What motivates early lies? Deception in 2½- to 5-year-olds.

What motivates young children to produce early lies? A total of 217 2½- to 5-year-old children (Mage = 44.5 months, SD = 8.45; 54% girls; 61.7% White) from the southeastern United States were tested using a modified third-party transgression paradigm to examine the motivation behind their deception. Children were assigned to one of three conditions-baseline, self-motivated, or other-motivated condition-and their propensity to lie was captured through both verbal and nonverbal measures. Results show that children's early lies are primarily driven by a self-serving motivation. However, the motivation to lie diversifies by 4 years of age, when children begin to lie for both self-serving and other-serving motivations.

Relations among lie-telling self-efficacy, moral disengagement, and willingness to tell antisocial lies among children and adolescents.

This study examined a proposed model of relations among lie-telling self-efficacy, moral disengagement, and willingness to tell antisocial lies among children and adolescents. Children and adolescents aged 6 to 15 years completed measures of lie-telling self-efficacy and moral disengagement. They also read vignettes about a character committing a transgression and telling a lie to conceal the transgression. For each vignette, children and adolescents made a hypothetical decision about telling the truth or a lie if they were in the character's position to assess their lie-telling propensity. Lie-telling self-efficacy was related to willingness to tell lies, and this relationship was mediated by moral disengagement. Children and adolescents with higher lie-telling self-efficacy had higher moral disengagement, and those who had higher moral disengagement were more willing to tell antisocial lies. Overall, results support Bandura's social cognitive theory as a framework for understanding the psychosocial mechanisms underlying attitudes toward lie-telling. Moreover, these findings suggest that interventions to address problematic lie-telling behavior should focus on children's and adolescents' use of moral disengagement mechanisms.

Advanced theory of mind and children's prosocial lie-telling in middle childhood: A training study.

Children's advanced theory of mind (AToM) is concurrently associated with their prosocial lie-telling. However, the causal link between AToM and prosocial lie-telling has not yet been demonstrated. To address this gap, the current study adopted a training paradigm and investigated the role of AToM in children's prosocial lie-telling in middle childhood. A total of 66 9- and 10-year-old children who did not demonstrate any prosocial lie-telling in a disappointment gift paradigm at the baseline were recruited and randomly assigned to either the experimental group (n = 32) or an active control group (n = 34). The experimental group underwent a conversation-based training program of four sessions. The results showed significantly greater gains in AToM at the posttest for the experimental group children compared with the control group children, controlling for family socioeconomic status, children's literacy score, working memory, and inhibition. More important, the experimental group children were more likely to tell prosocial lies than the control group, even after controlling for the pretest AToM and other covariates. However, the training effects faded at the 6-month follow-up test after the training's completion. These findings provide the first evidence for the causal role of AToM in the development of prosocial lie-telling in middle childhood. The fade-out effect is discussed in the context of educational interventions.

Elementary school-aged children's perceptions of academic dishonesty: Definitions and moral evaluations of cheating behaviors in school.

A total of 76 children (Mage = 9 years 5 months, SD = 2.22 years) participated in a structured interview about their experiences with and knowledge of academic dishonesty. Overall, 27% of the sample reported having cheated in school. Most of these children were 10 to 13 years old, and the most prevalent form of cheating behavior reported was using forbidden materials during a test. Children's age group was a significant positive predictor of their reported cheating history; however, no significant difference was found between children's gender and engagement with cheating. Children's moral evaluations of cheating did not predict their reported cheating history, nor did children's parents' cheating history. Vignette type (cheating vs. non-cheating), age group, and the interaction between vignette type and age group were significant predictors of children's ability to accurately identify behaviors that constitute cheating. Children rated cheating behaviors as significantly less moral than non-cheating behaviors. Overall, the current results provide insight into what forms of cheating behavior children engage in at the elementary school-age level.

Longitudinal associations between lie evaluations and frequency: The moderating role of age.

While previous studies have demonstrated correlations between children and adolescents' evaluations of lies and lie-telling behaviors, the temporal order of these associations over time and changes across this developmental period remain unexamined. The current study examined longitudinal associations among children and adolescents' (N = 1128; Mage = 11.54, SD = 1.68, 49.80% male, and 83.6% white) evaluations of lies to parents for autonomy and lie-telling frequency to parents and friends. Autoregressive cross-lagged analysis revealed longitudinal associations moderated by age. Among children, evaluations of lies predicted greater lie-telling rates over time. Conversely, among adolescents, lie-telling frequency predicted lie evaluations over time, and evaluations predicted lying to parents over time. These results demonstrate a novel developmental pattern of the associations between moral evaluations of lies and lie-telling. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children and adolescents' evaluations of lie-telling and lie-telling frequency were associated longitudinally, but the direction of this association was moderated by age. Among children, more positive lie evaluations predicted greater lie-telling to parents and friends over time. Among adolescents, more positive lie evaluations predicted lying more often to parents over time; lying more to parents and friends predicted more positive evaluations over time. These findings suggest a novel developmental pattern regarding the temporal order of the association between evaluations of lie-telling and lie-telling frequency.

