The Influence of Different Types of Lies and Moral Judgments on Children’s Lying Ability
by Enise Akay.
Enise Akay is a senior year psychology student at Bilkent University.
Since the late 1800s, research on lying has become a broad and current interest in developmental psychology, starting with the publishing of Charles Darwin’s scientific paper in which the core knowledge of deception based on his observations in young children is discussed (Lee, 2013). Darwin’s paper was followed by Piaget’s studies that mainly focused on the children’s moral judgments of lying and their evaluations in a conscious state of mind. According to Piaget (1932; 1965), significant points in lying are the definition of a lie, responsibility as a function of lie’s content, and its consequences. He also states that although children have difficulty in differentiating the truth and concepts of a lie, as they gradually develop and gain various abilities, they become better at distinguishing these two concepts– truth and lie.
So, the reason behind the interest in lying is that research on lying enables us to observe many cognitive aspects of development in children. One aspect of development is that lying demonstrates the presence of theory of mind ability; which is the understanding that others can have different desires, opinions, or mental states (Miller, 2016). Thus, the child should understand that others’ and his/her own mental state might be different than each other. Therefore, the child should be able to create a false belief in the mind of others and be willing to deceive others or conceal their own intention to lie successfully (Lee, 2013; Chandler et al, 1989; Polak & Harris 1999). In order to do that, a child has to develop a theory of mind ability.
The second aspect of development is that it demonstrates the increase in the child’s ability to understand culture-specific concepts, and his/her ability to behave in an appropriate manner (Turiel, 1983). This means that as children grow up and gain cognitive abilities and socially develop, they become able to understand expectations of the society; and how these expectations can change depending on the culture- so, being able to do this differentiation is another cognitive ability.
Finally, studies also show that inhibitory control and working memory are also significant cognitive abilities that influence lying (Carlson &Moses, 2001; Carlson et al. 2002). Since children have to suppress the feeling of telling the truth (which is inhibitory control); recall their transgressions to maintain a lie, and create consistency between statements, children have to use working memory and develop inhibitory control ability (Talwar & Lee, 2002a; Carlson et al., 1998, 2002).
Although these cognitive developments increase as the child grows up, that doesn’t mean that children do not lie in younger ages. Actually, they start lying approximately at three years of age (Fu et al, 2018). However, the emergence of lies differs according to the types of lies that children prefer to use. That means, children can start telling a specific type of lie earlier than other types, and vice versa.
According to Talwar and Lee (2008), primary lies that are aimed at protecting oneself or gaining a personal benefit emerge approximately 2–3 years of age. This means that it emerges earlier than other types of lies. On the other hand, children construct blue-lies later than self-benefiting lies or prosocial lies. The self-benefiting lies are told for the benefit of self which requires concealing transgression to gain a personal achievement (Fu, et al., 2018). This personal gain is usually a presentation of objects that attracts a child’s attention such as a toy or sticker. Prosocial lies are those that are usually told for politeness.
This means that the intention of the individual is not to harm the other person; in fact, it aims to help the person by concealing one’s intention (Xu, et al., 2010). For example, a child can lie about liking a gift when she receives an undesirable present, just to be polite. On the other hand, blue-lies are told for the benefit of their own group members- which means that they are highly culture-specific, and can be observed mostly in collectivistic cultures (Fu, et al., 2016). Even though lying requires using false statements, the intention of the child and the moral evaluation of the lie (whether they perceive the lie negatively or positively) is also important. In this review paper, three different types of lies including self-benefiting lies, prosocial lies, and blue lies; and their influences on children’s moral appropriateness judgments were investigated. Thus, the first discussion will be about children’s moral evaluations of lies followed by self-benefiting lies and prosocial lies; concluding with blue lies.
Children’s Moral Evaluation of Lies
Even though lying shows that children are able to create a false statement to deceive others, it is not clear how children perceive lies. Meaning, although the child prefers to lie in a given situation, he/she may not evaluate this act as morally acceptable; and their judgment can change depending on the content of a lie, the age of the children, culture that children is raised in, or the character of the child.
