Three Situations Where Lying Is a Good Idea

Soc Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 Nov 8.

Published in final edited phase as:

PMCID: PMC2975356

NIHMSID: NIHMS246669

Children's Reasoning about Lie down-telling and Truth-telling in Politeness Contexts

Gail D. Heyman

University of California, San Diego

Monica A. Sweet

University of California, San Diego

Kang Lighthorse Harry Lee

University of Toronto

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Abstract

Children's reasoning about untruthful and truth-telling was examined among participants ages 7–11 (total N = 181) with reference to conflicts between being honest and protecting the feelings of others. In Study 1, participants showed different patterns of rating and motivational inference in politeness contexts vs. transgression contexts: in niceness contexts, they rated lie-telling more favourably and were far more likely to assume that motives were prosocial. In Study 2, participants evaluated lie-telling more positively and accuracy-telling to a greater extent negatively in politeness contexts, especially when they focused on the implications of the statements for others rather of whether the statements were true or mendacious.

Keywords: deception, major form class communicating, sound judgement, social knowledge

Innovation

Commandment children to distinguish betwixt right and wicked is a major focus of socialisation, and as part of this process, children are taught that truth-telling is angelic and consist-telling is bad (Kohlberg, 1964; Piaget, 1932/1965). However, children are likely to face challenges as they seek to employ this concept to specific social situations. One important challenge occurs when true statement-effectual comes into conflict with other values such as avoiding scathe to others (Lewis, 1993). For example, if a child were to receive a gift that she does non deficiency, to truthfully admit her feelings about it would risk hurting the feelings of the gift giver. The focus of this clause is how children grounds about situations in which the values of truth-telling and politeness come into conflict.

Children's logical thinking about whether lying is always received can be viewed within a general framework of moral development, presented that honesty is an important topic in discussions most morals (Perkins & Turiel, 2007). Early work along honourable development has convergent connected growing with reference to invariant stages (Kohlberg, 1964; Piaget, 1932/1965). For model, Piaget (1932/1965) argued that around the old age of 10, children shift from a heteronomous morality level in which they eyeshot rules every bit moral absolutes to an autonomous morality level in which they appreciate that rules buns sometimes equal challenged or violated in order to benefit multitude, and that judgments of what is right or wrong should be focused more on intentions than on objective outcomes.

More recently, enquiry examining children's lesson reasoning has focused along the tendency to take a leak distinctions between contrary types of rules and different social contexts (Smetana, 1985; also see Smetana, 2006). This research provides strong evidence that across a range of ages, children tend to differentiate between moral reasoning (which involves issues of welfare, justice, and rights) and other kinds of social reasoning. One key distinction is between moral transgressions, such as hurting others physically Beaver State psychologically, and social conventional transgressions, such as dressing inappropriately operating theatre using inappropriate table manners. Children and adolescents run to label moral transgressions, but not social conventional transgressions, as wrong crossways social contexts, even in the absence of explicit rules (Turiel, 2002). Children and adolescents also make distinctions between reasoning about the good and social formal domains and the personal domain, which involves actions that are of grandness primarily to the individual WHO engages in them (Nucci, 1981, 2001; see Turiel, 2002).

Children's tendency to apply context-specific reasoning to social situations extends to judgments about lying and truth-telling. Perkins and Turiel (2007) found that although adolescents judged lying to be wrong 'in general' and perceived lying to cover improving misdeeds to be clearly wrong, they judged Trygve Halvden Lie-telling as acceptable under a number of circumstances. For example, they considered deception of parents American Samoa acceptable in response to parental directives that would restrict personal activities or involve moral transgressions.

Other research suggests that younger children, like experient children, do not purview all lies as reprehensible and get distinctions among different types of lies. Flatbottom early grade school children sometimes find lying to make up acceptable in politeness contexts, which fall out when there is an chance to tell a 'white lie' ready to be civilized (see Walper & Valtin, 1992). White lies have been defined as intentional distortions of the the true without despiteful engrossed (Bok, 1978) and usually involve preferences and ethnic relations (Bussey, 1999). In a typical Patrick Victor Martindale White prevarication context (Cole, 1986; Saarni, 1984), an somebody is given an ineligible gift and is asked if He or she likes it. This situation presents a dilemma because a fake claim to like the endow would Be inconsistent with socialization messages about the grandness of truth-telling, but an honest response may be inconsistent with norms of avoiding harm to others.

There are a number of reasons to investigate how children reason about lie-telling and Sojourner Truth-telling in politeness contexts. First of all, information technology speaks to debates within philology and philosophy concerning the acceptability of Trygve Lie-telling when motives are prosocial (attend Bok, 1978). For example, Immanuel Kant (1797/1949) argued that lying is always virtuously difficult because information technology undermines meaningful verbal discourse whereas utilitarians such as Mill (1869) argued that the moral implications of lying are context dependent, so lying is wrong only if it has disinclined consequences (see also Robinson, 1996; Solomon, 1993). Secondly, children's reasoning about white lies has implications for understanding socialization processes. Such an understanding could inform efforts to teach moral reasoning (Peterson, Peterson, & Seeto, 1983) and has implications for how children deal with contradictory socialization forces. Finally, children's reasoning about white lies speaks to their conceptions of untruthful more broadly. For instance, savvy touchstone development in reasoning about lying has important legal implications, and research on this topic could inform efforts to refine effectual definitions of children's competency to sho (Goodman, 1984; Lyon, 2000; Talwar, Lee, Bala, &A; Lindsay, 2004).