A Latent Profile Analysis of Lie-Telling to Parents and Friends during Adolescence.

Adolescence has been suggested to be a time of heightened lie-telling. The current study used a latent profile analysis to examine unique patterns of lie-telling for lies told to parents and friends during adolescence as well as whether adjustment indicators (relationship quality, depressive symptoms, social anxiety, externalizing problems) could be used to predict group membership. These patterns were examined among 828 10- to 16- year-olds (Mage = 12.39, SD = 1.69, 49.9% male). In both relationships, 5-profile solutions emerged; most adolescents reported very infrequent lie-telling, while a small portion (less than 5%) told high rates of lies. Adjustment indicators predicted group membership. Depressive symptoms, social anxiety, parent relationship quality, and externalizing problems predicted group membership for lying to parents. Depressive symptoms and social anxiety predicted group membership for lying to friends. The findings indicate that high rates of lie-telling found in previous research may be driven by a small number of prolific lie-tellers.

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.

Prosocial lie-telling in preschoolers: The impacts of ethnic background, parental factors, and perceived consequence for the partner.

This study explored prosocial lie-telling behavior in 4- to 5-year-old children from two ethnic groups: European Canadian (n = 49; excluding Eastern European Canadian) and Chinese Canadian (n = 45). Children completed an online experiment involving two real-life politeness situations. In the first situation, children were asked whether they thought someone with a red mark on their face looked okay for a photo or a Zoom party (Reverse Rouge Task). In the second situation, upon hearing the researcher's misconception about two pieces of artwork, children were asked whether they agreed with the researcher (Art Rating Task). Parents completed questionnaires that measured their levels of collectivist orientation and parenting styles. Contrary to our hypotheses, the likelihood of children telling a prosocial lie did not vary as a function of their ethnic group or the presence of a perceived consequence for the partner, nor was it predicated by parental collectivist orientation. Interestingly, prosocial liars were more likely to have authoritative parents, whereas blunt-truth tellers were more likely to have permissive parents. These findings have important implications for the ways in which certain parenting styles influence the socialization of positive politeness in children. In addition, the similar rates of prosocial lying across the two ethnic groups suggest that children who are born and raised in Canada may be much more alike than different in their prosocial lie-telling behavior, despite coming from different ethnic backgrounds.

A cross-cultural comparison of the relation between children's moral standards of honesty and their lie-telling behavior.

This study examined the relation between children's moral standards of honesty and their lie-telling behavior and the role that culture plays in this relation. In the study, 6- to 12-year-old Chinese and Northern American (Canadian and American) children underwent a behavioral paradigm where they had the opportunity to tell a lie about their performance to gain a benefit. The children then read vignettes where a character told lies to conceal a transgression committed to satisfy either a need or a desire and evaluated those lies. Northern American children were less likely to lie with age, but Chinese children did not demonstrate this trend. Lie-telling rates were higher for Chinese children than for Northern American children, but children were overall unlikely to tell a lie about their performance. Chinese children evaluated the lies in the vignettes more negatively than Northern American children. Children's moral standards of honesty were related to their lie-telling behavior, and the relation between children's moral standards and behavior did not differ by age in either culture. Overall, results suggest that culture influences how children make moral evaluations and decisions related to lie-telling and support the notion that children's moral standards and behavior are related. These findings suggest that socialization plays a central role in children's moral decision making related to honesty through helping children to develop moral standards related to honesty.

Longitudinal associations between impulsivity and lie-telling in childhood and adolescence.

Lie-telling and impulsivity levels peak during late childhood to early adolescence and have been suggested to be related. Heightened impulsivity may lead adolescents to lie in favor of short-term benefits without consideration for the potential consequences of deception. The present study assessed longitudinal relations between self-reported impulsivity and lie-telling frequency. Participants from a large-scale longitudinal study (N = 1148; Mage  = 11.55, SD = 1.69, 9-15 years at Time 1) reported on their impulsivity (Barratt Impulsiveness Scale) and their frequency of lie-telling to parents, to teachers, to friends, and about cheating across two time points 1 year apart. Cross-lagged path analysis revealed greater impulsivity was associated with more frequent lie-telling to parents, friends, and teachers, and about cheating over time. Our findings demonstrate the role of impulsivity in the development of lie-telling behaviors. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Impulsivity predicts lying across time in multiple contexts (to parents, friends, teachers, and about cheating). Previous research has demonstrated the role of top-down influences on lie-telling, but the current study suggests that bottom-up processes are also influential.