Moral Evaluations of Children’s Truths and Lies in a Prosocial Context: The Role of Reputation

Moral Evaluations of Truths and Lies in a Prosocial Context

Introduction

• Honesty is valued in interpersonal relationships and social interactions.
• Dishonesty can negatively impact relationships.
• However, honesty can sometimes be damaging, such as telling a blunt truth that hurts someone's feelings.
• Prosocial lies (lies told to preserve social harmony) may be positively valued in certain situations.
• Children are socialized around complex social norms of honesty and develop an understanding of truth- and lie-telling with age.
• Moral evaluations of truths and lies are influenced by context, intention, and outcome.
• A speaker's reputation may also influence moral evaluations.
• The study examines the influence of a child's reputation on children's and adults' moral evaluations of blunt truths and prosocial lies.

Moral Evaluations of Children's Truths and Lies

• Children are taught that antisocial lies are wrong and that they should tell the truth.
• Children condemn antisocial lies and commend truth-telling following misdeeds.
• The moral distinction between truths and lies in prosocial contexts is more nuanced.
• Children evaluate truths about misdeeds more positively than blunt truths and antisocial lies more negatively than prosocial lies.
• Blunt truths are rated less positively with age, indicating increased sensitivity to social norms.
• Sweetser's (1987) folkloristic model suggests that the context influences how statements are perceived:
  • General cooperative rule: Focuses on helping, not harming, others.
  • Politeness context: Lakoff’s (1973) rules of politeness apply (do not impose, give options, and be kind).
  • Informational context: Grice’s (1975) maxims of conversation apply (e.g., maxim of quality, which requires honesty).
• Lee and Ross (1997) found that lies told in the politeness context are judged less harshly than those in the informational context.
• Opinions vs. facts are an important communication distinction.
• Cheung et al. (2015) found that children evaluate prosocial lies about opinions less negatively than prosocial lies about facts.

Children's Reputation Management

• Helpful or harmful intentions influence moral evaluations.
• A speaker’s reputation may indicate their intentions.
• A positive reputation could imply good intentions in some contexts but bad intentions in others.
• Children are sensitive to their reputation from a young age and exhibit reputation-preserving behaviors.
• Zhao et al. (2018) found that 3- to 5-year-olds were more likely to cheat when told they had a reputation for being smart.
• Fu et al. (2016) found that 5-year-olds were less likely to cheat when told they had a reputation for being good.
• Children appreciate the differential acceptability of truths and lies to preserve or tarnish another’s reputation.
• Ahn et al. (2020) found that 7- to 11-year-olds condoned truths and lies told to uphold another’s positive reputation and condemned those told to tarnish it.
• Fu et al. (2015) found that 6- to 12-year-olds preferred truths about a classmate's transgression but rated the lie-teller as more trustworthy.

The Current Investigation

• Studies examine the influence of a child’s reputation on moral evaluations of truths and lies in a prosocial context.
• Study 1: Examined 7- to 12-year-olds’ moral evaluations of blunt truths and prosocial lies as a function of speaker’s reputation and content of the statement.
• Study 2: Assessed adults’ moral evaluations of children’s blunt truths and prosocial lies as a function of the same factors; included a negative reputation condition.

Study 1

• Design: 3 (Reputation: smart, kind, or clean) x 2 (Content: opinion or fact) x 2 (Veracity: truth or lie) within-participants.
• Participants were shown vignettes where a protagonist, described as being smart, kind, or clean, responded either truthfully or dishonestly about an opinion or fact.
• Children rated the character’s response on a 7-point scale.

Moral Evaluation Predictions

• Children's moral evaluations of blunt truths would be more positive than those of prosocial lies, with the difference decreasing with age.
• The kind protagonist’s prosocial lies would be rated less negatively and their blunt truths less positively than those of the clean protagonist for opinions.
• The smart protagonist’s prosocial lies were anticipated to be rated less negatively, and their blunt truths to be rated less positively, than those of the clean control protagonist, for facts.
• Lies about opinions would be rated less negatively than those about facts.

Personal Reaction Predictions

• Explored whether children’s personal reactions differed across content in terms of valence.

Method

• Participants: 146 children (Mage = 10.02 years, SD = 1.74; 41.1% male).
• Recruited from a community database.
• Materials:
  • Lie-telling vignettes: 12 vignettes featuring gender-matched child characters, with PowerPoint animations.
  • Six vignettes about opinions and six about facts.
  • Comprehension check: Questions after each vignette to ensure understanding.
  • Moral evaluations: 7-point Likert scale.
  • Personal reactions: Responses coded as negative, neutral, or positive valence.
• Procedure:
  • Participants took part in the study over Microsoft Teams.
  • Parents completed consent forms and demographic questionnaires.
  • Children trained on the 7-point Likert scale.
  • Sessions took 15–20 min; families received a $10 Amazon gift card.