To measure children’s moral evaluation of lies, different stories that include both lies and truths are used. In these stories, protagonists lie for various reasons such as to hide transgression, gain a reward, or lying for a friend; and also tell truths for different situations too (Talwar, et al., 2008). Then, children are asked to answer questions that investigate whether what the protagonist did was good or bad, etc. This is done to obtain the moral judgment of children. According to Xu et al., (2010), children evaluate the stories that contain truth-telling in a positive manner whereas stories that contain lies are evaluated in a negative manner. Also, researchers indicate that this evaluation changes depending on the age of the children, suggesting that 7-year-olds evaluate blunt-truth telling significantly more positively (Xu, et al., 2010). Similarly, Fu et al. (2016) found that the oldest age group (17) in their study evaluates the blue-lies less negatively compared to younger age groups- which demonstrates the influence of age. Furthermore, according to Fu et al., (2007), Chinese children gave significantly less negative ratings to lying for a collective compared to Canadian children- which demonstrates the impact of culture on children’s moral judgments.
Prosocial Lies
Lies that are told for protecting others benefits are called “prosocial lies” (Talwar, Crossman, 2011). Such lies are usually told with the intention of helping or politeness. In order to tell prosocial lies, children have to understand the basic concepts of social and moral conventional rules so that they can act in a certain way. This means that children should be aware of the expectations of the society, and socially appropriate behaviors (Helwig &Turiel, 2002; Nucci & Turiel, 200). Therefore, these lies positively influence social conventions because they enable maintaining social relationships by being polite. Prosocial lies also require a theory of mind ability since the child has to realize differences in mental states, and has a desire to manipulate these mental states (Talwar, Crossman, 2011).
In order to measure prosocial lie telling behavior Reverse Rouge Task and Undesirable Gift Paradigm are mostly used. In the undesirable gift paradigm, a child is presented with an undesirable gift which is usually obtained by a Likert scale in which children state how much they like or dislike the gift by using numbers from 1 to 7 so that the least desirable gift can be obtained. Then, an experimenter asks the child whether s/he likes the gift or not, so that they can determine the child’s prosocial lying behavior. Results of a study in which disappointing gift paradigm was used show that 59% of the children tell prosocial lies by telling the experimenter that they like the gift which they did not (Williams et al., 2016). In the reverse rouge task, the experimenter asked whether she looks okay or not while having a lipstick mark on her face before the photoshoot (Talwar & Lee, 2002). Therefore, children have to decide to tell a prosocial lie or a truth. Results of Talwar & Lee (2002) study show that only 11% of the children tell prosocial lies when they think that the experimenter did not look okay. In this case, a child is able to understand that telling the truth might lead to negative consequences so s/he assumes that in order to avoid those negative consequences prosocial lies can be effective. Since prosocial lies also have the self-protective quality, it can develop earlier than it is expected because it prevents the embarrassment of other people and protects liars from potential negative reactions such as hate or exclusion (Talwar, Crossman, 2011).
Self-Benefiting Lies
Self-benefiting lies are told in order to gain a reward or a benefit. Even though there are previous studies that investigate self-protective lies in which children tell a lie to hide their transgression and gain a reward as a result of correctly identifying the name of a toy, these cannot be counted as self-benefiting lies since gaining a toy is the result of the process rather than the main concern (Fu, et al., 2018). Therefore, the ultimate concern pertaining to self-benefiting lie is achieving a personal gain (Fu, et al., 2018).
To assess self-benefiting lying behavior Temptation Resistance Paradigm, and Zero Sum Game are mostly used. Talwar and Lee (2008) used the modified version of the temptation-resistance paradigm in which children were asked to guess the name of a toy by listening to the sound of it, and they were instructed to turn their chairs so that they wouldn’t be able to see the toy. Then, the experimenter left the room by telling the child to not peek at the toy. When the experimenter came back, he asked the child whether s/he peeked or not in order to see if the child is lying or telling the truth (Talwar, & Lee, 2008). In the zero-sum game, children play a game with a confederate in which they have to hide the stickers because if the confederate finds the stickers s/he has a right to keep them- so whoever wins the game can keep the stickers (Fu, et al., 2018). After hiding them, the confederate asks the child where the toy is, and children either verbally deceive the confederate by responding in a way that confederate wouldn’t find the stickers or tell the truth (Fu, et al., 2018). According to Talwar and Lee (2008), results of the study in which the temptation-resistance paradigm was used revealed that 64% of peekers between 3–8 years of age lie to the experimenter by saying that they did not peek at the toy.