The introduce work builds upon prior search on rational about politeness during the grade school long time (Bussey, 1999; Peterson et al.., 1983; Walper & Valtin, 1992) by investigating Trygve Lie-telling and truth-informative among 7–11-year-olds in contexts in which telling the truth seat case hurt feelings. When investigating this topic, it is strategic to ensure that the youngest participants understand the relevant social expectations. There is substantial evidence that such an understanding is firmly in place ahead the age of seven. After receiving a disappointing gift, school-aged children typically manage their emotional expressions sol as to appear happier than they really are, and such displays are more common among girls than among boys (Cole, 1986; Saarni, 1984). Cole (1986) demonstrated that children as young as the age of leash are sometimes competent of spontaneous control of their disappointed emotional expressions in such circumstances. In that location is also manifest that young children's capacity to provide delusory information in niceness contexts extends beyond non-verbal communication. Talwar and her colleagues (Talwar & Lee, 2002; Talwar, Murphy, & Lee, 2007) found that from three years of age onward, children promptly told white lies to adults when commenting along an unusual facial mark up or when receiving unwanted gifts.

Another condition in selecting the youngest age group involved the verbal demands of the procedure, in which children were given with scenarios and asked to make unrestricted responses. Our pilot burner examination suggested that only by the years of seven were children able to clearly and consistently explicate the scenarios rachis to us and provide coherent responses to our unrestricted questions.

In each of two studies, an experimenter read participants a set of illustrated stories in which a child admirer either lies operating room tells the truth to a teacher. In the niceness contexts, which were of primary interest, a teacher gives a gift to a nestling protagonist and asks what he or she thinks of it. In the lie-recounting story the protagonist incorrectly claims to like the gift, and in the truth-telling story the agonist admits his OR her dissenting feelings about it. In apiece story, participants were asked to make evaluative ratings of what the protagonist said.

We chose adults A the target of lie-efficacious and truth-telling because information technology seems likely that it is adults kind of than children WHO serve as the primary socializers about white lies. The ad-lib telling of white lies has been more clearly documented in the literature with adults than with children (e.g., Kale, 1986; Talwar & Lee, 2002; Talwar et alii., 2007). We decided that the adults should be described as teachers kinda than parents because children may spirit so well-situated around their parents that they would tone no need to be nice in such contexts.

To examine whether children's patterns of reasoning within politeness situations would extend to reasoning astir fabrication more generally, participants were also asked to reason about lies in transgression contexts in which a shaver protagonist by choice damages a program library book and is asked about it by a teacher. In the lie-telling scenarios the supporter denies the evildoing, and truly-telling scenarios the champion admits to IT. This situation provides a clear contrast with the politeness context because in a transgression context, children are more likely to have clear messages all but lying being wrongheaded, and telling the truth is unlikely to conflict with other important mixer values.

Premature research (Bussey, 1999; Peterson et al., 1983; Walper & Valtin, 1992) has shown that simple school children consider lie-informative more acceptable and true statement-telling less received in politeness contexts as compared to transgression contexts. We expected to copy these findings. We were also interested in whether thither might be age-related changes in children's evaluations. Studies by Bussey (1999) and by Peterson et Heart of Dixie. (1983) found atomic number 102 so much differences across the elementary shoal years. However, Walper and Valtin (1992) found that 10-year-olds made significantly more positive evaluations of segregated lies than did 6- and 8-year-olds. Walper and Valtin (1992) argued that over time, children determine to identify the social contexts in which honesty norms need to be qualified and that the factor just about likely to chronicle for this change is 'the development of role-attractive skills which allow one to infer and take into consideration the of necessity and wants of interacting individuals and to coordinate different perspectives' (p. 249).

In reply to each story, participants were asked to evaluate a protagonist's true or false assertion, and then to respond to an open-ended question. In Study 1, the naked-ended question concerned the protagonist's motivation for lying or telling the verity. The question of motives is of particular importance in light of bear witness that when individuals reason around lie-telling scenarios they often do not draw the motivational inferences that researchers expect them to, and that children's evaluations are affected by information about the speaker system's intentions (Peterson, 1995). A number of researchers have pointed come out that possible motivations for lying OR otherwise concealment uncomparable's feelings can alter widely (Camden, Motley, & Wilson, 1984; Miller & Tesser, 1988; Saarni & von Salisch, 1993) and that lie-apprisal in politeness contexts can possibly be motivated by self-interest also arsenic concern for the welfare of others (Gnepp & Hess, 1986). For example, 1 might claim to like an undesirable gift to further a personal agenda, as would atomic number 4 the guinea pig if a child sought-after to avoid getting into trouble, or to upgrade the interests of others, as would be the case if a child craved to avoid hurting the feelings of the natural endowment giver.

We predicted that children would tend to focus along the bear upon on others when inferring motivations for fabrication in niceness contexts. Coherent with this possibility is evidence suggesting that school-aged children clearly understand that lying in politeness contexts give notice serve to protect the feelings of others (Broomfield, Robinson, & Robinson, 2002; Gnepp &ere; Dame Myra Hess, 1986; Walper &ere; Valtin, 1992). For example, in Walper and Valtin's (1992) study of simple school children's reasoning about white lies, the authors far-famed, 'just about without exclusion altogether the children understood the motive behind the lie. Even those who at number 1 said that they did not know, said, in the course of the consultation, that the truth would have been unpleasant for the addressee' (p. 235). Similarly, Broomfield et al. (2002) found that children who expected others to incorrectly claim to like a dissatisfactory gift almost always referred to the gift bestower when explaining their responses. However, it has not been clearly established that children of this years consider the potential impact happening others to be the most salient motif for mendacious in this context. For case, children may understand that false statements can protect people's feelings but seize that the primary motivation concerns self-interest. This opening is important to evaluate in light of evidence that elementary school children are aware of the potential benefits of accentuation or distorting one's emotional responses in sociable contexts (Zeman &adenylic acid; Shipman, 1996).

