Younger and Older Adults' Health Lies to Close Others.

OBJECTIVES: Lying is a common social behavior; however, there is limited research on lying about health and if this differs into later life. This study sought to explore age differences in the frequency of and motivations behind telling health-related lies and if lying differs within romantic and parent/child relationships. METHODS: Younger (N = 158) and older adults (N = 149) reported how often they told general health-related lies, how often they lied about health to their romantic partner and parent or adult child, and why they told health lies. RESULTS: Compared with older adults, younger adults lied more frequently to conceal sickness and pain as well as to feign sickness. Younger adults also told more health lies to their parent than their romantic partner, but older adults lied to their adult child and partner at similar rates. Younger adults reported lying more about their health because they felt ashamed or embarrassed and they worried about what others would think of them compared with older adults. DISCUSSION: These results suggest that health-related honesty may increase in later life and that younger and older adults differ in why they tell health lies. Implications for psychological theory on lying about one's health and health interventions are discussed.

Rating the Honesty of White and Black Children via Implicit and Explicit Measures: Implications for Child Victims in the Criminal Justice System.

The present study explored implicit and explicit honesty perceptions of White and Black children and whether these perceptions predicted legal decisions in a child abuse case. Participants consisted of 186 younger and 189 older adults from the online Prolific participant pool. Implicit racial bias was measured via a modified Implicit Association Test and explicit perceptions through self-reports. Participants read a simulated legal case where either a Black or White child alleged physical abuse against their sports coach, and they rated the honesty of the child's testimony and rendered a verdict. Participants were implicitly biased to associate honesty with White children over Black children, and this bias was stronger among older adults. In the legal vignette, for participants who read about a Black child victim, greater implicit racial bias predicted less trust in the child's testimony and a lower likelihood of convicting the coach of abusing the child. In contrast to their implicit bias, participants self-reported Black children as being more honest than White children, suggesting a divergence in racial attitudes across implicit and explicit measures. Implications for child abuse victims are discussed.

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

Research has explored age-related and cultural differences in moral evaluations of dishonesty; however, this has not yet been examined in an aging context. The present study provided a novel account of how younger and older adults (in Canada, Singapore, and China; N = 401) morally evaluate adults' truths and lies in antisocial, modesty, and politeness settings. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing how acceptable it is for adults to tell the truth or a lie in given social scenarios, and they reported on their levels of collectivism and individualism. In all countries, older adults provided more favorable evaluations to blunt and immodest truths than younger adults did. Compared with younger adults, older adults provided harsher evaluations to Polite Lies (in Canada and China) and Modesty Lies (in Canada and Singapore). Thus, there may be an age-related increase in the acceptability of direct honesty over good-intentioned lies, and this age effect is somewhat stable across cultures. Older adults were also more lenient in evaluations of an antisocial lie to conceal an affair compared to younger adults. Overall, adults in China tended to rate lies less negatively, and their greater levels of collectivism mediated their greater approval of polite lies. The present results demonstrate that evaluations of (dis)honesty differ as a function of age and culture and these results can assist in developing a more complete lifespan model of the morality of dishonesty. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03785-6.

Dishonesty during a pandemic: The concealment of COVID-19 information.

Honest disclosures of COVID-19 behaviors and symptoms is critical. A sample of adults on MTurk (N = 451, 20-82 years of age) were asked if they have concealed social distancing practices, COVID-19 symptoms, and quarantine instructions, as well as how they evaluated others' COVID-19 concealment. Those who believed they had contracted COVID-19 engaged in greater rates of concealment and evaluated concealment more positively compared to those without the virus. As age and communal orientation increased, COVID-19 concealment behaviors decreased, and evaluations of this concealment were rated more negatively. Implications for public health initiatives and psychological theory on concealing health information is discussed.

Can adults discriminate between fraudulent and legitimate e-mails? Examining the role of age and prior fraud experience.

The present study assessed how accurate adults are at detecting fraudulent e-mail activity. A total of 100 younger (18-26 years) and 96 older adults (60-90 years) categorized a series of e-mails as legitimate or fraudulent phishing schemes and self-reported their fraud experiences. Younger and older adults did not differ in accuracy rates when categorizing the e-mails (72%), but older adults used a "high-suspicion" strategy where they were more likely to mislabel a legitimate e-mail as fraudulent compared to younger adults. Younger adults were less likely to be targeted by fraud than older adults, but the groups were victimized at similar rates. Being a prior fraud victim negatively related to e-mail detection performance, but this differed across age groups and the extent of fraud experience. Together, these results provide insight into the relation between fraud experience and the ability to detect e-mail scams and can inform fraud prevention and education initiatives.

