The Origins of Lying and Deception in Everyday Life: A Historical Perspective

In what ways can youngsters make sense of the complicated social code that determines when they are allowed to and are not allowed to lie?

Lies and deceit appear to be especially concerning to those of us who live in the United States of America. Consider the popular legend around our nation’s founding father and commander of the Continental Army, George Washington. What most of us remember most about Washington as a child—in fact, it is the only thing we remember—is that when his father questioned him, “Did you cut down the cherry tree?” he is said to have spoken the truth, which is the only thing we know. Regardless of whether the tale is true (it was most likely made up by biographer Parson Weems), the fact that children are taught that our nation’s first president never lied says volumes about how important the subject is to American parents.

Lies and deceit appear to be especially concerning to those of us who live in the United States of America. Consider the popular legend around our nation’s founding father and commander of the Continental Army, George Washington. What most of us remember most about Washington as a child—in fact, it is the only thing we remember—is that when his father questioned him, “Did you cut down the cherry tree?” he is said to have spoken the truth, which is the only thing we know. Regardless of whether the tale is true (it was most likely made up by biographer Parson Weems), the fact that children are taught that our nation’s first president never lied says volumes about how important the subject is to American parents.

An urban legend has it that George Washington cut down a cherry tree as a kid but then confessed to the truth about his actions, despite the fact that he was well aware he would be punished. Children in the United States have long been taught about the tale as an example of moral uprightness.

It may be beneficial to consider what we mean by lying and deception, both in children and in adults, in order to develop a taxonomy that can inform our ideas about the origins of lying and deception. Given the diversity of studies on this topic, it may be beneficial to consider what we mean by lying and deception, both in children and in adults. There has been some research on the subject of lying and deceit in emotional life (for example the works of Paul Ekman), but little research into this behavior in children has been conducted. 

The study of lying and deceit started in earnest in the 1980s, with the publishing of studies by Carolyn Saarni and Pamela Cole, as well as my own, apart from Charles Darwin’s account of his kid when he was two years old and a solitary study by philosopher Charles Hartshorne in 1928. Given the long-standing fascination with emotional development, it is rather unexpected that this area of study has just recently developed. 

The research, as we will see, demonstrates that a person’s inner emotional experience can be concealed by their facial expression, even in children; furthermore, it suggests that lying and deception, as measured by both verbal and facial expression, may have been subjected to evolutionary pressure and are positively related to other cognitive capacities associated with psychological fitness.

On the surface, it seems that the concept of anything being honest suggests that it is also possible for something to be untrue or to tell a lie. Lieing, deception, and the disguising of our inner selves are all a part of the social environment in which we live, as our human experience has shown time and time again. Sonoma University professor of psychology Saarni has shown some of the deception techniques individuals use, which are derived from societal standards that dictate how people should display their emotions. Despite the fact that such norms of behavior seem perfectly normal to those who have grown up with them, they differ significantly from one culture to the next. Japan, for example, teaches children to conceal their facial emotions of anger by placing their hand in front of their lips when they laugh, with females more frequently than boys being trained to do so. When Marsha Weintraub, of Temple University, and I watched how two-year-olds reacted to their mothers’ departure, we discovered another another example of different societal and personal standards for the expression of emotion: Children in the United States are often encouraged to show sorrow at the time of separation, despite the fact that they rapidly recover after their moms have departed and they are left in the care of a babysitter. We also discovered that parents’ reactions to their children’s minor injuries varied, with some offering comforting comments such as “It’s normal to weep, it must be truly hurting,” while others reprimanded their children (particularly males) for sobbing. In a true sense, deceit, lying, and dissemblance are all “natural” features of the social milieu, and they are not just acceptable but encouraged.

It goes without saying that deceit may come in a variety of forms and degrees; concealing one’s feelings is quite different from purposefully telling a lie. One method of distinguishing between different types of lying is to examine the degree to which the deceiver is conscious of his or her own deceit.

Consciousness and Intention
These kinds of lying, such as when youngsters tell their parents that they have completed their chores despite the fact that they have not, or when students say that they were unable to complete their project on time because they were called in to assist a sick friend, are self-aware. The deceiver is well aware of the expectations placed on him or her, and he or she attempts to conceal the failure. Deceptions of this kind are often met with social contempt, which we express with words such as “You need to be courageous enough to accept your penalty,” among others.

The use of deception or lying without being aware of it is more troublesome. When someone makes a false remark without realizing that what she or he is saying is untrue, it cannot be stated that the speaker is lying. After acknowledging this fact, we may turn our attention to the issue of deceit in nonhuman creatures. The existence of deceptive conduct in animals is well documented; nevertheless, it is not apparent if chimpanzees, for example, have a third-level viewpoint that can be described as “I know the other chimp knows that I know.” Animal deceit cannot be distinguished from human deception until this viewpoint is taken into consideration.