We were also interested in latent age-related changes in children's assumptions about what motivates the great unwashe to consist politeness contexts. During this catamenia, children are likely to experience a range of situations in which there is pressure to regulate their emotional expression in the presence of others (see Saarni & von Salisch, 1993). In addition, at these ages, children are developing a sophisticated perceptive of mental animation. For example, between the ages of 6 and 11, children demo a square increase in their savvy of motives relating to social desirability (Heyman, Fu, & Lee, 2007; Heyman & Legare, 2005). This greater understanding of mental life may facilitate children's ability to reason about the relation between motives and verbal behavior (see also Broomfield et aliae., 2002, concerning the theory that s-order beliefs facilitate reasoning in politeness contexts).

In Study 2, participants were asked to provide explanations for their evaluative ratings. Because politeness situations present a conflict for children who are attempting to be both honest and respectful of the feelings of others (see Clive Staples Lewis, 1993), we sought to study whether children would focus connected honesty, the feelings of others, or other factors as they judged the appropriateness of lie-telling and accuracy-telling. We hypothesized that children who focused happening whether the protagonist had been honest would view telling the accuracy as good and lying as bad. We expected the opposite pattern for children who centralised on the impact of the statement on the gift bestower: lie-informative would be judged relatively favorably and truth-telling relatively unfavorably. Such a final result would suggest that the comparatively neutral evaluations of prevarication-telling and truth-telling in politeness contexts that receive been seen in previous studies do non reflect ergodic patterns of responding, and that IT power beryllium possible to predict children's moral judgments in politeness contexts based on the aspect of the billet they find well-nig spectacular.

Study 1

The goal of Subject field 1 was to determine how 7–11-year-old children would reason about the motives of individuals who cause true or false statements. We were especially interested in whether children would guess that individuals who tell lies in politeness contexts are motivated away a concern for others and whether children's inferences about the protagonist's motivating would be oversensitive to the situational context or to the truthfulness of the statement. Understanding how children reason about motives for lie-telling and trueness-telling is important in light of show that motives carry often of inductive potential for children as they reason about people, such every bit when predicting how people will feel and act in new situations (Heyman &adenylic acid; Gelman, 1998).

Method

Participants

Participants were 103 children (50 boys and 53 girls) in a 7-year-old chemical group (N = 38, M = 7 years 7 months, range 6 geezerhood 10 months to 8 long time 2 months), a 9-year-used aggroup (N = 35, M = 9 geezerhood 5 months, range 8 long time 10 months to 10 years 2 months), and an 11-year-old group (N = 30, M = 11 long time 2 months, range 10 years 10 months to 12 years 0 month). Participants were recruited from elementary schools with children from diverse economic backgrounds. The sample was 58.3 percent White, 11.7 pct Asian American, 15.5 pct Hispanic American, 3.9 percent African-American, and 10.7 percent unknown. The participants were recruited from several schools located in the southwestern USA, and participation rates ranged from about 40 percent to about 70 percent across schools. The socioeconomic status (SES) of students' families varied across schools, from a school in which approximately 60 per centum of students received free or reduced-Leontyne Price lunches to a school in which no children received free surgery reduced-price lunches, and the of import reported that median home income was approximately $80 000.

Procedure

An experimenter read four short stories to participants in one of two at random determined orders as part of a study of the development of moral intelligent. The stories were illustrated with colored line drawings.

Before audition the stories, participants were told, 'Today, I'm going to tell you about some kids World Health Organization coif some things and say some things. I want you to heed carefully because I'm loss to ask you some questions or so what they say. The questions are exclusively or so what the kids say, non what they do, okay? So, for instance, sometimes people do things alike feeding or drawing off and sometimes people say things equitable like I am saying things to you good now. So the questions I am loss to ask round you are only about what they say. Is that okay with you?'

The two stories that were of primary theoretical interest described politeness situations in which a child agonist accepted an undesirable gift from a teacher. In ane tale the gift was an apple that was too vinegarish, and in the different narration IT was a slice of cake that was too dry out. In each account, the protagonist was described American Samoa disliking the gift, and the teacher directly asked the frien what he or she thought of the gift. For each player, one of the two stories (involving either the apple or the cake; counterbalanced across participants) all over with the protagonist honestly reporting that he or she did not care the gift, and the another ended with the protagonist falsely claiming to like the give.

Two additional stories were enclosed for comparison purposes and described transgression situations in which a minor damaged a library book. For each participant, one of the two stories (which involved either drawing on the book or tearing out pages; counterbalanced across participants) terminated with the supporter frankly reporting that helium or she had disreputable the hold, and the other story finished with the admirer incorrectly denying having damaged the book.

Each story was tested in a preliminary study with a different group of participants to address the possibility that children might non always consider on purpose providing inaccurate information to be a lie if the intent is seen as prosocial (see Sweetser, 1987). Results of the preliminary study indicated that children in the targeted get on groups are indeed likely to empathise the conflict between being polite and telling the truth that is posed in politeness contexts, and that they do not bu annul the question by defining truthfulness as the all but prosocial carry out to take. Further details about the prelim study are presented in the Appendix.

Evaluative ratings

Later on earreach apiece story, participants were asked to make evaluative ratings of the protagonist's financial statement. Participants were asked whether they thought the reply was 'good operating room bad' using a 7-point scale that has been used in prior explore with children of similar ages (e.g., Fu, Xu, Cameron, Heyman, & Lee, 2007). The scale included the following response options: 'rattling, very healthy' (represented aside three stars, scored as 3), 'very good' (represented by two stars, scored As 2), Oregon 'effective' (represented by two stars, scored as 1), 'neither good nor bad' (pictured by a blank circle, scored as 0), 'big' (represented by one X, scored as −1), 'really bad' (represented past two Xs, scored as −2), and 'very very bad' (represented by three Xs, scored as −3). Participants were taught how to interpret and make use of this scale prior to the study. For example, they were asked, 'if you thought that something person said was "really bad" which choice would you point to?'

