Children Endorse Defiance and Deception as Legitimate Modes of Moral Resistance and Social Opposition

• In Event: When is it Alright to Lie and Cheat? Developmental Perspectives on the Morality of Dishonesty

Abstract

Research has shown that a key contributor to children’s understanding and differentiation of social norms is their parents’ use of prohibitive rules and assertions of behavioral control (Waltzer et al., 2019). As children gain experience with norms and their corresponding transgressions, they come to systematically differentiate among them and understand that different types of norms are intended to regulate and govern particular types of behavior (Turiel & Dahl, 2019). Still, children do not simply accept these norms or parents’ assertion of them unreflectively. Instead, children reject and resist various norms when they restrict desired activities. One common form of everyday resistance is covert defiance paired with deception. Evidence suggests that children selectively resist certain norms and prohibitions by lying, while accepting other types of norms and rules that restrict their behaviors, and that this pattern of resistance and acceptance changes with age (Gingo, 2017).

Despite a growing body of research, little is known about how children evaluate the legitimacy of various sorts of norms that proscribe behavior, nor how they evaluate the legitimacy of lying to resist those norms and proscriptions. Thus, we asked U.S. 6-, 8-, and 11-year-olds (N = 118) to assess twelve hypothetical situations depicting comparably aged children engaged in defiance and deception to circumvent parents’ proscriptions. The nature of the proscriptions, and parents’ justifications for them, varied in terms of social-cognitive domain (moral, personal, prudential, pragmatic, and conventional, Table 1). Evaluations and justifications for the legitimacy of the parents’ proscriptions, and the children’s disobedience and deception were examined, as were general evaluations of deception and parental authority.

Across situations, increased age was associated with decreased acceptance of proscriptions, and, in several situations, increased acceptance of disobedience and deception. Children responded significantly differently to proscriptions by domain of norm (Table 2). Prudential and pragmatic proscriptions were widely accepted, whereas disobedience and deception in those situations was generally rejected. In contrast, immoral proscriptions related to racial and gender inequity were judged illegitimate, and disobedience and deception in these situations was generally judged acceptable. For example, children endorsed defiance and deception to a greater degree when a parent prohibited playing basketball with a peer because he or she was of a different race (immoral) than when parents prohibited playing basketball because it was dangerous (prudential).

Children’s justifications also varied significantly by age and domain. With age children increasingly justified defiance and deception for reasons of personal autonomy. They also increasingly endorsed defiance and deception as moral obligations required to resist immoral norms. Older children showed high levels of coordination among the varied and competing social concerns presented in the situations.

This research shows that children value parental authority, but not at the expense of their personal autonomy, and value honesty but sometimes subordinate it to competing moral concerns. Our findings will be discussed in terms of children’s reasoning about the boundaries of parent authority and deception as a means of social and moral resistance in relationships of unequal power.

Author

• Matthew Gingo, Wheaton College
  Presenting Author