A Study Of The Relationship Between Family Environment And Child Lying Behavior

Lying is a verbal or non-verbal way that conceals or forges the message about the fact purposely, in order to induce others to form or maintain a false belief which the communicator himself knows whether it is successful or not. With the rise of the "theory of mind" and "ecological theory" since the mid-1980 s, the research on the mechanism of the development of children's behavior is becoming more and more concerned with the micro system of children's family, kindergarten, and more and more emphasis on the interaction between the elements of the system and the different systems. Affected by this trend, the research of children's lying begins to focus on background variables such as family, peer, etc. However, the study on the influencing factors of the family lies mainly in parenting style, family function and other related family mental environment variables. And few of the researchs regard the family physical environment, fewer regard the family environment as a system to study its relation with lying. However, the family environment is an organic whole composed of multilayer system. A separate discussion about the influence of parenting style and role model on children's lying could not put forward systematic theoretical basis and guidance for the lying behavior.The children's lying questionnaire-parents evaluation version revised by Dong Huiqin contains 9 projects and the internal consistency is 0.88. The FES-CV revised by Fei Lipeng et al. includes 10 dimensions and 90 projects with the internal consistency in each dimension ranging from 0.63 to 0.92. The self-made family physical environment questionnaire contains 8 projects to survey the family income, occupation of parents and so on. Using this three questionnaire systematically discuss the relationship between family environment and children's lying.444 children aged 3 to 6 from two kindergartens were investigated. The 3 years group contains 71 children(43 boys, 28 girls); the 4 years group contains 157 children(93 boys, 64 girls); the 5 years group contains 130 children(69 boys, 61 girls); the 6 years group contains 86 children(48 boys, 38 girls).The research found that:First, gender differences don't exist in children's lying, but age differences exist. 3-year-old children tell more lies than 6.Second, family physical environment,such as the family income, occupation of parents has no siginificant impact on children's lying.Third, the Expressivesness and the Moral-Religious Emphasis can negatively predict children's lying; the Conflict can positively predict children's lying. The higher the Expressivesness and the Moral-Religious Emphasis are; the lower the Conflict is, the less lies the children tell. Otherwise, it's contrary.Fourth, gender and age have no regulating role between the family physical environment and children's lying.Fifth, gender plays a regulating role between the Achievement Orientation of family mental environment and lying. Its predictive effect was only shown at boys, no girls.The greater the Achievement Orientation is, the more lies the boys tell. Otherwise, it's contrary.Sixth, age plays a regulating role between the Control of family mental environment and lying. Its predictive effect was only shown at the high age of groups, no other groups. The more the Control is, the more lies the high age of children tell. Otherwise, it's contrary.