Children approve of lying to benefit another person’s reputation

Abstract

This study investigated how children reason about true or false statements that are meant to damage or enhance the reputation of a third party. Six- to 12-year-old participants in South Korea (total N = 89) responded to a series of four scenarios in which one child, the evaluator, describes seeing a public performance that featured a second child who is new to the classroom. The scenarios were a factorial combination of the actual quality of the performance (good, bad) by the evaluator’s public assessment of it (good, bad). The evaluator who offered a false but positive performance assessment was rated by participants as trustworthy and likeable, and judged to have made the morally correct choice. In contrast, the evaluator who offered a truthful but negative performance assessment was rated negatively. The findings suggest that children tend to have a favorable view of efforts to promote the reputation of others, even if it involves telling a lie.