Lying and Truth-telling in Children: from Concept to Action

Overview

Journal Child Dev

Specialty Pediatrics

Date 2010 May 5

PMID 20438462

Citations 16

Authors

Fen Xu

Xuehua Bao

Genyue Fu

Victoria Talwar

Kang Lee

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Although there has been extensive research on children's moral knowledge about lying and truth-telling and their actual lie- or truth-telling behaviors, research to examine the relation between these two is extremely rare. This study examined one hundred and twenty 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds' moral understanding of lies and their actual lying behaviors in a politeness situation. Results revealed that as age increased, children increasingly evaluated others' lying in politeness situations less negatively and were more inclined to tell lies in such situations themselves. Contrary to previous findings, children's sociomoral knowledge about lying was significantly related to their actual behaviors, particularly when children's rationales underlying their moral judgments were consistent with their motives for actual lie- or truth-telling in the politeness situation.

Citing Articles

The influence of mutually beneficial and self-beneficial situations on the lying behavior and cognition of Chinese 4- to 5-year-old children.

Kang D, Zhang Y, Xu X, Li J Front Psychol. 2025; 16:1513033.

PMID: 39950069 PMC: 11822772. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1513033.

Testing Causal Effects of Empathy on Children's Prosociality in Politeness Dilemmas - An Intervention Study.

Thiede N, Stengelin R, Seibold A, Haun D Open Mind (Camb). 2023; 7:691-710.

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Other-Benefiting Lying Behavior in Preschool Children and Its Relation to Theory of Mind and Empathy.

Zhang X, Wang S, Wang Y, Zhao Q, Shang S, Sai L Behav Sci (Basel). 2023; 13(8).

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Older adults are more approving of blunt honesty than younger adults: a cross-cultural study.

OConnor A, Kea D, Li Q, Ding X, Evans A Curr Psychol. 2022; :1-14.

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Understanding Social Display Rules: Using One Person's Emotional Expressions to Infer the Desires of Another.

Wu Y, Schulz L Child Dev. 2019; 91(5):1786-1799.

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