moral reasoning ability more broadly (Blair et al., 2001), we found no significant differences in moral evaluations based on conduct problems (ps>.05). On average, children viewed confessing to a transgression as “good” (M=1.40) and antisocial lying as “very bad” (M= -1.80), regardless of conduct problems. However, regression analyses showed that evaluations were not predictive of children’s actual antisocial lying, regardless of conduct problems (p>.05). In fact, 80% of children who transgressed told an antisocial lie to conceal it, demonstrating a gap between their moral knowledge and actual antisocial lying behaviors.

In the politeness contexts, children viewed both telling the blunt-truth (that you dislike an item) and telling a prosocial lie (to conceal this dislike) as slightly negative (Mblunt-truth= -0.27; Mprosocial lie= -0.44), reflecting a struggle to uphold the value of honesty in contexts where the truth may actually be more harmful than a lie. Regression analyses showed that these evaluations were not predictive of children’s actual prosocial lying behaviors, regardless of conduct problems (p>.05). However, 69% of children told a prosocial lie by feigning liking the disappointing gift, suggesting that most children understand cultural norms regarding prosocial lying. No age effects were found. These findings offer novel and important theoretical and clinical insights about typical and atypical development of verbal deception.

Authors

• Sarah Zanette, University of Regina
  Presenting Author

• Leena Augimeri, Child Development Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Margaret Walsh, Child Development Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kang Lee, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author