Contextual and age-related determinants of children's lie telling to conceal a transgression

Abstract

Children frequently tell lies to conceal their transgressions. Evidence to date, using the temptation resistance paradigm (TRP), indicates that antisocial lie telling to conceal a transgression increases into middle childhood (4–8 years) but decreases during early adolescence (8–14 years). However, these age-related conclusions have emerged from different studies that have involved different age groups, using one of two different TRP tasks. Before accepting this age-related trend, this study aimed to remove the confound of age and task type by using the two most frequently used TRP tasks (guessing game and school-achievement task) across a broad age range (4- to 14-year-olds) of 443 students in one laboratory study. Results revealed the same age-related decrease in lie telling after 8 years reported in previous research, indicating that the age-related decrement in lie telling cannot be attributed to task type. However, across all ages, there was an overall difference in the amount of lie telling with respect to the TRP task. Implications for understanding the independent role of age and task type in children's lie telling and suggestions for future research are discussed. Highlights: Unconfounded age and task type effects for children's antisocial lying by using two TRP tasks across a broad age range in one study. Results revealed that task type does not contribute to the established age-related decrement in lie telling. However, task type does affect the overall amount of children's lie telling. Findings support the importance of context (i.e., task type), in addition to other factors, in determining lie telling. Highlights need to also consider task type in future research.