The Research On The Characteristics Of White Lie In Children Between4to6Years Of Age And Its Related Influential Factors

White lie belongs to pro-social lies. As a social behavior it violates and upholds the basic rules of interpersonal communication. White lie-telling in children provides a window for us to understand the process by which children learn necessary social skills to interact with others and form social relations.This study examined the behavior and moral understanding of4-6year-old children’s white lie, as well as other factors related to the white lie, such as empathy and false belief. The study is divided into two parts:The first study is disappointment gift program. It examined that children whether would tell white lies according to need or not. After the disappointment gift program, Experimenter asked children a series of questions to understand the true motives of children lying and the giver’s beliefs, expectations and emotional awareness. The second study is two moral stories. They examined children’s response selection on the moral stories through story scenario. The stories also added the question on empathy to understand the relationship between children’s white lie and empathy. In addition, this study increased two false belief tasks to understand the development of children’s false belief and the relationship between these factors and children’s white lie.The result indicates:(1) With growing older, more and more children will tell White lie in the disappointed gifts contexts.(2) Children’s motives of white lie behavior in the real-life situation have a significant age difference. The motivation of children under five years old are more likely to be self-protection or can’t judge their own motives, and4-year-old and6-year-old children said white lie is pro-social motivation.(3) There is a significant age difference in children’s judgment of the false reaction giver emotional,4-year-old can’t be false reaction giver emotions to make the right judgments, and children over the age of5can be properly judged.(4) Children’s white lies and first-order false belief, second-order false belief has a significant relationship.(5)Children’s pro-social white lie behavior and first-order false belief, empathy has a significant relationship.