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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Children experience that, from a moral point of view, dishonesty has two sides: Both generally condemned and occasionally encouraged. While they learn from parents and teachers that lying is wrong, children will notice that adults pretend that Santa Claus is real, treat white lies as polite, and tell stories about heroes who deceive villains. To navigate this moral landscape, children have to develop nuanced notions of when dishonesty is wrong, when dishonesty is good, and when dishonesty—while not ideal—is the only option. Getting it wrong is consequential. Lying can undermine trust in close relationships, academic cheating can block future paths, and financial deception can land you in jail. Despite the high stakes, little research has investigated how children and youth develop moral views about when, if ever, dishonesty is acceptable.

This symposium brings together research on the development of moral views on dishonesty from childhood to adulthood. The first presentation explores parents’ judgments and reasoning about lying to children about cultural characters (e.g., Santa Claus). The second presentation examines children’s judgments about when it is alright to lie to circumvent parents’ prohibitions. The third presentation uses hypothetical scenarios and a behavioral paradigm to test whether children’s judgments about cheating predicts their own cheating. The fourth presentation shows how emerging adults judge that academic and non-academic cheating is permissible under certain situational pressures.

The discussion will consider what we know and what we need to know about the developing morality of dishonesty from childhood to adulthood.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chairs

• Talia Waltzer, University of California - San Diego

• Audun Dahl, University of California - Santa Cruz

Individual Presentations

• When Parents Lie With Broad Support: Santa Claus and Other Cultural Characters - Presenting Author: Thalia Raquel Goldstein, George Mason University; Candice Mills, The University of Texas at Dallas

• Children Endorse Defiance and Deception as Legitimate Modes of Moral Resistance and Social Opposition - Presenting Author: Matthew Gingo, Wheaton College

• Children’s Moral Judgment of Academic Cheating and its Relation to Their Actual Behavior - Presenting Author: Kanza Batool, University of Toronto; Kaitlyn Monica Wilson, University of New Brunswick; Elizabeth Lynn Gerhardt, Saint Mary’s University; Tz-yu Duan, University of British Columbia (UBC); Catherine Ann Cameron, University of British Columbia (UBC); Kang Lee, University of Toronto

• Emerging Adults’ Evaluations of Cheating: How External Pressures Lead to Moral Exceptions - Presenting Author: Fiona C DeBernardi, Cornell University; Talia Waltzer, University of California - San Diego; Audun Dahl, University of California - Santa Cruz