Parent Socialization of Lying and Moral Identity

• In Event: Parental Lies: Socialization, Legitimacy, and Consequences

Abstract

Introduction. The way that children are socialized about lying directly impacts their understanding of the acceptability of lying and influences the degree to which they rely on lie-telling behaviour (Lavoie et al., 2016; 2017; Santos et al, 2017; Setoh et al, 2020). While there has been considerable attention to how lying is associated with children’s cognitive development, less is known about how parents socialize their children about honesty and lying, how to assess it and how it relates to parents’ own moral identity (Talwar & Crossman, 2022).
Aims and Method. The Socialization of Lying Questionnaire was developed as a first step to measure parents’ socialization about honesty and yielded some important early results regarding the types of methods that parents tend to use to socialize children about lying, but had some shortcomings, for example, one subscale had low internal reliability, and the scale had not been validated. To address these issues, the current study assessed a fully validated measure of the Socialization of Lying Questionnaire, using a large and diverse sample of parents. Moreover, we extended the inquiry to explore whether parents’ self-reported socialization of lying is associated with their moral identity more broadly. Participants were 401 parents (age range 21-65 years, M = 37.93 years, SE = 0.37 years; 47% fathers, 53% mothers) with at least one child between the ages of 3 and 17 years of age. Ethical approval was obtained for the study, following the American Psychological Association guidelines. Participants completed a series of questionnaires through an online platform and were provided with a nominal compensation at the end of completion of the study as a thank you for their time.
Results. We found that the final Revised-SoL questionnaire had good internal reliabilities and an adequate model fit across multiple indices using confirmatory factor analyses. Four factors were empirically validated: (1) the direct socialization of honesty; (2) parents’ modelling of lying behavior; (3) parents’ discipline of lying and reinforcement of honesty; and (4) parents’ perceptions of their child’s problematic lying. Importantly, we found that parents’ values for honesty and their direct teaching of honesty were associated with their own moral identities, both in terms of their perceptions of themselves as moral being, r = 0.34, p < .001, and their internalization of honesty as a value, r = 0.32, p < .001. Finally, we found that parental modelling of lying was associated with a lower moral self-identity, r = -0.15, p = .002, and with a lower internalization of the value of honesty, r = -0.25, p < .001.
Conclusion. Our results suggest that parents’ own methods for socializing their children about lying and honesty are interconnected with their own moral self-identities and that the Revised-SoL is a good measure for capturing both direct and indirect approaches for socializing children about lying and honesty.

Authors

• Ipek Isik, McGill University
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer Lavoie, University of Edinburgh

• Angela M Crossman, City University of New York

• Victoria Talwar, McGill University