A similar study that also used the temptation-resistance paradigm demonstrated that 93.1% of peekers were between 6 and 11 years of age, and they lied about peeking behavior (Talwar et al., 2007). Neither of these studies found any significant age or sex difference. On the other hand, a study by Fu et al. (2018) that used zero-sum game revealed that 66% of children between 2 and 4 years of age do not lie in the zero-sum game.
Blue-Lies
Blue lies refer to creating false statements to the benefit of in-group members or for a collective (Fu, et al., 2016). Although many studies investigate the moral behaviors of children especially pertaining to harm or fairness, there was not sufficient research that investigates children’s patriotic behaviors which enable them to understand the blue lies in a better way (Haidt, 2007). Since these lies -blue lies- are told for collective or in-group members, the culture that the children are raised in is tremendously important. According to Fu et al. (2007), Chinese children evaluate lies for a collective in a more positive manner whereas they tend to evaluate lying for oneself more negatively. Canadian children, on the other hand, do the opposite. Therefore, it is not surprising that Chinese children evaluate lies by looking at their collective value (Bond, 1986). Bond (1986) explains the issue by pointing out the Chinese cultures’ tendency to use self-effacement and modesty whereas Canadian culture focuses more on self-esteem. This means that preference to use blue-lies can change depending on the culture or age. Moreover, the importance of collective value in Chinese culture might be a result of school policies since children are becoming a part of different group members called ‘young pioneer team’ in which they learn to organize their daily schedule or extracurricular activities as well as group loyalty and collective values (Fu et al., 2007; Fu et al., 2016 ).
In order to assess blue-lies, different stories in which the protagonist either lies for the benefit of a group interest or tells the truth against group interest were used by Fu et al., (2016). In these stories, there are three collective levels including class, school, and country to assess whether the nature of the group setting influences lying or not (Fu, et al., 2016). Results of the study that was conducted with Chinese children between 9 and 17 years of age shows that oldest children perceive blue-lies less negatively compared to younger children- which suggests that these lies are formed later since children constantly witness the positive influences of being a loyal group member and negative impact of disloyalty to the group in their daily lives (Fu et al., 2016). Moreover, they found that 9- and 11-year-olds gave more positive ratings to lying for class compared to lying for school or country; and 13-year-olds gave more positive ratings to lying for school whereas 17-year-olds were the least critical to lies that are told for the country which suggests that as age increases, children may become more group-oriented rather than feelings of belonging to one particular small group (Fu, et al., 2016).
Conclusion
In conclusion, lying ability predicts many significant cognitive developments in children. Although children start to tell lies approximately at 3 years of age, age is not sufficient to predict the emergence of lying ability since it also depends on the type of lies that children prefer to use (Fu et al, 2018). In this paper three types of lies –prosocial lies, self-benefiting lies, and blue-lies- and children’s moral evaluation of those lies are discussed. Self-benefiting lies which children prefer to use in order to gain a reward are assessed by the Temptation Resistance Paradigm, or Zero Sum Game (Talwar & Lee, 2008). On the other hand, lies that are told for the others’ benefit are called prosocial lies; and they are measured by Reverse Rouge Task and Undesirable Gift Paradigm (Talwar, Crossman, 2011). Similarly, blue-lies are told for the benefit of one’s own group and the influence of culture highly predicts the tendency to tell blue-lies (Fu, et al., 2016). Moreover, if a child lies in a specific context, it doesn’t mean that s/he judges the situation as morally appropriate. This moral appropriate judgment can change depending on the content of a lie, the age of the children, and the culture that children are raised in.
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