Young children's conception of lying: Lexical realism—Moral subjectivism

Abstract

Four- to twelve-year-old children's use of the verb “lying” and their moral judgment of true and false assertions was tested. Two types of stories were used in which a speaker was led to a false belief and therefore mistakenly produced either a false statement despite his truthful intentions or a true statement despite deceptive intentions. It was first tested whether children understood that the speaker held a false belief. As a test of moral judgment children were then asked to reward the speaker. Even 4-year-olds tended to reward according to the speaker's intentions and showed little sign of “moral realism” by rewarding according to the truth value of the assertion. As a test of the lexical definition of lying, children were first tested as to whether they understood that the falsity of the assertion by the well-meaning speaker was unintentional. Then they were asked whether this speaker had told a lie or not. Of those children who had given correct answers to the control questions (i.e., who understood that the speaker entertained a false belief and that the falsity of his assertion was therefore unintentional) most 4-year-olds, a fair proportion of 6-year-olds, but practically no 8-year-olds showed a realist concept of lying. They called the well-intended, mistakenly false statement a lie. This conceptual realism persisted even in children who just before had rewarded this speaker for his truthful intentions.