A Study On The Development Of Children's Other-benefiting Lies:the Influence Of Theory Of Mind And Empathy

The development of lying is the process of socialization and cognitive development of young children.The research on young children's lying is of great significance for children's development.Many researches on children's self-benefiting lies has been done.But the research on other-benefiting lies was relatively limited.There was very few study on young children lie-telling behavior to get benefits for others.This study revised the window task paradigm to explore the development of lie-telling behavior for other's gain and its influencing factors for 3-5 year-old children.The research was divided into two parts: the first study explored the developmental changes of 3-5 year-old child's lying behavior for others' gain by an adapted window task,with comparing children's behavior of lying for themselves and for another.The second study measured theory of mind through theory-of-mind scale and empathy through Affective Situations Test for Empathy.Then we explored the relationship between other-benefiting lies and empathy?theory of mind(ToM).The main conclusions of this research are as follows:At the age of 3,only 34.1% of children said other-benefiting lies,and 67.7% of children said self-benefiting lies.The difference between the people ratios of the two kinds of lies was significant.With age,the ratio of children who said both kind lies increased significantly.But the difference between them was getting smaller and smaller,and the difference disappeared at the age of 5.The study also showed the key time points for the two lies.The proportion of the children who said self-benefiting lies increased significantly at the age of about 3.5;the proportion of the children who said other-benefiting lies increased significantly at the age of about 5.The score of other-benefiting lies was significantly related to both ToM and empathy.The score of self-benefiting lies and ToM were also significantly correlated.In addition,the scores of ToM who said self-benefiting lies were significantly higher than children who did not lie.No significant difference on the scores of ToM was found between children who said other-benefiting lies and who did not.However,a significant difference was found on the scores of empathy.The scores of empathy who said otherbenefiting lies were significantly higher than children who did not lie.