Results

• Moral evaluations:
  • Significant main effect of age group, F(2, 143) = 6.39, p = .002, gp^2 = .08.
  • Significant main effect of reputation, F(2, 286) = 4.10, p = .018, gp^2 = .03.
  • Significant reputation by content by veracity interaction, F(1.81, 259.16) = 3.17, p = .049, gp^2 = .02.
  • Kind protagonist's lies were rated more positively than the smart protagonist t(143) = 2.50, 95% CI [0.08, 4.91], p = .040, d = 0.42, and clean protagonist t(143) = 2.73, 95% CI [0.31, 5.16], p = .021, d = 0.46.
  • Significant content by veracity interaction, F(1, 143) = 111.91, p = .018, gp^2 = .44.
• Personal reactions:
  • Significant main effects of content, F(1, 124) = 97.31, p < .001, gp^2 = .44, and veracity, F(1, 124) = 179.11, p < .001, gp^2 = .59.
  • Significant content by veracity interaction, F(1, 124) = 219.27, p < .001, gp^2 = .64.

Discussion

• Children’s moral evaluations varied by the reputation of the protagonist, the content, and the veracity of the statement.
• The kind protagonist’s opinion lies were rated more positively than those of the clean protagonist.
• No significant differences in children’s moral evaluations by reputation about facts.
• Direction of children’s moral evaluations of truths and lies differed based on statement content.
• Children evaluated a prosocial lie positively for opinions and negatively for facts, and the inverse held for blunt truths.
• Children’s sensitivity to the content of statements was also reflected in their personal reactions.

Study 2

• Examined whether adults, like children, take a child’s reputation into consideration when making moral evaluations about truth- and lie-telling.
• Included a negative reputation condition (troublemaker) in addition to the positive reputation conditions examined in Study 1.
• Examined the influence of the reputation of the parents’ own children.
• Design: 4 (Between-Participants Reputation: smart, kind, clean, or troublemaker) x 2 (Within-Participants Statement Type: opinion or fact) x 2 (Within-Participants Veracity: truth or lie).
• Parents with at least one child aged 5 to 12 years read and responded to a series of vignettes.

Moral Evaluation Predictions

• The troublemaker child’s statements would be rated less positively than the smart, kind, and clean children’s statements.
• Reputation, content, and veracity would interact such that for opinions the kind protagonist’s lies would be rated less negatively, and his/her blunt truths would be rated less positively, than those of the clean protagonist.
  • For facts, the smart protagonist’s lies were anticipated to be rated less negatively, and her blunt truths were anticipated to be rated less positively, than those of the clean protagonist.
• Lies would be rated less positively than truths overall.
• As parent-reported child reputation scores increased, moral evaluation scores would increase.

Personal Reaction Predictions

• Explored whether parents’ personal reactions differed across these conditions in terms of valence.

Method

• Participants: 198 adults with at least one child aged 5 to 12 years.
• Recruited from the United States and Canada.
• Materials:
  • Lie-telling vignettes: Four vignettes featuring school-aged children.
  • Protagonist introduced as being either smart, kind, clean, or a troublemaker.
  • Moral evaluations: 7-point Likert scale.
  • Personal reactions: Responses coded as negative, neutral, or positive valence.
  • Own children’s reputations: Questionnaire concerning their own children’s reputations.
• Procedure:
  • Participants completed an informed consent form, followed by a demographic questionnaire.
  • Randomly assigned to one of four reputation conditions.
  • Participants received one of two story orders.
  • They then responded to the Own Children’s Reputations questionnaire.
  • The study took approximately 5 to 10 min to complete.

Results

• Significant main effect of protagonist reputation on participants’ moral evaluations, F(3, 194) = 5.49, p = .001, gp^2 = .08.
• Significant protagonist reputation by content interaction, F(3, 194) = 6.64, p < .001, gp^2 = .09.
• Simple main-effect comparisons following up on the reputation by content interaction revealed significant differences in ratings between protagonist reputation conditions for opinions, F(3, 194) = 11.72, p < .001, gp^2 = .15, but not for facts, F(3, 194) = 0.87, p = .458, gp^2 = .01.
• Significant interaction between content and veracity, F(1, 194) = 125.72, p < .001, gp^2 = .39.
• Children’s parent-reported reputations were not significantly related to moral evaluations, F(1, 193) = 2.93, p = .089, gp^2 = .02, and F(1, 193) = 2.65, p = .105, gp^2 = .01.
• Significant main effect of veracity on participants’ personal reactions, F(1, 192) = 75.63, p < .001, gp^2 = .28.
• Significant content by veracity interaction, F(1, 192) = 131.94, p < .001, gp^2 = .41.
• Significant interaction between protagonist reputation and content, F(3, 192) = 2.83, p = .040, gp^2 = .04.

Discussion

• The reputation of a child and the content of the statement (opinion or fact) were found to be related to parents’ moral evaluations.
• Parents’ personal reactions to the truths and lies differed by statement content.
• Similar to a negative halo effect, parents morally evaluated the troublemaker’s statements about opinions more negatively than those of a child with a positive reputation label.
• Participants evaluated the smart protagonist’s statements about opinions more negatively than those of both the kind (positive reputation) and clean (control reputation) protagonists.
• No relation between parents’ own children’s reputations and their moral evaluations was found.

General Discussion

• The investigation examined the influence of a child’s reputation on children’s and parents’ moral evaluations of the child’s truths and lies across statement content (opinion or fact).
• Children and adults factor a child’s reputation into their moral evaluations of the child’s honest and dishonest behaviors.
• Different reputation labels held significance to children versus adults.
• For both children and adults, the child’s reputation influenced evaluations of statements solely about opinions and not facts.
• The current studies demonstrated that the reputation of a child influences both children’s and parents’ moral evaluations of the honesty of the child’s statements in prosocial contexts.