Motivational inferences

After making their evaluative rating, participants were asked to make over a psychological feature inference concerning the agonist's motive for fashioning the statement. For model, in the version of the story in which a protagonist (e.g., 'Mark') lied about liking an Malus pumila given to him by a teacher, participants were asked, 'Why did Deutschmark say "yes, I like-minded the orchard apple tree?" ' Children's responses were recorded verbatim, and they were not prompted to provide further information.

Coding of Open-ended Responses

Children's responses to the motivational inferences measure were coded independently by two coders.¹ The response categories seem on a lower floor, on with examples of responses participants made.

Veracity

Responses were coded into this category if they were simple statements about telling the the true, telling a lie, operating theater the factual evidence for the claim. Examples are 'she lied', 'IT was honest', 'she really doesn't like information technology and doesn't want to lie', and 'he really did tear out the pages'.

Impingement on others

This category included references to the impact happening individuals other than the protagonist. Examples are 'he didn't want to hurt the teacher's feelings', 'he didn't want to embarrass his teacher', 'someone else might get in problem', and 'she is afraid it will make him feel bad'.

Impact on self

This category enclosed references to how the response would impact the supporter. Examples are 'atomic number 2 didn't want to pull in disoblige', 'he's telling Mrs. Smith he doesn't like the apple in case she gives him another Malus pumila', 'because she didn't want to arrest humiliated in front of everyone', and 'he didn't want to accept the guilt and if they found out he did IT he'd get in more trouble'.

Some responses did not did not fall into any of these categories and were coded as other. Most of these responses involved general statements about the rightness of what the protagonist did, should have done, or should non have finished, without any reference to the consequences for story characters (e.g., 'She should necessitate things people share with them and say zero').

For Study 1, Cohen's Kappas averaged .89 (niceness story, verity = .92; politeness story, lie = .88; transgression history, Truth = .90; evildoing news report, lie = .87).

Results

Evaluative Ratings

Supported findings from prior research, we expected children to make a larger distinction betwixt lying and the true-weighty in their appraising ratings of evildoing situations than in their evaluative ratings of politeness situations. We besides expected that evaluative ratings might differ according to age or gender. We conducted a 3 (Age: 7, 9, 11) by 2 (gender: male, female) by 2 (berth: civility, evildoing) by 2 (decision: truth, lie) ANOVA, with age and sexuality every bit between-subjects factors and situation and decisiveness as inside-subjects factors. Significant of import effects of situation and decision emerged: F (1, 97) = 10.43, p < .01, η_p ² = .10 and F (1, 97) = 79.89, p < .001, η_p ² =.45, respectively. These main personal effects were qualified by a significant fundamental interaction between situation and decision, F (1, 97) = 132.39, p < .001, η_p ² = .58, which is represented in Figure 1. Children made more neutral evaluative ratings of politeness situation stories and more immoderate evaluative ratings of transgression situation stories, with significantly larger differences for transgression stories than for civility stories. Specifically, in the transgression situation, children evaluated telling a lie (M = −1.76, SD = 1.20) negatively and telling the truth (M = +1.37, SD = 1.55) positively. In the niceness situation, even so, children judged lying (M = +.30, SD = 1.34) and telling the accuracy (M = +.02, SD = 1.57) to be equally neutral.

Average Evaluations by Spot Type and Lie Decision in Study 1 (very, very bad = −3; very, same good = 3).

A significant gender by situation by conclusion interaction emerged, F (1, 97) = 6.29, p < .05, η_p ² = .06. For the politeness situation chronicle in which the protagonist told a lie, boys (M = +.62, SD = 1.23) viewed the white lie more positively than girls did (M = .0, SD = 1.39). No another main effects operating room interactions were statistically noteworthy.

Psychological feature Inferences

Frequencies of children's coded responses to the psychological feature inference question are shown in Prorogue 1. The 'new' and 'multiple codes' groups are registered in the table for synchronal purposes, merely they were not central to the study hypotheses and were therefore not enclosed in subsequent analyses. Chi-square analyses were conducted for each of the 4 story types to determine if observed frequencies differed from a chance pattern of responding. Observed frequencies differed importantly from casual patterns in all Little Jo stories (evildoing situation, lie: χ² ₍₁₎ = 58.70, p < .001; transgression situation, Sojourner Truth: χ² ₍₂₎ = 48.44, p < .001; politeness site, lie: χ² ₍₂₎ = 98.62, p < .001; and politeness situation, truth: χ² ₍₂₎ = 79.91, p < .001). Likelihood ratio chi-square analyses were also conducted to determine whether frequencies of coded responses differed according to child old age. Age was not related coded reply types for the transgression stories or for the politeness story in which the truth was told. Psychological feature inferences did differ significantly crossways age groups in the civility story in which a Trygve Halvden Lie was told, χ² ₍₄₎ = 23.92, p < .001, much that the likelihood of referring to an shock on others increased with eld.

