Big Little Lies: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Prosocial Lying to Children Outside of Parental Contexts

Principal Author
Natalie S. Tucker
Graduate

Co-Author(s)
Rianne Kok, Urasmus University, Rotterdam Jennifer Clegg, Texas State University, San Marcos Katherine Warnell, Texas State University, San Marcos

Faculty Sponsor
Dr. Katherine Warnell

Abstract

Although lying is socialized across a variety of contexts, almost all research studying how adults lie to children has examined lying within parent-child relationships (e.g., Heyman et al., 2013; Setoh et al., 2020). Little is known about the general tendencies of adults to tell prosocial lies—or lies that benefit another person—to children. Given both the social importance of prosocial lying and evidence for cross-cultural variability in its prevalence (Giles et al., 2019), there may be important cultural differences in children’s exposure to adult prosocial lies. In this study, we examined adults’ tendencies to tell prosocial lies to children versus adults in both the US and the Netherlands, cultures which differ on the relative importance of directness (Rottier et al., 2011). A cultural emphasis on directness may dampen the extent to which prosocial lies are considered helpful or appropriate in favor of more honest appraisals. Dutch (n = 320, average age = 40.3y) and American (n = 405, average age = 36.6y) participants completed a survey reporting their likelihood of telling the truth to an adult friend or a friend’s seven-year-old child. Unlike many studies of prosocial lying that examine only a single scenario, participants responded to five situations differing in honesty demands [e.g., receiving a disappointing gift (low in demands) versus a social partner asking for feedback on a poorly-executed assignment (high in demands), see Table 1]. To determine whether adults showed different patterns of prosocial lying to children versus adults—and whether this was influenced by culture—we conducted a 2 (child, adult) x 2 (US, Dutch) x 5 (scenario type) repeated measures ANOVA (Figure 1). We found main effects of culture and social partner, such that participants were more likely to tell the truth to adults and Dutch participants were more likely to tell the truth than Americans (ps<.001). There was also a significant effect of scenario and significant interactions between scenario and social partner (ps<.001) and between social partner, culture, and scenario (F(4,2884)=5.33, p<.001). This three-way interaction was driven by more directness (i.e., truth-telling) by Dutch participants to children when discussing a preference, either for a song or a sports team, that was not mutual. In contrast, there were minimal cross-cultural or social partner-related differences when receiving a disappointing gift. In follow-up exploratory analyses, we found that parental status did not influence American truth-telling, but had an effect in the Dutch sample (F(4,1092) = 4.25, p = .002), such that Dutch parents showed an increased willingness to tell the truth to others’ children in preference-based scenarios. Broadly, we found elevated prosocial lying to children compared to adults, although rates of lying were influenced by culture and situation, such that Dutch children are potentially exposed to more honesty when disagreeing with adults. Future research should consider cross-cultural variation in the mechanisms driving these effects (e.g., sparing feelings versus avoiding conflict) and how prosocial lying by non-parental adults influences lie-telling behaviors in children. Overall, the results have implications for how children learn socially-complex and culturally-important behaviors.