Younger and older adults' prospective memory: the role of delay task difficulty.

There is mixed evidence on the impact of delay task difficulty on prospective memory (PM) performance and little research has examined this among older adults. The present study examined younger (N = 60) and older (N = 57) adults' prospective memory (PM) performance after completing an easy or difficult Raven's matrices task. To assess whether delay difficulty impacted how often participants thought about their PM intention, participants were asked to report on what they thought about during the delay task itself and retrospectively after all tasks were completed. Younger adults outperformed older adults on the PM task; however, delay task difficulty had no impact PM for either age group. Reports of thinking about the intention during the delay task differed by age group depending whether they were online or retrospective, however, overall greater reports of thinking about the intention was positively associated with PM performance.

Executive functions and young children's lie-telling and lie maintenance.

The current study is the first to provide a comprehensive examination of the activation-decision-construction model (Walczyk, Roper, Seemann, & Humphrey, 2003, 2009) in relation to young children's lie-telling and lie maintenance. Young children (3 to 4 years of age, N = 93) completed the temptation-resistance paradigm to elicit a transgression (peeking at a forbidden toy). Children were asked if they peeked at the toy (initial lie) and what they thought the toy was (lie maintenance). A battery of executive functioning tasks was administered (working memory, inhibitory control, planning). With increased inhibitory control on a response inhibition task, children were significantly more likely to lie. With increased inhibitory control on a conflict inhibition task and superior planning on a planning task, children were significantly more likely to maintain their lies. Support for the activation-decision-construction model in relation to young children's deception is discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Adults' Perceptions of Children's Referentially Ambiguous Responses.

The present study examined adults' (N = 295) interpretations of child witnesses' referentially ambiguous "yes" and "no" responses to "Do You Know/Remember (DYK/R) if/whether" questions (e.g., "Do you know if it was blue?"). Participants were presented with transcripts from child sexual abuse cases modified based on question format (DYK/R vs. Direct) and child response type (Yes, No, I don't know) in a between subjects design. We assessed whether adults recognized that children's ambiguous responses were unclear, and if not, how they were interpreting children's responses compared to the control (Direct) conditions. More specifically, we assessed whether adults interpreted children's responses as answering the explicit (e.g., "No, I don't remember") or implicit (e.g., "No, it wasn't blue") question. Participants virtually never recognized ambiguous responses as unclear, and their interpretations were influenced by the attorney's question and child's response type. In sum, these results suggest that DYK/R questions often lead to misinterpretation, resulting in miscommunication.

The effects of self- and other-awareness on Chinese children's truth-telling.

Several honesty promotion techniques have been established for children living in Western cultures; however, limited research has examined the effectiveness of these techniques among non-Western children. Recently, inducing self-awareness (by looking at oneself in a mirror) was found to be effective in promoting young Western children's honesty. The present investigation compared the effectiveness of this self-awareness technique to a novel other-awareness technique (looking at a photograph of a peer) in promoting young Chinese children's honesty. Chinese children aged 3 and 4 years (N = 121) completed a modified temptation resistance paradigm where they were requested not to peek at a toy in the experimenter's absence. Children were randomly assigned to a Self-Awareness, Peer (other-awareness), or Control condition. When asked whether they peeked at the toy, children in the Self-Awareness condition were significantly more likely to tell the truth compared to those in the Control condition. No significant differences in truth-telling emerged between the Peer and Control conditions. The present results demonstrate the cross-cultural application of self-awareness as an honesty promoting technique with young children. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? High rates of dishonesty persist across cultures. Social and cultural values can shape lie-telling behaviours. Inducing self-awareness promotes honesty in Western children. What does this study add? A tool for promoting honesty in non-Western cultures. Inducing self-awareness promotes honesty in Chinese children. Inducing other-awareness was not effective in promoting honesty in Chinese children.

The role of theory of mind and social skills in predicting children's cheating.

The current study investigated the relation between children's (3- to 8-year-olds) cheating behaviors and their sociocognitive development, including theory-of-mind (ToM) understanding and social skills. A total of 295 children completed a temptation resistance paradigm where they were asked not to peek at a toy in the experimenter's absence (measure of cheating). Children completed first- and second-order ToM measures, and parents completed the Social Skills Improvement System (SSiS) Rating Scales questionnaire as an assessment of their children's social skills. Results indicated that ToM and total SSiS scores were unique predictors of children's cheating, such that with increased ToM and SSiS scores children were significantly less likely to cheat. In particular, children's responsibility scores (subscale of SSiS Rating Scales) emerged as a unique predictor of cheating. Children's performance on both scales were examined together and demonstrated that only children who had high levels of both ToM and responsibility were significantly less likely to cheat compared with children who were low on both measures. These findings demonstrate that children's sociocognitive development affects their cheating behaviors, likely through an understanding of the importance of maintaining positive social relationships.