Table 1

Responses to the Motivational Inferences Measure in Study 1, by Coded Group

Coded group	Evildoing situation		Civility situation
	Told lie	Told truth	Told lie	Told truth
N	103	102	103	103
Veracity	12 (11.65%)	27 (26.47%)	15 (14.56%)	69 (66.99%)
Impact happening others	0	7 (6.86%)	78 (75.73%)	5 (4.85%)
Impingement on ego	89 (86.41%)	62 (60.78%)	4 (3.88%)	15 (14.56%)
Other	1 (.97%)	6 (5.88%)	5 (4.85%)	14 (13.60%)
Multiple codes	1 (.97%)	0	1 (.97%)	0

As can be seen from Table 1, when protagonists told lies in politeness situations, three-fourths of the children referred to the impact connected others whereas less than 5 percent adjusted happening the impact on the somebody. Piece at the least 60 pct of children in apiece age group referred to the impact on others, the significant age effect also indicated that responses in this class accrued with age (60 percent of 7-year-olds, 84.38 percent of 9-year-olds, and 100 per centum of 11-year-olds gave responses classified in this category). It is likewise interesting to note that all of the responses (N = 4) that referred to the impact on the self were generated by the youngest cohort. Children's inferred motivations in the verity-telling niceness site showed a real different pattern: a focus on veracity was Thomas More frequent than all another categories combined.

In the evildoing situations, children tended to make very different inferences about the motivation of protagonists: references to the impact on the self were more common than all other categories combined for both the lie-telling and the truth-notification contexts. In the lie-telling post, the vast majority of children assumed that the lie was told to avoid acquiring into trouble. In the trueness-telling billet, these self-oriented statements often consisted of motives to avoid getting in trouble for lying and to invalidate guilt surgery unusual negative feelings associated with lie-weighty.

Discussion

Analyses of the appraising rating measure suggest that children made a clearer distinction between lying and truth-telling in the transgression situations than in the politeness situations. These findings are consistent with prior research (Bussey, 1999; Peterson et Camellia State., 1983) and provide further evidence that children differentiate between different types of lies when making ethical evaluations. The want of age effects too replicates the findings of Bussey (1999) and of Peterson et al. (1983). However, there were eld effects in children's inferred motives, with experient children to a greater extent credible than jr. children to focus along the impact on others when logical thinking close to a protagonist's motives for mendacious in politeness contexts. Nevertheless, even for youngest children, responses referring to the impact connected others predominated, and references to the impact on the self were rare.

It is interesting to note that in niceness contexts, 15 percent of participants mentioned self-interest motives for telling the verity. Again, although researchers have identified reasons it power be in children's self-involvement to dwell much contexts (Saarni &ere; von Salisch, 1993; Zeman & Shipman, 1996), there has been short accent on the shipway in which telling the accuracy power apply positive implications for the self. For children who responded in that agency, the particular concern appeared to be with the impact of the teacher's early behavior toward the protagonist. For example, a typical reply in this category was, 'If he doesn't like it and if he aforementioned he did like it, his instructor power give him another, and he didn't want another one'.

Work 2

Study 2 focused on how children would explain evaluative ratings. Although many studies on children's reasoning about lying have included evaluative ratings, few have systematically examined which factors children rive on when making such ratings. Unmatchable interrogative sentence was whether children would imag the Lapp issues as conspicuous when they are making evaluative ratings vs. when they are making inferences about motives. For lesson, participants in Study 1 tended to explicate motives for mendacious in politeness contexts in relation to the interests of others, and we wanted to examine whether children would also view the interests of others to be near prominent when they explained their appraising ratings. A relevant question was whether the types of entropy that children take for about related when making evaluative ratings would differ as a officiate of truthfulness of the financial statement, and the situational context (i.e., politeness vs. transgression).

Other question concerned whether the evaluative ratings would be associated with any individual differences that might be seen in the explanations. We anticipated that children WHO focused on concerns about others would rate lie i-telling in politeness contexts more favorably than would children who focused on the truthfulness of the statement.

Method

Participants

Participants were 78 children (34 boys and 44 girls) in a 7-year-old group (N = 33, M = 7 years 6 months, chain of mountains 6 years 10 months to 8 years 1 calendar month), a 9-year-old group (N = 26, M = 9 eld 6 months, graze 8 years 9 months to 10 years 2 months), and an 11-yr-old group (N = 19, M = 11 years 5 months, range 10 years 10 months to 12 long time 2 months). Participants were recruited from elementary schools attended past children from diverse economic backgrounds. This sample was 47.4 percentage White, 2.6 percent Asian American, 33.3 percent Latino American, 15.4 percent African-American, and 1.3 percent Native American operating theatre Pacific Islander.

No of the participants had been reliable as divide of Study 1. Approximately participants were recruited from different classrooms in the same schools as in Study 1, and others were recruited from different schools in the same districts. As in Study 1, schools changed substantially in the SES background of children's families. The overall rate of participation was about 50 pct.

Procedure

The stories and the general procedure were the same atomic number 3 in Study 1. A in Analyze 1, participants were asked to make evaluative ratings of the protagonists' statements using the same seven-point surmount. However, rather than being asked to make a psychological feature inference about the agonist's reception, participants in Study 2 explained why they had given positive, unfavourable, or neutral ratings of apiece of the protagonists' true or false statements (see Lee, Xu, Fu, Cameron, &adenylic acid; Chen, 2001, concerning these types of explanations in modesty contexts). For instance, in the version of the story in which a frien (Mark) lied about liking an apple apt to him by a teacher, a player who responded that Mark's response was very bad was asked, 'Why act up you think what Mark aforesaid was very bad?' Although this addressed a different question than the motivational inferences measure in Study 1, we found that the two studies generated open-ended responses that related to the same gross underlying themes, and consequently, the same steganography system was put-upon. For Study 2, Cohen's Kappas averaged .87 (niceness story, truth = .79; politeness story, lie = .92; evildoing story, truth = .81; transgression story, lie = .97).

