The Development Of Moral Cognition And Behavior Of White Lies Considering Children Aged 3-6 And Its Influencing Factors

In interpersonal relationships, we often intend to tell well-meaning lies, also known as white lies, in order to take others’ feelings into consideration or to avoid the negative consequences brought by the truth. This sort of lie seen as one of the pro-social behaviors is usually told with no harm but good intentions in mind and plays a positive role in establishing, maintaining and promoting the interpersonal relationships. Children’s white lies are gradually developed in their interpersonal relationships, especially from 3 to 6 years of age. Understanding the development characteristics of moral cognition and behavior of children’s white lies and its influencing factors not only contributes to knowing the development process of children’s white lies, deepening the study of children’s socialization and other fields, but also providing a theoretical basis for children’s white lie-telling behavior and pro-social education.The present research reviewed both the correlative theories and empirical studies of children’s white lies from aspects of concepts, methods, development characteristics and influencing factors. The author also explores the development characteristics of moral cognition and behavior of children’s white lies, and the relationships among white lie-telling behavior,false belief,empathic ability and situational factors by such methods as the context experiment and interview, and then analyzes and discusses the relationship between children’s moral evaluation and behavior of white lies, and the moderator variables of the relationship between them.The research includes three parts. The first part is the developmental research, using methods of story and real situations, respectively discusses the development characteristics of children’s(3-6) moral cognition and behavior of white lies by a task called disappointing gift.The second part is the study of the influencing factors. Firstly, it studies the relationships among children’s(3-6) white lie-telling behavior, false belief and empathic ability by using such tasks as disappointing gift, false-belief and empathic ability. Secondly, the author investigates the effects of situational factors(pro-social inducement, self-protection inducement, the presence of authority, and role models) on the white-lie telling behavior of children aged 3-6 by setting clues. The third part is the study of moderating role. Taking 6-year-old children for example,it studies the relationship between moral evaluation and behavior of children’s white lies,and also analyzes the role of the moderator variables(false belief, empathic ability and situational factors) in this relationship.The results show that:(1) It can be seen significant age difference but no gender difference about moral cognition of white lies considering children aged 3-6. As they grow up, children are able to realize that white lies are just lie-telling behaviors. Children’s judgment on the degree of white-lie telling presents a tendency from big lies to small lies, and gets worse and worse.(2) The scores are increased with the age judging from the white lie-telling behavior of children aged 3-6,which demonstrates significant age differences, but no significant gender differences.(3) The scores of both the empathic ability and false-belief of children(3-6) gradually improve with age,which demonstrates significant age differences,but no significant gender differences. And there is a significant correlation of white lie-telling behavior with empathic ability and false-belief.(4)Under the influence of pro-social inducement, self-protection inducement and the presence of authority, children(3-6) get obviously higher scores than the control group on the white-lie telling behavior, which indicates that the factors of pro-social inducement, self-protection inducement and authority presence have a facilitating effect on children’s white lie-telling behaviors.(5) The moral evaluation of 6-year-old children’s white lies is not significantly correlated with their white lie-telling behaviors. The factors of empathy, pro-social inducement, and authority presence play a role as moderators in the relationship between them.