Developmental profiles of children’s spontaneous lie-telling behavior

To tell the truth or not: What effortful control, false belief, and sympathy tell us about preschoolers' instrumental lies

This study aimed to examine the predictors of instrumental lies in preschool children, specifically focusing on false belief, effortful control, and sympathy. Instrumental lies are intentional falsehoods used to achieve personal goals such as avoiding punishment and obtaining an undeserved reward. A total of 192 preschool children (age range = 32-73 month-olds), along with their mothers and fathers, participated in the study. The Temptation Resistance Paradigm, an experimental task, was employed to elicit instrumental lies from the children. The children also completed first-order false belief measures, and their parents filled out questionnaires assessing their children's effortful control and sympathy skills. Results revealed a positive association between children's effortful control and their decisions to tell instrumental lies. However, no significant relationship was found between false belief and instrumental lying. Age moderated the link between sympathy and the decision to tell instrumental lies, with sympathy being negatively associated with lie-telling behavior among older children but showing no effect among younger children. The study variables did not predict the maintenance of instrumental lies. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the role of effortful control and sympathy as underlying temperamental and emotional processes influencing children's decisions to engage in instrumental lie-telling.

'I like you so . . . ': how transgressor and interviewer likeability and familiarity influence children's disclosures

This study examined how children's age and their ratings of the likeability of a transgressor (E1) and an interviewer (E2) influenced their testimonies after witnessing a theft. Children (N = 152; ages 7-13 years) witnessed E1 steal $20 from a wallet. E1 then asked the children to lie and say that they did not take the money. Children were interviewed about their experience with E1 and completed two questionnaires about E1 and E2. Children who reported higher likeability scores with E1 were more likely to attempt to conceal the theft and more willing to keep it a secret. Children who reported higher likeability scores with E2 were more likely to indirectly disclose the theft. Age also played a role in children's ability to maintain their concealment. Results have important implications for professionals who interview children and suggest that more research is needed to examine ways to increase children's comfort with interviews/interviewers.

When kindergarteners are tempted to deceive: A study of factors predicting lie-telling for personal gain

The current study examined the relations between children's cognitive and emotion abilities with their likelihood to tell a lie for personal gain in a tempting situation. These relations were examined using behavioral tasks and questionnaires. A total of 202 Israel Arab Muslim kindergarten children participated in this study. Our results showed that behavioral self-regulation was positively associated with children's likelihood to tell a lie for personal gain. Children with higher behavioral self-regulation actually tended to lie more for their own gain, suggesting that the likelihood to tell a lie might be related to children's ability to mobilize and integrate their cognitive abilities to self-regulate their behavior. In addition, through exploratory analysis, we found a positive relation between theory of mind and children's likelihood to tell a lie, which was moderated by inhibition. Specifically, only among children with low inhibition was there a positive correlation between their theory of mind and the likelihood to lie. Moreover, age and gender were related to children's lie-telling; older children tended more to lie for their own gain, and this likelihood was higher for boys than for girls.

Give and take: A microgenetic study of preschoolers' deceptive and prosocial behavior in relation to their socio-cognitive development

Early on, young children begin to learn the social skills which will help them navigate through an increasingly complex social world. We explored how deceiving for personal gain potentially interacts with sharing the resulting resources and how they both relate to theory of mind (ToM) and inhibitory control in 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 92, 43 girls). Children played a hide-and-seek zero-sum game in which they could win stickers if they discovered how to deceive the experimenter. Then they were prompted to share their stickers in a dictator game paradigm. Using a microgenetic design, we tracked deceptive behavior across ten sessions and sharing behavior across five of these sessions, plus a follow-up session 15 months later. Children polarized into a group who never deceived across all sessions, and a group who constantly deceived above chance levels (around 85 % of the time). Sharing behavior was extremely low (under 6 % of stickers) across the sessions. At follow-up, deceptive behavior was above 80 %, while sharing remained at a low level (under 5 %). The novelty of our findings was that children who initially discovered how to deceive shared less than the children who didn't use this deceptive strategy. Nonetheless, this pattern was reversed at follow-up. Furthermore, ToM positively predicted deceptive behavior across all sessions and improved after the microgenetic sessions but wasn't related with deception at follow-up. Implications for enabling children to deploy the growing understanding of their worlds in a more prosocial way are discussed.

A Review of the Nature and Development of Lying and Deception and Considerations for Teaching Prosocial Lying to Autistic Persons

Compared with their neurotypical (NT) counterparts, persons with autism appear to be less inclined to tell lies and less skilled in delivering sophisticated forms of deception. At the same time, some forms of deception like white lies and prosocial lies are frequent in human interaction because they are important for social success. This article challenges the reader to evaluate the therapeutic potential for prosocial deception and teaching white-lie telling to autistic persons. The nature and development of antisocial and prosocial lying in NT development and autism are reviewed. Considerations for when to (and when not to) teach the skill of empathic lying are discussed and recommendations for how to teach the comprehension and production of prosocial lies are offered.

Liar, liar … sometimes: Understanding social-environmental influences on the development of lying

Lying is a behavior that, in theory, is discouraged and punished, except when it isn't. Perhaps as a result, many individuals lie at low levels somewhat regularly. While research has well documented the cognitive skills that support children's early lying, it does not explain how children learn when to lie versus tell a truth. The current article reviews the impact of social-environmental influences on the development of children's lie-telling knowledge, understanding and behavior, including the roles of parents, siblings, teachers and others. It is argued that holistic examinations of cognitive, social, environmental, cultural and child factors, interacting over time, is required to understand divergent trajectories of lying and truth-telling across development, particularly at the extremes.

