Child lying refers to children displaying varying degrees of deceptive behavior in a social situation. Children have been observed lying as early as age 2 and their deceptive skills increase sharply as they mature into adolescence. Children who have advanced cognitive skills for their age have an increased tendency to begin lying at earlier ages. Children may lie for various reasons including, but not limited to, escaping punishment for not obeying a task (such as eating a cookie when told not to), through observation of their parents and peers, or lacking a comprehensive understanding of basic morality.
Well known psychologists such as Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg placed particular importance on the cognitive development of children.Sigelman, Carol K., and Elizabeth A. Rider. Life Span Human Development. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2012. Print. Moral reasoning is a function of increased cognitive abilities in the brain in conjunction with socialization within the established moral codes of a culture and society. Children's cognitive abilities increase as the brain develops and matures and gains more experience interacting with their surrounding environment. Research and experimentation has validated and expanded upon the premise of cognitive functioning maintaining a leading role as the mechanism that drives the fabric of human behavior.
Background
Morality
Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are "good" (or right) and those that are "bad" (or wrong). The philosophy of morality is ethics. A moral code is a system of morality (according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness" or "rightness." Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e. opposition to that which is good or right), while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or principles.Johnstone, Megan-Jane (2008). Bioethics: A Nursing Perspective. Elsevier Health Sciences. pp. 102–103. .Superson, Anita (2009). The Moral Skeptic. Oxford University Press. pp. 127–159. ."Amorality". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2010-06-18. "having no moral standards, restraints, or principles; unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong"
What is a lie?
A lie is a false statement to a person or group made by another person or group who knows it is not the whole truth, intentionally. A fabrication is a lie told when someone submits a statement as truth without knowing for certain whether or not it actually is true. A half-truth is a deceptive statement that includes some element of truth. The statement might be partly true, the statement may be totally true but only part of the whole truth, or it may employ some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, or double meaning, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade, blame, or misrepresent the truth. An honest lie (or confabulation) is defined by verbal statements or actions that inaccurately describe history, background, and present situations. Perjury is the act of lying or making verifiably false statements on a material matter under oath or affirmation in a court of law, or in any of various sworn statements in writing. White lies are minor lies which could be considered to be harmless, or even beneficial, in the long term.
Child development
Child development refers to the biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescence, as the individual progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy. It is a continuous process, has a predictable sequence yet having a unique course for every child. It does not progress at the same rate and each stage is affected by the preceding types of development. Because these developmental changes may be strongly influenced by genetic factors and events during prenatal life, genetics and prenatal development are usually included as part of the study of child development. Related terms include developmental psychology, referring to development throughout the lifespan, and pediatrics, the branch of medicine relating to the care of children. Developmental change may occur as a result of genetically-controlled processes, or as a result of environmental factors and learning, but most commonly involves an interaction between the two. It may also occur as a result of human nature and our ability to learn from our environment.
Experiments
Evans and Lee
Apparatus and methods
Evans and Lee investigated the importance of lying in 2- to 3-year-old children. This was the first experiment to examine the development of a child's early spontaneous verbal deceptive behaviors and how their cognitive skills relate. Forty-one 2-year-olds and twenty-four 3-year-olds participated in the experiment. In this experiment, the children performed tasks that tested their cognitive abilities for 5 different executive functioning skills. For every correct task the children performed, they would receive a point.