Results

Critical Ratings

As in Study 1, we conducted a 3 (age: 7, 9, 11) by 2 (sexuality: male, pistillate) by 2 (post: niceness, evildoing) past 2 (decision: truth, lie) ANOVA, with age and gender as between-subjects factors and situation and decisiveness as within-subjects factors. As in Study 1, main personal effects of situation and determination were significant: F (1, 72) = 8.04, p < .01, η_p ² = .10 and F (1, 72) = 91.78, p < .001, η_p ² = .56, respectively. Again, these main effects were qualified by a significant interaction between state of affairs and decision, F (1, 72) = 110.88, p < .001, η_p ² = .61, which is depicted in Figure 2. On average, children successful more neutralised critical ratings of politeness stories and more extreme evaluative ratings of transgression stories, with importantly large differences for transgression stories than for politeness stories. In the evildoing situation, children evaluated telling a lie (M = −2.32, SD = 1.03) negatively and telling the truth (M = +1.47, SD = 1.73) positively. In the politeness situation, however, children judged mendacious (M = −.08, South Dakota = 1.63) and recounting the truth (M = +.26, SD = 1.73) to be equally neutral. No other main effects OR interactions were statistically significant.

Average Evaluative Ratings aside Situation Type and Lie Decision in Study 2 (very, very bad = −3; very, precise good = 3).

Explanations

Frequencies of children's coded responses to the explanation question are presented in Table 2. The 'other' and 'multiple codes' groups are registered in the table for descriptive purposes, simply they were not central to the study hypotheses and were therefore not included in subsequent analyses. Chi-square analyses were conducted for each of the four story types to determine if the patterns of observed frequencies differed from a chance pattern of responding. Observed frequencies differed signifi-cantly from bump patterns in all quaternary stories (transgression situation, Lie: χ² ₍₂₎ = 89.93, p < .001; transgression situation, truth: χ² ₍₂₎ = 95.49, p < .001; politeness office, lie: χ² ₍₁₎ = 8.96, p = .003; politeness situation, truth: χ² ₍₂₎ = 47.16, p < .001). Likelihood ratio chi-square analyses were also conducted to ascertain whether frequencies of coded responses differed according to maturat; age was not significantly affiliated coded explanations in any of the stories.

Table 2

Responses to the Explanations Measure in Subject 2, by Coded Group

Coded group	Transgression situation		Niceness plac
	Told lie	Told truth	Told lie	Told truth
N	78	78	78	78
Veracity	54 (69.23%)	60 (76.92%)	38 (48.72%)	43 (55.13%)
Touch on on others	2 (2.56%)	2 (2.56%)	16 (20.15%)	11 (14.10%)
Impact happening self	3 (3.85%)	5 (6.41%)	0	3 (3.85%)
Other	11 (14.10%)	11 (14.10%)	12 (15.38%)	20 (25.64%)
Multiple codes	8 (10.26%)	0	12 (15.38%)	1 (1.28%)

The modal reception category for all stories involved reference to the veracity of the statement. In politeness situations, children were more likely to justify their responses in terms of the impact on others than in transgression situations, peculiarly when a lie was told. At long last, children were more likely to provide explanations that fit double coding categories in the lie-telling contexts than in the truth-telling contexts.

Recounting between Explanations and Appraising Ratings

Also of interest was whether children who centered on the wallop on others mightiness evaluate a protagonist's lies in niceness contexts Sir Thomas More positively, and truth-persuasive more negatively, than would children WHO did non share this focus. To examine this outcome, analyses were conducted to mold whether children's evaluative ratings of the protagonists' statements differed as a function of their answers to the explanation call into question. To preserve statistical unity, only coded explanations provided by 10 or more children were included in analysis; these included reference to the veracity of the narration operating room a focus on the impact happening others (see Put over 2). Children whose explanations were coded into multiple categories were not included in the analysis; because their responses were amorphous, there was no room to determine which categories were to a greater extent OR less important to them. A total of four one-way ANOVAs were conducted, one for each situation type (politeness, transgression) away decision (truth, lie) grouping. There were nobelium significant main effects of geezerhoo or gender or any interactions involving the deuce; consequently, neither will be discussed further.

Evaluative ratings differed as a function of coded explanations but in the politeness stories; lie: F (1, 48) = 22.77, p < .001, η_p ² = .20; truth: F (1, 48) = 12.03, p = .001, η_p ² = .32. Figure 3 depicts median story evaluative ratings for both niceness stories, hierarchal by explanation group. When a lie was told, children who focused on the impact along others evaluated the white lie significantly to a greater extent positively than did children who focused along the veracity of the statement. When the truth was told, children who justified their responses aside focusing on the veracity of the protagonist's statement evaluated the protagonist's actions significantly much favorably than did children who focused on the protagonist's impact on others.

For Niceness Stories in Subject field 2, the Coitus between Children's Evaluative Ratings of Protagonists' Statement (very, very unfit = −3; very, very good = 3) and Their Explanations.

Discussion

Results from analyses of the evaluative evaluation measure replicated findings from Field 1, which indicated that children made a clearer distinction 'tween lying and truth-telling in transgression situations than in politeness situations, and showed no age-cognate patterns. Unlike Study 1, however, there was no significant effect of participant sexuality.

When participants provided explanations for their responses, they most frequently referred to the veracity of the statement in all of the situations. In contrast, responses in this category had been relatively infrequent in Study 1, in which participants had been asked to make psychological feature inferences rather than to excuse their critical ratings. This suggests that children have a polar focus when they consider the motives for statements than when they reckon why statements are good Oregon bad.

Although explanations referring to the veracity of statements were the most common, there was substantial variability in the types of responses, particularly in politeness contexts. Analyses of responses to civility stories indicated that they systematically attendant children's appraising ratings. Specifically, children who focused on the impact on others in their explanations were more likely to view lie-telling in politeness contexts as 'good' and accuracy-apprisal in politeness contexts arsenic 'bad'.

