Poster #73 - Examining U.S. Parental Beliefs and Behaviors Associated with Different Categories of Lies

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Parental practices are thought to play a large role in the development of children’s lie-telling behaviors, but investigation of parental influences remains limited (Talwar & Crossman, 2022). Many existing studies either ask parents about lying in general (e.g., whether they discourage lying; Lavoie et al., 2016) or ask only one or two items about a specific lie (e.g., telling a child a monster will get them if they do not eat vegetables; Heyman et al., 2009). More recent scales developed to assess parents’ socialization of lying have employed subscales that ultimately collapse across different types of lies (Talwar et al., 2022). Extensive research with children, however, indicates that different categories of lies (e.g., white lies vs. antisocial lies) follow different developmental trajectories both in understanding of norms and in children’s behavior.

Thus, to better understand the development of children’s lying, this pre-registered study will systematically examine parental attitudes about, socialization of, and modeling of three categories of lies: self-oriented (lying to benefit or protect oneself), other-oriented (lying to be polite or protect another), and action-oriented (lying to avoid a particular situation or shape another’s behavior). Additionally, unlike past work which has predominantly focused on the parents of school-aged children, we will also examine parents of younger and older children, to determine whether there are developmental shifts in parents’ attitudes and behaviors regarding children’s lie telling.

Parents from the United States will complete an online survey that consists of three main subsections that will ask separately about all three types of lying (self-oriented, other-oriented, and action-oriented). The subsections are (1) general attitudes about lying (adapted from the Theory of Planned Behavior; Ajzen, 2006); (2) socialization of lying via instruction (adapted from Dykstra et al., 2020; Malloy et al., 2019), (3) parental modeling of lying via use (adapted from Dykstra et al., 2020).

We predict that attitudes, socialization, and modeling will show convergence for self-oriented and other-oriented lies, such that parents report negative attitudes about, socialization against, and minimal use of self-oriented lies, but positive attitudes about, socialization for, and high use of other-oriented lies. In contrast, we predict that action-oriented lies will be frequently used by parents, but be associated with more negative attitudes and lower rates of socialization. Developmentally, we predict that attitudes and behaviors regarding self-oriented and other-oriented lies will stay more consistent, but that there will be a shift for action-oriented lies, with increased endorsement as children get older.

Pilot testing was used to determine example tokens for each of the three categories of lies. Data will be obtained from approximately 300 U.S. caregivers of children aged between 0 and 5 years (n=100), children aged between 6 and 16 years (n=100), and children over 16 years of age (n=100). The study protocol has been approved by the local IRB and data collection is in progress. All data will be collected and analyzed before SRCD. The results of this study will yield important insights into how different categories of lies are socialized by parents across different age ranges.

Authors

• Victoria Lauren Leyva, Texas State University
  Presenting Author

• Emma Bulut, Texas State University

• Ines Constance Lucieer, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Rianne Kok, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Nicole Lucassen, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Jennifer Marie Clegg, Texas State University

• Katherine Rice Warnell, Texas State University