In previous work, I proposed a taxonomy of lying and deceit that I believe may be helpful in studying children’s conduct in this area. It is possible that this taxonomy does not cover all kinds of deceit, nor does it imply that the categories are mutually exclusive of one another. When an act of deceit meets more than one of the following conditions, it is considered a fraud.

Lying in order to protect the emotions of another; lying in order to protect one’s own feelings in order to escape punishment; lying to oneself, or self-deception; and lying in order to do harm to others.
Although the first three categories are often seen as moral flaws, it will be shown that they are favorably linked to other cognitive abilities.

Providing false information in order to protect the feelings of another
Rana, a three-year-old girl, had been looking forward to receiving a Christmas gift from her grandma. She’s hoping for a nice item in the mail. In spite of this, when Rana’s grandma presents her with a sweater she had knitted, she tears open the box and beams at her grandmother while exclaiming, “It’s nice.”

Rana, like many other youngsters her age, has already mastered the art of adjusting her facial expressions and words to suit the demands of various social situations. “Little white lies” are a term often used to describe this behavior, but I prefer the phrase “lying to protect the emotions of others.” In my book, The Rise of Consciousness and the Development of Emotional Life, I suggest that the purpose of this kind of deceit is to help people survive in their social environments. The Norwegian sociologist Stein Braten described the data as follows: “There is substantial evidence that the human baby has built-in systems for assisting others.” Although some people believe that deceit of this kind harms interpersonal relationships, it is fair to presume that deceptions of this nature are necessary for the preservation of social interaction in general.

There are many instances of this motivation in everyday life, but researching it in young children in the laboratory presents some challenges. Saarni, a researcher who examines how infants acquire emotional competence, has reasoned that if a kid is promised an appealing item but does not get it, the child is unlikely to express her displeasure in order to avoid making the experimenter feel terrible about himself or herself. In her research, youngsters ranging in age from seven to eleven were given a choice of various toys and asked which one they like the most and which one they disliked the most. Once the youngsters had completed their task, they were given a challenge to solve in exchange for a gift of their choice from the toy store. Following the completion of the challenge, each kid was awarded his or her least favorite gift. The reactions of the youngsters varied according to their gender and age, as shown by the expressions on their faces and the words they uttered. Younger children, particularly males, were more likely than older children to express disappointment, while older children expressed more positive feelings on average. Cole found that girls were better at hiding their disappointment than boys in a similar study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, this time involving children as young as four years old. In this study, however, the four-year-olds were just as good as older children at concealing their sadness. When the scope of this research was broadened to include preschoolers, it was shown that three-year-olds were also able to suppress their displeasure. This talent, it should be noted, manifests itself very early in one’s life.

In order to determine if and when young children lie in order to protect the emotions of others, various paradigms have been employed. My colleague Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and I devised a variation of the traditional Rouge test in 1979, in which we marked a red mark on the nose of an infant and placed the infant in front of a mirror. The majority of children touch their noses and exhibit shame when they see the red spot in the mirror by age two, indicating that they are aware that this mark is odd and out of place in their environment. This test was modified by Kang Lee and his colleagues, who developed another paradigm to investigate the issue of lying to protect the emotions of others. The experimenter, who this time wears a red mark on her own nose, informs the kid that she is going to have her photo taken and inquires as to whether she seems to be in good health. After the first experimenter (E1) has her photo taken and exits the room, another experimenter (E2) arrives and inquires as to whether or not experimenter E1 seemed to be in good health.

In this research of 98 youngsters between the ages of three and seven, 89 percent of the participants lied, claiming that experimenter E1 seemed to be in good health. Interestingly, the 11 percent of participants who reported the truth, stating that the researcher did not seem to be in good health, had facial expressions that were very comparable to those of those who lied. Furthermore, there were no age-related differences. On the basis of these findings, it seems that youngsters between the ages of three and seven are more or less equally competent in polite deceit.

Their early training in this talent is often done in the comfort of their own homes. Parenting is a learned behavior, and it is probable that parents would instruct their children in this behavior (“Tell Grandma you appreciate her gift/cooking/choice of movie even if it is not what you wanted”) to avoid hurting others’ emotions. Deceit to preserve the emotions of others may also be seen by children whose parents engage in deception. Rana may overhear her mother say, “My friend is coming over for tea and I am very weary to meet her,” but when the friend comes, the kid sees her mother happy and hears her remark, “I am so pleased you came by,” and the girl is delighted.