General Discussion

In the ever-present research, participants were asked to reason about a go under of politeness stories in which a protagonist received a small gift from a teacher (an Malus pumila or a slice of cake) that he operating room she did not like and either told the teacher the accuracy about disliking it or falsely claimed to like it. For comparison purposes, transgressions stories were also presented, in which protagonists damaged library books and either told the instructor the truth about the transgression or falsely denied it.

In both studies, children between the ages of 7 and 11 evaluated lie- and verity-telling really differently in civility situations Eastern Samoa compared to evildoing situations (Bussey, 1999; Peterson et al., 1983). In evildoing contexts, participants across all ages assessed truth-telling favourably and lie-telling unfavorably. In counterpoint, in politeness contexts, participants' median ratings for both verity-telling and lie-telling were more neutral. These results replicate prior research demonstrating that children brawl not consider all lies to be equivalent (Bussey, 1999; Perkins & Turiel, 2007; Peterson et alii., 1983; Walper &A; Valtin, 1992) and are reproducible with a wide-cut body of research demonstrating context sensitivity in the way children earn evaluative judgments (see Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 2002).

Results of Study 1 indicate that in wound of evidence that children in this maturat range are alive that lie-telling in politeness contexts often serves their self-interest (Zeman &adenosine monophosphate; Shipman, 1996), they rarely concentrate on this ingredien when making inferences about the motives of others. Alternatively, their firsthand focus is on how the statement will impact others. One might argue that participants viewed the protagonists' concern with the teachers' feelings as motivated by soul-interest, given that the teachers' feelings might have implications for how the protagonists would be treated in future interactions. However, at the very to the lowest degree, the present data suggest that children view concern for the feelings of others as a central proximal factor motivating lie-telling behavior in these situations. This may atomic number 4 because by the age of seven, children are already aware of the encroachment of lying and truth-telling in gift-handsome situations (see Broomfield et alia., 2002). This early awareness that May result from direct and indirect instruction about this issue is expected to get down in early childhood (see Lewis, 1993). For example, a parent Crataegus oxycantha tell a child to pelt negative feelings about undesirable gifts when in the presence of gift givers, operating theater a child might observe a parent expressing positive feelings just about a gift when the empower giver is salute, and harmful feelings later. However, our results besides bring home the bacon evidence that children's beliefs about motives in these contexts are still nonindustrial during the primary school geezerhood, as was evident from the age-correlate change in children's tendency to revolve around the bear on of others, which constituted 60 percent of responses from the youngest group and 100 percent from the oldest group. This related to change parallels changes described by Kohlberg (1964) in which children shift from a focus connected satisfying one's ain needs in Stage 2 to a business organisation with pleasing others in Stage 3.

In the evildoing situations, children made same various types of inferences about the motives of the protagonists than they did in the politeness situations. Notably, careless of whether protagonists told lies OR the truth in evildoing situations, participants tended to assume that the statements were driven by self-occupy. Given that even before they reach school senesce, children a great deal lie around their personal transgressions to avoid getting caught (see Lewis, 1993), it is non astonishing that participants assumed that individuals who lied about their personal transgressions had done so to avoid getting into trouble. Perhaps much surprising is that participants tended to infer person-pursuit as the nigh probably motivation for protagonists who told the true statement in the transgression contexts, which contrasts with the findings from the politeness contexts. In discussing these motives, some participants mentioned the possibility that protagonists would want to debar getting into trouble for lying, and others recommended that the protagonists told the the true to avoid feeling frightful about lying. These different types of self-interest explanations also raise the gunpoint that not completely actions that are consistent with one's interests reflect an every bit sophisticated virtuous judgment. It will be particularly important to further explore children's understanding of anticipated disinclined social consequences, much as guilty conscience, as potential motivators in lie-telling and truth-notification contexts, given the theoretical importance of emotions in elite group info processing (imag Lemerise &ere; Arsenio, 2000), and grounds that over the elementary school years children become increasingly sophisticated in their understanding of the emotional consequences of righteous transgressions (Arsenio & Kramer, 1992).

The results of Study 2 march that there are single differences in the factors that children focus on when making evaluative ratings in white lie contexts and that what children focus on consistently relates to how positively or negatively they pass judgment rest-telling and truth-telling in these contexts. This final result suggests that although children's mean ratings were near the achromatic taper off, it does not indicate that they felt indifferent to lie-telling and Truth-telling in overall, merely instead that some viewed IT as Sir Thomas More appropriate to tell the truth and others viewed it A more appropriate to lie, and that the preferred option depended upon which aspect of politeness situations they focused happening. The clearest pattern was that when participants focused on the truth value of the statements, they evaluated truth-telling more favorably, but when they focused on the emotional impact of the program line they evaluated lie-telling as more favorable.

Limitations and Future Directions

One limit to the present research is that children were lone asked about stories in which protagonists were interacting with teachers. It bequeath be important for time to come research to shape how these results mightiness generalize to some other relationships, in light of evidence that easy school-aged children's rational about what people say about themselves is conscious to the nature of the attached audience (Banerjee, 2002; Watling & Banerjee, 2007) and that children are aware that individuals can regulate their emotions in different ways when interacting with different populate (Zeman &ere; Shipman, 1996). Children may also regard the nature of the relationship between individuals who are communication inside politeness contexts, especially formerly children appreciate that in close relationships, on that point tends to be a stronger motivation to protect the feelings of others (see Saarni & von Salisch, 1993).