Theory of Mind and Concealing vs. Forthcoming Communication in Adolescence

Concealing information requires that adolescents manage the information that they share, which requires cognitive skills, for example, theory of mind (ToM). This study explored motivations for concealment that early adolescents (N = 90, M = 12.81 years, SD = 5.10 months, range 12–14 years, and 58% female) endorsed concealing or disclosing to friends and parents, in relation to their theory of mind. We found that adolescents broadly endorsed disclosure to both parents and friends, even when it might mean they would face consequences, be impolite (by not protecting another’s feelings), or face negative identity-related emotions. We found that ToM ability was associated with a tendency to endorse being forthcoming and sharing information with both friends and parents. These findings provide new insight into how the relation between ToM and concealment may change with age, specifically how in early adolescence it may foster open communication rather than concealment as is the case in early and middle childhood.

Lie-telling for personal gain in children with and without externalizing behavior problems

Few studies have examined the lie-telling behavior of children who have externalizing problems using experimental procedures. In the current study, children's lie-telling for personal gain (N = 110 boys aged 6-11 years) was examined using an experimental paradigm in relation to their theory-of-mind abilities and inhibitory control as well as their moral evaluations of truths and lies. Children with externalizing behavior problems (n = 53) were significantly more likely to lie and to be less skilled at lying than a typical comparison group (n = 57). Children who had lower theory-of-mind scores were significantly less likely to tell a lie for personal gain compared with those who had higher theory-of-mind scores. Children with externalizing problems who told personal gain lies were also more likely to rate tattle truths more positively than other children. For a subsample of children (n = 55), parent-reported diaries of the frequency of children's lies over 2 weeks revealed a higher frequency of lies by children with externalizing problems compared with the typical comparison group. Children whose parents reported a high frequency of lies for their children were also more likely to lie in the experimental personal gain lie paradigm. Results suggest that children with externalizing behavior may have a different pattern of lie-telling than has been previously reported for normative lie development.

Theory of mind, executive function, and lying in children: a meta-analysis

Scientific research on how children learn to tell lies has existed for more than a century. Earlier studies mainly focused on moral, social, and situational factors contributing to the development of lying. Researchers have only begun to explore the cognitive correlations of children's lying in the last two decades. Cognitive theories suggest that theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) should be closely related to the development of lying since lying is, in essence, ToM and EF in action. Yet, findings from empirical studies are mixed. To address this issue, the current meta-analysis reviewed all prior literature that examined the relations between children's lying and ToM and/or between children's lying and EF. In total, 47 papers consisting of 5099 participants between 2 and 19 years of age were included, which yielded 74 effect sizes for ToM and 94 effect sizes for EF. Statistically significant but relatively small effects were found between children's lying and ToM (r = .17) and between lying and EF (r = .13). Furthermore, EF's correlation with children's initial lies was significantly smaller than its correlation with children's ability to maintain lies. This comprehensive meta-analysis provides a clear picture of the associations between children's ToM/EF and their lying behavior and confirms that ToM and EF indeed play a positive role in children's lying and its development.

Lying and Theory of Mind: A Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis investigated the link between lying and theory-of-mind (ToM) by integrating findings from 81 studies involving 7,826 children between 2 and 14 years of age from 14 different collectivist and individualist cultures. Overall, there was a small, significant positive association (r = .23). Four main moderators were examined: facet of lying (understanding, instigated production, spontaneous production, maintenance); valence of lies (antisocial, prosocial); type of ToM (first-order, second-order); and culture (collectivist, individualist). Facet of lying and type of ToM were significant moderators. ToM was positively related to all facets of lying, but most strongly linked to lie maintenance and weakest for spontaneous production. Both first-order and second-order ToM were positively related to lying, but the link was stronger for the former.

The link between parental mental state talk and children's lying: An indirect effect via false belief understanding

Past research shows that parental mental state talk (MST) is closely associated with children's theory-of-mind (ToM) understanding. The current study extends previous work by investigating whether parental MST is also associated with children's ToM in action (i.e., lying). A total of 90 Singaporean 3- to 5-year-olds participated in this study with their parents. Parental MST was measured using a storytelling task with a wordless picture book. Mediation analysis revealed an indirect effect: Children's ToM understanding served as a mediator in the path between parental MST and children's lying, whereas there was no significant direct effect of parental MST on children's lying. This study is the first to focus on the relation between parental MST and ToM in an applied setting. Our findings suggest that parental MST can help children to develop sociocognitive skills, which in turn can help children to gain the insight that lying may be used as a strategy for personal gain.

Differences and similarities in lying frequency, moral evaluations, and beliefs about lying among children with and without conduct problems

The current study examined whether children (6-12 years old) with varying levels of conduct problems differ from those without conduct problems in three key areas: their perceptions of how often other people tell lies, their moral evaluations of truth- and lie-telling in different social contexts, and how often they tell antisocial and prosocial (i.e., "white") lies. Using a continuous measurement of conduct problems, we found that children with greater conduct problems believed that other people tell lies more often compared with children with fewer conduct problems. However, unexpectedly, children's moral evaluations of truth- and lie-telling in antisocial and prosocial contexts did not significantly differ based on conduct problems. Using parent-report methods, we found that children tell more antisocial lies with increasing severity of conduct problems, but they tell prosocial lies at a similar rate regardless of conduct problems. Finally, after grouping children based on level of conduct problems (none, low, or high), we found that children in the group with no conduct problems told more prosocial lies than antisocial lies, but the reverse was found for children in the group with high conduct problems. These findings highlight the importance of considering social context when examining the development of lying in children experiencing conduct problems.