Studienergebnisse zeigen, dass Kinder seltener zu Täuschungen greifen, nachdem ihnen die Erlaubnis zum Täuschen gegeben wurde. Moralische Überlegungen bleiben auch in Kontexten bestehen, in denen davon ausgegangen wird, dass ethische Richtlinien außer Kraft gesetzt werden, und die kognitiven und moralischen Aspekte der Täuschung können während der frühen Entwicklung eng miteinander verflochten sein.

Children are less likely to use deception after being given permission to deceive, study finds

A set of three studies of 36- to 83-month-old Singaporean children found that they were less likely to use deception in a strategic game after they were given explicit permission to deceive. The paper was published in Developmental Science.

Deception is the act of intentionally causing another person to believe something that is false. It can be done through lying, hiding information, exaggeration, or creating a misleading impression. In everyday life, deception is part of social interactions, competition, and self-protection.

People use deception to avoid punishment, gain an advantage, protect privacy, or spare someone’s feelings. In some situations, deception can help maintain social harmony, as in polite or tactful communication. In other situations, it can seriously damage trust, relationships, and cooperation.

Engaging in deception demands both the cognitive sophistication to mislead others and the moral awareness to navigate the ethical implications of such behavior. Because of this dual nature, scientifically researching deception can be quite difficult. For example, when a person does not engage in deception in a certain situation, it is very difficult to determine whether this was because of ethical concerns or because the person was simply not capable of the cognitive processes needed to deceive.

Most children learn about deception—both how to recognize it and how to engage in it—from a very young age. For example, parents may teach them that lying is bad, but children may also learn that lying can be a way to avoid punishment. From an evolutionary perspective, both being able to deceive others and to recognize deception had survival value. Because deception is such a widespread phenomenon, human societies developed moral rules, laws, and social norms to limit harmful deception.

The results of Study 3, which was pre-registered to account for those initial practice phase lying rates, confirmed the paradoxical finding: children who were explicitly told that they were allowed to lie actually became less likely to lie compared to children in the control group who did not receive the instruction.

“This paradoxical effect was replicated, suggesting that moral considerations persist even in contexts where ethical guidelines are presumed to be suspended and that the cognitive and moral aspects of deception are deeply intertwined during early development,” the study authors concluded.

The researchers propose a few psychological reasons for why giving a child permission to lie actually makes them more honest. For one, by saying, “Usually it is bad to give someone the wrong answer,” the adult accidentally highlighted the word “bad,” bringing the moral weight of lying to the very front of the child’s mind. Children are also very good at trying to figure out what adults really want, leading them to assume the game was a secret test of their honesty.

For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.70168