Child psychologists Victoria Talwar and Kang Lee, then at Queen’s University in Ontario, examined the effect of adults telling children to lie in order to spare the feelings of another person. They used the “disappointment” paradigm developed by Saarni and Cole, but with the addition that adults encouraged children to tell a white lie. The majority of the youngsters, even those as young as three years old, cooperated; when dissatisfied, females smiled more often than boys, which indicates that they are better able to conceal their emotions when necessary.

They also demonstrate that deceit to spare the emotions of others may be detected as early as three years of age, and that females may be more adept at deception than boys, despite the fact that experimental data are still restricted. Furthermore, it seems that parental instructions to lie in order to protect the emotions of another are successful.

There is an intriguing tension between a child’s growing moral conduct and his or her developing prosocial behavior—that is, any action that is meant to benefit others—that is explored in these research investigations. In this case, there is a clear contradiction between not telling a lie and not hurting someone’s emotions, particularly considering the fact that honesty is regarded to be a component of moral conduct. In order to answer this issue, Gail Heyman directed a research at the University of California–San Diego in 2009 in which children were asked why they had told a lie and their responses were recorded. The researchers showed a series of vignettes to children between the ages of seven and twelve years old, some of which were about children who get an unwanted present and are asked if they like it or not. The children were questioned whether they liked it or not. In half of the tales, the youngsters speak the truth, whereas in the other half, they do not disclose the truth. In another set of tales, a kid commits a transgression by destroying a book from the library. Once again, in half of the tales, the youngsters admit to causing the harm, while in the other half, they do not confess.

Upon being asked to assess the conduct of the children in the tales that they had heard, the participants in this research gave more neutral scores to the politeness stories and more negative ratings to the transgression stories, according to the results of the study. Such results provide credence to the theory that children are more likely than other kinds of children to learn and assess favorably falsehoods that protect the emotions of others, as opposed to other sorts of lying.

A increasing amount of research (as described by Braten) suggests that infants exhibit early prosocial conduct, and that deception to spare someone’s emotions is one element of this activity. More evidence in support of the prosocial view of lying comes from an unpublished study by developmental psychologist Antonella Brighi of the University of Bologna, who discovered that four-year-olds who were more successful at masking their emotions when placed in the “disappointing gift” paradigm were more likely to be chosen as play dates by other children. In fact, as we shall show, deceit and lying are often linked with other prosocial and cognitive skills as well.

Trying to get away with lying in order to avoid punishment

Even though his mother has warned him not to eat a cookie, two-year-old Maron sneaks one when she is out of the kitchen. When his mother inquires as to whether he had eaten the cookie, he lies and claims that he had not.

Another kind of lying that is prevalent among youngsters has to do with the desire to avoid being punished. Children quickly learn to tell lies when they have performed an undesired behavior or have failed to complete a task that has been assigned to them. The character Maron recalls that eating a cookie has in the past resulted in parental rage or punishment, and he attempts to avoid these anticipated results by lying.

The question is, what do toddlers do after they have understood the idea that lying may provide them with an opportunity to avoid punishment? My colleagues and I wanted an experimental setting in which only little verbal activity was necessary in order to investigate this kind of deception in infants who were too young to talk effectively; we came up with the “do not peek” paradigm as a creative solution. The children in these experiments are taken into a room and placed at a table with their backs to the wall, facing forward. “Do not turn around and look at the item,” the experimenter instructs the kid as he or she unpacks an intricate toy behind their backs. After the toy has been put up, the experimenter informs the kid that she will be required to leave the room for a short period of time. Once again, when the experimenter leaves the room, the kid is instructed not to look at the toy because “we will play with it when I return.”

We set up this scenario to increase the chance that the kid would peek, which is frequently the case, and we were successful. The children are left alone in the room for a brief period of time, and if they have not peeked after five minutes, the experimenter returns to the room. “Did you take a peek?” the experimenter inquires of the youngster. Without the children’s knowledge (but with their permission), they are filmed throughout the experiment in order to give an objective record of whether they really peeked and are now lying or speaking the truth, as well as whether they are lying or telling the truth.

According to the findings of our first research, youngsters as young as two and a half years old are capable of deceit and manipulation. If left alone, the vast majority of youngsters this age would break the “no-peeking” rule; just four out of the 33 participants were able to maintain their abstinence for the entire five minutes. Of those who peeked, 38 percent confessed to doing so, 38 percent denied doing so, and 24 percent did not respond verbally. So we found that 62% of our participants were misled in some manner between the ages of two and a half and three years. The deceivers were not distinguished from the truth-tellers based on their facial expressions or physical activity, indicating that these children had already mastered the art of deception.