The Influence Of Negative Self-conscious Emotion On Children's Lying Behavior

Lying is the behavior that an individual consciously transmits false information so that the receiver forms false beliefs.As children grow older,and when they are 4 to 5 years old,the frequency of children's lying behavior not only reaches the peak,but also their lying strategies and skills are rich and varied.Habitual lying will have a negative impact on individual social relationships,such as destroying others' trust and damaging friendship.Therefore,how to reduce preschool children's lying rate has become a concern of educators.The existing methods to intervene children's lying behavior are mainly to affect their internal cognition,but ignore the effect of emotional factors on children's lying behavior.Guilt and shame,these two negative self-conscious emotions are involved in the process of cognitive assessment and can guide the individual's own behavior.When an individual's behavior violates social norms or experiences social comparison failure,the resulting negative self-consciousness will help the individual identify and correct his mistakes and restrain his behavior.Current research shows that children as young as 4 are better able to experience guilt and shame,and can adjust their behavior according to their emotional state.Therefore,the main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of negative self-conscious emotions on young children's lying behavior.This study consisted of three experiments involving 336 children aged 4-6 years.(1)Experiment 1,in the classic paradigm of resisting temptation to test children's lying behavior,the negligence situational paradigm was used to induce children's guilt emotions.The results showed that,compared with the absence of emotional induction,the incidence of lying behavior in children aged 4-6 under the condition of guilt-induced emotion was significantly lower.(2)Experiment 2,in the classic paradigm of resisting temptation to test children's lying behavior,task failure situational paradigm and violation situational paradigm were respectively used to induce children's achievement shame and violation shame emotions.The results showed that,the incidence of lying in children aged 4-6 under the condition of offending shame emotion induction was significantly lower than that without emotion induction.However,there was no significant difference in the incidence of lying among children aged 4-6 under the condition of achievement shame induction compared with those without emotion induction.(3)Experiment 3,in the classic temptation resisting paradigm test of children's lying behavior,video paradigm was used to induce children's sad emotions(negative basic emotions).The results showed that,there was no significant difference in the incidence of lying among 4-6 years old children under the condition of emotional distress and no emotional distress.In summary,the study has drawn the conclusion:The negative self-emotion only involves the emotion caused by harming others' interests or social rules,that is,guilt and violation shame can effectively reduce the incidence of children's lying behavior.Achievement shame and general negative emotion have no effect on children's lying behavior.