Carving Pinocchio: Longitudinal examination of children’s lying for different goals

•First longitudinal study of children’s lying across different motivational contexts.•Children were fairly consistent in telling prosocial and antisocial lies over time.•Decisions to tell lies type may change developmentally across motivational contexts.•Findings advance understanding of the develop...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental child psychology 2019-05, Vol.181, p.34-55
Main Authors: Talwar, Victoria, Lavoie, Jennifer, Crossman, Angela M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antisocial lies
Child
Child Behavior - psychology
Child, Preschool
Deception
Developmental trajectories
Female
Goals
Humans
Lie-telling
Male
Motivation
Motivational contexts
Parenting - psychology
Prosocial lies
Social Behavior
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Summary:•First longitudinal study of children’s lying across different motivational contexts.•Children were fairly consistent in telling prosocial and antisocial lies over time.•Decisions to tell lies type may change developmentally across motivational contexts.•Findings advance understanding of the development of lying over time. The current study examined children’s lie-telling behavior across four motivational contexts at two time points: Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2). There were 127 children (MT1 = 4.65 years old, SD = 0.66; MT2 = 6.93 years old, SD = 0.80) who participated twice in four experimental paradigms to examine antisocial and prosocial lie-telling behavior approximately 2 years apart. Children also completed cognitive measures, and parents completed questionnaires on parenting styles and their children’s behavior. Results revealed that children’s lie-telling was not uniform across motivational contexts within one time point but that children were fairly consistent in telling antisocial and prosocial lies over time. These findings advance our understanding of the development of lying and how children’s decisions to lie may change over time and across motivational contexts.
ISSN:0022-0965
1096-0457
DOI:10.1016/j.jecp.2018.12.003