Does valence matter? Effects of negativity on children’s early understanding of the truth and lies

Abstract

Early deceptive behavior often involves acts of wrongdoings on the part of children. As a result, it has often been assumed, although not tested directly, that children are better at identifying lies about wrongdoing than lies about other activities. We tested this assumption in two studies. In Study 1, 67 3- to 5-year-olds viewed vignettes in which a character truthfully or falsely claimed to have committed a good or bad act. Children were biased to label claims that the character had committed a good act as the truth and claims that the character had committed a bad act as lies. In Study 2, 51 4- to 6-year-olds viewed vignettes in which characters either admitted or denied committing a good or bad act. Children were better at identifying truth-tellers and liars when the acts were good. Results suggest that young children initially overgeneralize the concept of lie to include all negative acts and the concept of the truth to include all good acts and only gradually make a distinction between act valence and honesty. As a result, including wrongdoing in scenarios to test children's early understanding of the meaning of lying is likely to underestimate children's abilities.

ALIED: Humans as adaptive lie detectors.

“…They use simple generalized rules to decide what to believe. For example, characters committing a good or bad act are judged as truth-tellers and liars, respectively (Wandrey, Quas, & Lyon, 2012; see also Clément et al, 2004). But if more diagnostic individuating information is available, children as young as 4 years make use of it instead of showing a blanket bias to believe or disbelieve (Brosseau-Liard & Birch, 2011; Brosseau-Liard, Cassels, & Birch, 2014; Robinson et al, 1995; see also Mitchell, Robinson, Rye, & Isaacs, 1997; see also Reyes-Jaquez & Echols, 2015).…”

Young children’s understanding that promising guarantees performance: The effects of age and maltreatment.

“…For example, it is much more difficult for children to provide even a minimally competent definition of the truth or a lie compared with identifying whether a statement is true or not (Lyon & Saywitz, 1999; Pipe & Wilson, 1994). Furthermore, children’s apparent understanding will falter if they are asked about truth and lies in contexts in which wrongdoing occurs (because they will err on the side of calling all statements about wrongdoing lies; Wandrey, Quas, & Lyon, 2012). Similarly, a basic understanding of the morality of truth-telling (that true statements are “good” and false statements “bad”) also emerges before children turn 4 (Lyon, Carrick, & Quas, in press), and children’s moral understanding can easily be underestimated.…”

The Detection of Prosocial Lying by Children

“…The majority of research on the development of lying has focused on children's conceptions of and moral reasoning about lying. Three‐year‐olds can recognize statements as lies based on the intentions of the speaker (Bussey, ; Siegal & Peterson, ), but this ability is fragile, and they can still over rely on the factuality and valence of the statement to make their judgment (Wandrey, Quas, & Lyon, ). Gradually over childhood, children get better at distinguishing lies from other types of utterances such as mistakes, exaggerations or jokes such that by early adolescence their understanding resembles adults' (Talwar & Crossman, ).…”