Lisanne Schroer

Children’s lying behaviour is thought to develop through both domain-specific socialization, such as parental modelling of lying and parental moral messages about lying or honesty, and broader domain-general socialization such as parenting styles. To date, no studies have simultaneously investigated these socialization domains in child lying. The present study used cross-sectional parent-report data from 217 parents of 4- to 8-year-olds to examine associations between parental messages about lying, parenting-by-lying (modelling of lying), parenting styles, and child lying. All three aspects of socialization were independently associated with child lying. First, more parenting-by-lying was associated with more child lying. Second, stronger parental emphasis on honesty was linked to less child lying. Third, higher levels of authoritarian parenting were associated with more child lying. Overall, this study illustrates how different aspects of socialization contribute independently to children’s moral development.

While societal moral norms emphasize fairness and rule-following, cheating behaviour is surprisingly common among children. However, due to its social undesirability, cheating behaviour is difficult to study. The present preregistered paper introduces a novel word riddle paradigm to assess cheating behaviour in middle childhood. In a longitudinal twin cohort study, 428 8- to 10-year-olds were presented with unsolvable word riddles and left alone while an answer booklet was placed close by. Half of the children received the explicit instruction not to peek. Cheating tendency (whether children cheated) and cheating frequency (number of cheated words) were assessed. Results showed that 46% of children cheated on this task, and cheaters cheated on more than half of the words on average (54%). Reminding children not to peek decreased cheating frequency, but not cheating tendency. Age was negatively associated with cheating tendency, but not with cheating frequency. No cross-sectional or longitudinal associations were found between cheating behaviour and children’s callous-unemotional traits, empathy and effortful control. Finally, an ACE analysis indicated most of the variance (65%) in cheating behaviour was explained by unique environment of the child and/or measurement error, whereas genetic influences accounted for a smaller proportion of the variance (35%). No shared environmental effects were observed. Results are discussed in light of contextual factors that might shape cheating. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that this paradigm provides a simple yet sensitive tool to assess cheating in middle childhood and suggest that cheating is a frequent behaviour in middle childhood, even under explicit prohibitions.

Parental lying to children, for example, to influence children’s behavior and emotions, is common and linked to more child lying and maladjustment. Existing research mainly relies on retrospective parent- or child-reports of parental lying, does not differentiate between types of lies, and uses cross-sectional designs. This longitudinal population-based cohort study (N = 801) tested a novel systematic coding scheme to observe parental lying to children at age 3 during three structured behavioral control tasks in the laboratory. This study then examined prospective associations with observed child lying at age 4 (n = 537), and parent-reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms at age 5 (n = 729), and callous-unemotional traits at age 9 (n = 563). We reliably observed four types of parental lies to influence children’s behavior (i.e., instrumental lies) and parental lies to foster imagination or fun. Most parents (94%) told at least one of these lies, whereas only few lied often. Prospective associations were examined for the four types of instrumental lies. None of the parental instrumental lies were associated with child lying or internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Parental instrumental lies involving false promises or exaggerated positive consequences were related to fewer callous-unemotional traits. This study shows the feasibility of using structured observations to measure different types of parental lying to children and demonstrates that the casual parental lies we observed were not associated with harmful child development and, in some cases, may even be associated with positive developmental outcomes.

Parental lying is common practice, but the link between parental lying and other parenting practices is understudied. In this preregistered study, the association between three types of parental lying (child-oriented, parent-oriented, instrumental) and parental psychological and behavioural control is explored using cross-sectional self-report data in 308 Dutch parents. Parents reported on lying behaviour to their own children and parental control strategies. Multivariate multiple regression analysis showed that instrumental, but not child-oriented or parent-oriented, lying was related to higher levels of behavioural control. Our findings suggest that instrumental lying is more common in parents with a more demanding and strict parenting style. Future research should shed light on the question of how parental instrumental lying relates to children’s behaviour and development and should further explore how different parental lie types relate to domains of parenting.

