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Kids who are taught to reason about the mental states of others are more likely to use deception to win a reward, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The findings indicate that developing "theory of mind" (ToM) -- a cognitive ability critical to many social interactions -- may enable children to engage in the sophisticated thinking necessary for intentionally deceiving another person.
"Telling a lie successfully requires deliberately creating a false belief in the mind of the lie recipient, and ToM could provide an important cognitive tool to enable children to do so," the researchers write.
Research suggests that children begin to tell lies somewhere around ages 2 and 3, and studies have shown a correlation between children's theory of mind and their tendency to lie. Psychological scientists Genyue Fu of Hangzhou Normal University in China, Kang Lee of the University of Toronto in Canada, and colleagues wanted to see if they could find causal evidence for a link between the two.
The researchers first conducted a hide-and-seek task to identify children who hadn't yet started lying. The children were shown a selection of stickers and were asked to pick their favorite one -- they were told that they could only keep the sticker if they successfully won 10 candies from the hide-and-seek game. In the game, the child was told to hide a candy under one of two cups while the researcher's eyes were closed. The researcher then opened his or her eyes, asked the child where the candy was hidden, and chose whichever cup the child pointed to. Thus, the child could only win the candy by lying to the experimenter about its location.
A total of 42 children who never lied -- who told the truth about the location of the candy on each of the 10 trials -- were selected to continue with the study. The children, who were around 3 years old, were randomly assigned to complete either theory-of-mind training or control tasks focused on quantitative reasoning.
The findings indicate that developing "theory of mind" (ToM) -- a cognitive ability critical to many social interactions -- may enable children to engage in the sophisticated thinking necessary for intentionally deceiving another person.
"Telling a lie successfully requires deliberately creating a false belief in the mind of the lie recipient, and ToM could provide an important cognitive tool to enable children to do so," the researchers write.
Research suggests that children begin to tell lies somewhere around ages 2 and 3, and studies have shown a correlation between children's theory of mind and their tendency to lie. Psychological scientists Genyue Fu of Hangzhou Normal University in China, Kang Lee of the University of Toronto in Canada, and colleagues wanted to see if they could find causal evidence for a link between the two.
The researchers first conducted a hide-and-seek task to identify children who hadn't yet started lying. The children were shown a selection of stickers and were asked to pick their favorite one -- they were told that they could only keep the sticker if they successfully won 10 candies from the hide-and-seek game. In the game, the child was told to hide a candy under one of two cups while the researcher's eyes were closed. The researcher then opened his or her eyes, asked the child where the candy was hidden, and chose whichever cup the child pointed to. Thus, the child could only win the candy by lying to the experimenter about its location.
A total of 42 children who never lied -- who told the truth about the location of the candy on each of the 10 trials -- were selected to continue with the study. The children, who were around 3 years old, were randomly assigned to complete either theory-of-mind training or control tasks focused on quantitative reasoning.
Understanding others' thoughts enables young kids to lie
Kids who are taught to reason about the mental states of others are more likely to use deception to win a reward, according to new research.
www.sciencedaily.com
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