Moral disengagement: A new lens with which to examine children’s justifications for lying

ABSTRACT

The development of children’s lie-telling abilities is considered to be a social and cognitive milestone. While occasional lying is developmentally appropriate, the use of frequent, antisocial lies as a maladaptive problem-solving mechanism can indicate behaviour problems. Since lying is often considered a moral transgression, researchers should examine lying from the perspective of moral theory to understand children’s reasons for lying, which may help to understand how chronic lying develops. A theoretical framework, namely the social cognitive process of moral disengagement (MD) could not only provide new insight into children’s justifications for telling common lies, but also atypical, antisocial lies. This paper aims to describe how MD may be applied to explain children’s justifications for lying, especially antisocial lies, and how adults can address MD by modelling the positive consequences of truth-telling, to promote honesty in children.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral disengagement
• children
• lying
• antisocial lying
• modelling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ida Foster

Ida Foster is a senior Ph.D candidate in the School/Applied Child Psychology (SACP) program at McGill University and she is actively collecting data for her dissertation research on children’s lie-telling. She completed her Master of Arts degree at McGill in the SACP Program in 2015 where her thesis focused on the effects of interviewer gender on the veracity of children’s eye-witness testimonies. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Psychology from Concordia University in 2011.

Joshua Wyman

Joshua Wyman joined the Talwar Research Team in 2013, and recently completed his PhD in School and Applied Child Psychology at McGill University. Joshua has undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Criminal Justice, and previous experience working with children in the criminal justice system. Joshua’s research interests lie in children’s eye-witness testimonies; specifically, the types of questions that professionals can ask children after they witness a traumatic event.

Victoria Talwar

Dr. Victoria Talwar is a Canada Research Chair (II) and a Professor at McGill University. She has been working in the area of developmental psychology for over fifteen years with an emphasis on social-cognitive development. Her research interests include children’s verbal deception, their moral development, and their theory-of-mind understanding. In addition, she has investigated issues related to child witness testimony including child witness credibility and competence, lie detection and jury decision making. She is also interested in the influence of cross-cultural factors and attitudes to lying behaviour. Recently, her research interests include children’s social interactions in cyberspace as well as the role of spirituality in children’s social development.