A verbal ability measure was created for the parents of the children. The parents were given a list of simple words (e.g. dog, cat) and were asked if they had ever heard their child say those words. A reverse categorization trial, in which children were first asked to sort all of the big blocks into a big bucket and all of the little blocks into a small bucket. Then, twelve reverse categorization trials were performed where the child was asked to sort the big blocks into the little bucket and the little blocks into the big bucket. A shape stroop trial, in which children were shown three different cards that each had a large and small image of a fruit on them. The experimenter then labeled each of the sizes of the fruits and asked the children to name each fruit. Then, the children were given three trials where the card showed two large fruits with a smaller fruit embedded in the center and the children were asked to point at the small fruit. A gift delay condition, in which the experimenter presented the children with a bag and told the children not to peek inside of it while they went to get a bow. There were hidden cameras set up to tape the children's reactions while the experimenter was away. After three minutes (or until the child had peeked into the bag) the experimenter came back into the room. A deception task, in which children were asked to play a guessing game where a toy was placed on a table behind them and the experimenter made a noise that was associated with the toy in some way and the children were asked to guess what the toy was. There were three toys that the children had to guess and after the children guessed the first two toys correctly, the experimenter told the children that the next toy was on the table and played the noise while they went and got a storybook that was in a toy box in front of the children. The noise that the experimenter played though was not related to this last toy, so there would be no possible way for the children to guess the toy correctly without peeking. While the experimenter had their back towards the children, a hidden camera was there to check if the children had peeked or not. After a minute of having their back to the children, the experimenter shut the toy box loudly to signify to the children that they were going to turn back around and came back to the table and uncovered the toy. In order to figure out if the children would tell the truth or lie about peeking at the toy, the experimenter asked, “While I was getting the book, did you turn around and peek at the toy?” The children who had peeked and admitted to their act were classified as confessors and the children who had peeked and lied about it were classified as lie tellers. Then when the experimenter asked what the toy was, if children said the name of the toy correctly, they were classified as revealers. If children pretended that they did not know what the toy was or guessed a different toy, they were classified as concealers.
Results
80% of the children peeked at the toy. Out of the children who had peeked in the experiment, 40% lied about having peeked. Out of the children who lied about having peeked at the toy, 76% of the children were revealers, 14% of the children were concealers, and the remaining 10% claimed they did not know what the toy was.
For the different tasks, children were given a point for each task they had completed correctly. The children's scores were then used at the end of the experiment to see if there was any relation to lie-telling and the children's executive functions. The children that completed more tasks correctly received higher scores and had higher executive functioning skills. It was shown that the majority of three-year-olds lied and only a quarter of two-year-olds lied. There was proportional relationship between higher executive functioning scores and an increased tendency for children to lie. The 3-year-old children received higher scores overall and lied more.
Talwar, Lee, Bala, and Lindsay
Apparatus and methods for experiment one
Talwar, Lee, Bala, and LindsayTalwar, Victoria, Kang Lee, Nicholas Bala, and R.C.L. Lindsay. "Children's Lie Telling to Conceal a Parent's Transgression: Legal Implications." Law and Human Behavior (2004): 411-35. Web. performed two experiments. In the first experiment, 137 children between the ages of 3 and 11 (and for the most part, the children's parents) were used for the study. One child and one parent were brought into a room with a puppet, in which a "Do Not Touch" sign was displayed beside it. The parents (as instructed by the experimenters before entering the room and unbeknownst to the child) were told to pick up the puppet and exclaim "I have broken the puppet!" and point to the "Do Not Touch" sign. The parents were instructed to have the children lie for them by not letting the experimenters know that they had touched the puppet. After the child agreed not to tell on the parent, they were then asked a series of questions by the experimenter. There were three types of conditions for the question task:
A parent absent condition, in which the parents left the room while the experimenter asked the questions. A parent present condition, in which the parents were in the room with their backs away from the child and the experimenter. A child absent condition, in which the child was not in the room when the parent broke the puppet, however the experimenter would return the child to the room and leave. The parent would then admit to the child what they had done and prompt the child to lie to the experimenter upon his return.
The children were asked two individual sets of questions. The first set focused primarily on the actual situation. They were asked if they had broken the puppet, if their parents had broken it, or if someone else came into the room and broke the puppet. A second experimenter asked a different set of questions that was more hypothetically based than the first set. Their questions were designed to simulate a court competence examination. The children were told a story and asked questions about it to determine their capacity to comprehend moral values. They were also given a hypothetical situation in which the child was told by their parents not to climb a tree. Hypothetically the child climbed the tree anyway and was asked if they would lie to their parents.
All of the children were told the definition of a "promise" and then asked to promise to tell the truth for the next set of questioning. The children were then asked the same questions they heard in the first set about the broken puppet. The children and parents were debriefed after the questions were finished.