Younger and Older Adults' Lie-Detection and Credibility Judgments of Children's Coached Reports.

Previous research has examined young and middle-aged adults' perceptions of child witnesses; however, no research to date has examined how potential older adult jurors may perceive a child witness. The present investigation examined younger (18-30 years, N = 100) and older adults' (66-89 years, N = 100) lie-detection and credibility judgments when viewing children's truthful and dishonest reports. Participants viewed eight child interview videos where children (9 to 11 years of age) either provided a truthful report or a coached fabricated report to conceal a transgression. Participants provided lie-detection judgments following all eight videos and credibility assessments following the first two videos. Participants completed a General Lifespan Credibility questionnaire to assess credibility evaluations across various witness ages. Lie-detection results indicated that older adults had significantly lower discrimination scores, a stronger truth bias, and greater confidence compared to younger adults. Older adults also rated children as more competent to testify in court, credible, honest, believable, and likeable than younger adults. Participants with greater differences in their credibility evaluations for truth and lie-tellers were significantly more accurate at detecting lies. Responses to the Lifespan Credibility questionnaire revealed significant differences in younger and older adults' credibility evaluations across the lifespan.

The relation between having siblings and children's cheating and lie-telling behaviors.

The current study investigated how having at least one child sibling influenced children's dishonest behaviors. Furthermore, for those children with a sibling, we examined whether having a younger or older sibling and the age difference between siblings influenced deceptive acts. Children between 3 and 8 years of age (N = 130) completed the temptation resistance paradigm, where they played a guessing game and were asked not to peek at a toy in the experimenter's absence. Children's peeking behavior was used as a measure of cheating, and children's responses when asked whether they had peeked were used as measures of lie-telling. Results demonstrate that siblings do indeed influence children's deceptive behaviors. First, children with a sibling were significantly more likely to cheat compared with children without any siblings. Next, for those with a sibling, children with a larger age difference with their younger sibling(s) were significantly more likely to lie compared with children closer in age, and children with a younger sibling were significantly more likely to maintain their lie during follow-up questioning compared with children with an older sibling.

Mirror, mirror on the wall: Increasing young children's honesty through inducing self-awareness.

Previous studies have shown that in older children, promising to tell the truth increases truth-telling rates; however, in preschool-aged children, this has not been found to be effective. The current study compared promising with a novel technique of increasing children's self-awareness (by asking children to look at themselves in a mirror). It was predicted that inducing self-awareness would encourage children's honesty given that self-awareness increases adherence to social and moral norms. Children aged 3 or 4 years (N = 135) completed a modified temptation resistance paradigm where they were asked to not peek at a toy in the absence of an experimenter. Next, children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Self-Awareness, Promise, or Control. When questioned about whether they peeked at the toy, children in the Self-Awareness condition were significantly more likely to tell the truth about peeking compared with those in the Promise condition. There was no significant difference between the Promise and Control conditions.

Interleukin-7 enhances memory CD8(+) T-cell recall responses in health but its activity is impaired in human immunodeficiency virus infection.

Memory CD8(+) T cells regain function during a recall response, but the requirement of signals in addition to antigen during a secondary immune response is unknown. In this study, the ability of interleukin-7 (IL-7) to enhance memory CD8(+ ) CD45RA(- ) CD127(+) T-cell responses in health and in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection was investigated. CD8(+) T-cell-depleted peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from HIV(-) and untreated HIV(+) donors were pulsed with a cytomegalovirus/Epstein-Barr virus/influenza (CEF) peptide pool, and co-cultured with autologous memory CD8(+) T cells in the presence of IL-7. Cell survival and the function of memory CD8(+) T-cell subsets were then evaluated. Memory CD8(+) T-cell proliferation and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) production was enhanced by the presence of antigen, and the addition of IL-7 further enhanced antigen-induced proliferation. In HIV(+) individuals, the presence of antigen enhanced IFN-γ production to a small degree but did not enhance proliferation. Lastly, IL-7 did not enhance antigen-mediated proliferation of memory CD8(+) T cells from HIV(+) individuals. IL-7 therefore appears to have a role in secondary immune responses and its activity is impaired in memory CD8(+) T cells from HIV(+) individuals. These results further our understanding of the signals involved in secondary immune responses, and provide new insight into the loss of CD8(+) T-cell function in HIV infection.