The Effect Of Mental State Talk On Children’s Pro-social Lying

Lying is prevalent in the process of social interaction.Depending on the significance of lying to society,it can be divided into anti-social and pro-social lying.Pro-social lying is not only helpful in interpersonal relationships,but also has a positive social value in that it brings positive effects to the recipient of the lie without harming others,Thus,current social values tend to view pro-social lying as a helpful behaviour.On the other hand,pro-social lying is an important component of children’s moral development and involves complex cognitive processes behind it.Parents are the most important actors in children’s development and socialization.And they have an important influence on children’s cognitive and moral development.The social interaction between parents and children is also an important perspective and channel for studying children’s social development.However,little research has been conducted on the influence of family social interactions,especially daily communication interactions,on children’s cognitive and moral development,and few studies have focused on its influence on children’s pro-social lying behaviour.The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of parents’ use of mental state talk on children’s pro-social lying.Using a combination of online and offline research,two experiments were conducted with 146 preschool children aged 4-6 years,using wordless storybooks to measure parents’ mental state talk,four psycho-theoretical stories to measure children’s abilities of theory of mind,and a ’picture score’ to measure children’s pro-social lying.To explore the impact of using of parental mental state talk in relation to children’s pro-social lying behaviour and to test the validity of the online study.Study 1 was conducted primarily via online video conferencing.Results showed that 69(75.8%)of the 91 children aged 4-6 years told pro-social lies in order to accommodate the feelings of the main participant.The ’simple desire’ component of the mental state talk was found to be effective in positively predicting children’s level of pro-social lying.Furthermore,no correlation was found between theory of mind and children’s level of pro-social lying.Study 2 was conducted as an offline study and found that 47(85.5%)of the 55 children aged 4-6 years told pro-social lies in order to accommodate the feelings of the subject.Study 2 also found that ’simple desires’ positively predicted children’s level of pro-social lying.However,unlike Study 1,Simple Perception was associated with Theory of Mind and Simple Emotion was associated with children’s pro-social lying.The present study found a positive predictive effect of ’simple desires’ on children’s pro-social lying and expanded the avenues of research.The findings suggest that parents can enhance children’s helpfulness in parenting by exposing them more often to words that involve ’simple desires’.This not only provides a new pathway for teaching children’s moral development at home,but also provides inspiration for schooling preschoolers.