Many parents lie to their children. Because prominent socialization theories hypothesize that children learn about lying via parental modeling of lying or honesty, it is important to examine whether parental lying affects children’s lying behavior. While there is empirical evidence for the modeling effect of lying by an experimenter on child’s lying, a modeling effect has never been studied in parent-child dyads. The current preregistered study is the first to manipulate parental lying to examine its effects on children’s polite lying. Parents (n = 105) were randomly assigned to a lie- or truth-condition where they told a polite lie or the truth about a drawing of an experimenter in front of their child. Polite lying of their 4- to 8-year-old was subsequently assessed in the disappointing gift paradigm where children received an undesired gift from the same experimenter. Our results demonstrated no effect of parental modeling of lying or honesty on child’s polite lying. The results are discussed in context of parent-child history of interactions, the societal norms around polite lying, and socialization messages conveyed from parental modeling. Although we do not find evidence for a direct effect of parental modeling of polite lying on child polite lying, future research is warranted to explore the effect of parental modeling on child lying in alternative experimental designs, the potential effect of parental modeling of lying for other types of lies and beyond the experimental context.

Almost all parents lie to their children, and recent studies warn that parental lying may negatively impact children's trust in their parents. However, perspectives of children on parental lying and its effect on trust in parents have rarely been studied. In the current manuscript, we (1) report the development and co‐creation of an age‐appropriate instrument to assess children's perspectives on parental lying in middle childhood (8‐ to 12‐year‐olds), (2) investigate in a pilot sample ( n = 62 Dutch 8‐ to 12‐year‐olds) whether the instrument is able to capture children's perspectives on parental lying and truth telling, and (3) explore children's perspectives on parental lying and trust. Three different lies were distinguished: lies to benefit the parent, lies to benefit the child, and prudential lies. The instrument was co‐created with a child panel ( n = 5 Dutch 8‐ to 12‐year‐olds) and a game designer. The instrument was deemed age‐appropriate based on the high percentages of correct classifications of parental lies and truths. Our results demonstrated that children evaluated child‐benefit and prudential parental lies more positively than liar‐benefitting parental lies. Children expected trust to be lower when a parent used a liar‐benefitting lie as compared to a child‐benefitting lie. Our results demonstrated that 8‐ to 12‐year‐olds already have differentiated opinions about different types of parental lies and how they can affect trust, and our open‐access instrument provides an engaging and age‐appropriate opportunity for future research into children's views on parental lying and its effect on trust.

Previous studies have found that increased cognitive load during a task might result in the use of ‘easier’ motor strategies that nevertheless achieve task goals. Here, we investigated the influence of cognitive load on bimanual or unimanual strategy use in preschoolers, through a combination of secondary data analysis and new empirical data. Experiment 1 investigated block‐stacking strategies under high, medium and low cognitive load tasks in 3‐year‐olds and showed that 3‐year‐olds demonstrated significantly more unimanual strategy use in the high cognitive load task. Experiment 2 investigated (i) whether this effect persisted across preschool years and (ii) whether it was modulated by differences in executive function abilities. There was no age effect in motor strategy use under high cognitive load from 3 to 5 years of age. However, individual differences in inhibitory control and working memory use were significantly associated with differences in unimanual strategy use. These results are interpreted as evidence for a cognitive/action trade‐off in which higher cognitive demands result in the adjustment of motor strategies such as use of unimanual stacking instead of bimanual coordination in preschoolers.

Parental lying is a prevalent parenting practice but parental lying itself and its motivations are poorly defined. Thus far, the literature has focused only on lies to influence the child’s behavior and emotions. This qualitative semi-structured interview study aimed to broadly explore how lies cluster based on intended goals and reasons for lying. Forty Dutch caregivers with at least one child aged 5-12 years, were interviewed and examples of parent-to-child lies were analyzed. Our analyses derived a new taxonomy of 11 subtypes, including lies intended to maintain the parent’s privacy or to look better as a parent. Lies were either triggered by caregivers’ state of mind (e.g., feeling overwhelmed), or related to internalized parenting convictions (e.g., I must protect my child). The new taxonomy allows future quantitative and qualitative studies to study the correlates and outcomes of different types of parental lies.