It should be renowned that children's responses to undetermined questions were not probed for further explanations. Much probing could have allowed us to more precisely settle how children were abstract thought about these situations, particularly in cases in which participants used spacious evaluative terms such as 'precise' or 'bad' without providing more careful explanations. Information technology too could have allowed us to look more intimately at more nuanced old age-related changes, including possible changes in the extent to which children make moral evaluations based on how an individual's action affects others that they wish near (Kohlberg, 1964). It will also be distinguished for future researchers to explicitly ask children to try to generate octuple responses. It may be that elder children would provide a richer mixture of rationales, as they come out to do when explaining non-communicatory behavior in these contexts (see Saarni & von Salisch, 1993).

Some other direction for future research is to analyze how children reasonableness about lie i-telling and truth-tattle when they are in person involved. For instance, one might investigate children's abstract thought about whether it would be appropriate for them to belong to others and for others to lie to them. This approach would be useful in light of prior research suggesting that children arrange not necessarily apply equivalent judgments to themselves and to others (see Smetana, 2006). For exemplar, children run to view transgressions that they put as more acceptable than those committed by others (Slomkowski & Killen, 1992).

A final possibility is to examine children's abstract thought some much of the nuances involved in communicating inside politeness contexts. In the present enquiry, children were presented with situations in which individuals either told a blunt truth Oregon successful an obviously inaccurate statement. It may be that participants' evaluative ratings were affected by their awareness of new possible responses that one might make in these types of situations. Indeed, approximately participants made reference to alternatives that involved hedge operating room equivocalness, such as a child who said, 'She should have at least said she didn't really like IT, but it's pretty good'. Such responses may be attempts to at the same time avoid lying overtly and causing hurt feelings, and could reflect other attempts to reserve the target of the statement to choose which interpretation He or she wishes to trust (DePaulo & Gong, 1996). This phenomenon could be investigated past asking children to commend appropriate responses in politeness situations or to evaluate a wider range of possible responses.

Conclusions

The present tense research shows that 7–11-year-old children tend to focus happening the feelings of others when making inferences about what motivates mass to tell lies in politeness contexts and that there are individual differences in how children evaluate accuracy- and lie-telling that relate to whether they run to focus on the value of truthfulness vs. the value of headache for the feelings of others. The results too point to new directions for upcoming research connected children's reasoning in these contexts, including how they conceive about the thirster-term consequences of lie-telling and truth-telling, and the extent to which children of different ages endeavour to deal conflicts that are caused by the expectation to be both honest and polite.

Acknowledgments

This inquiry was supported by a grant from NICHD (R01 HD048962-01). We give thanks Brian Compton for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript, Christine Schneiber and Nikki Paglione for managing data collection, and Ye Xu and Tsz Wai Chow for coding the data.

Vermiform process

A total of 94 children (46 boys and 48 girls) participated in a preliminary branch of knowledg premeditated to assess whether participants would classify lie-telling in politeness contexts as 'lies' and truth-telling in these contexts arsenic 'truth.' Participants included a 7-year-old chemical group (N = 32, M = 7 age 6 months, vagabon 6 years 11 months to 8 years 2 months), a 9-year-old group (N = 33, M = 9 twelvemonth 7 month, range 8 year 9 month to 10 year 2 month), and an 11-year-old chemical group (N = 29, M = 11 years 4 months, roam 10 years 10 months to 12 years 2 months).

Children's classifications of each of the four story conditions are given in Table A1. As can be seen from the table, children circumscribed providing inaccurate information in civility situations as lie-telling, and providing accurate information as truth-notification, although they did not consider the distinction 'tween lying and telling the trueness to be quite as clear as in the evildoing situations. Specifically, in the politeness situation, they identified an unfaithful statement as a lie 84.04% of the time and an accurate statement as the truth 85.11% of the time; in the transgression situation these Book of Numbers were 100% and 95.71%, respectively.

Table A1

Categorizations of Protagonists' Actions: Frequencies and Percentages of Total Responses

Categorization	Transgression situation		Politeness situation
	Told lie	Told true statement	Told lie	Told truth
Lie	94 (100%)	2 (2.13%)	79 (84.04%)	6 (6.38%)
Truth	0	90 (95.74%)	5 (5.32%)	80 (85.11%)
Something other	0	2 (2.13%)	10 (10.64%)	8 (8.51%)

Overall, the results of children's classifications are rational with previous research suggesting that children inside this age range make a clear distinction between Trygve Halvden Lie-telling and the true-informatory in niceness situations Eastern Samoa well as transgression situations (Bussey, 1999; Peterson et al., 1983). This suggests that children in the targeted age range are likely to sympathise the conflict 'tween being polite and telling the trueness that is posed in politeness contexts, and that they do not simply avoid the question by shaping truthfulness in price of the most prosocial action to take.

Footnotes

¹The coding scheme was first developed for use in Study 1. The primary coder had encompassing have with secret writing social cognitive data, and the secondary coder was a trained undergrad. Both coders were blue-blind to the study hypotheses. Because we were especially concerned in whether motivations would concentrate on self vs. others, we asked the primary coil coder to start with these categories so to look for other general themes that emerged, supported a revaluation of approximately 25 percent of the data. The coder worked out the categories reported present, in accession to a detailed circle of subcategories (e.g., categories that coded the type of impact to the soul or others). The coder coded all of the information so trained the secondary computer programmer on a small subset (approximately 15 percent) of the data. Because the primary and auxiliary coder could not hit a high tied of reliability along a careful coding scheme, and because many of the categories were seldom used, subcategories were eliminated. The primary computer programmer then recoded the information and retrained the secondary software engineer on a small subset of the information. In instances in which responses fit into more one family, multiple codes were allowed.

Contributor Information

Gail D. Heyman, University of California, San Diego.

Monica A. Sweet, University of California, San Diego.

Kang Lee, University of Toronto.

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Three Situations Where Lying Is a Good Idea

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2975356/

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