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The influence of contextual factors on 4-year-olds’ understanding of lies and truths

  • THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
  • 2014, 27(2), pp.97-112
  • Publisher : The Korean Society For Developmental Psychology
  • Research Area : Social Science > Psychological Science

송미리 1 Hyun Joo SONG 1

1연세대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The current study investigated whether 4-year-old Korean children consider situational factors when comprehending a protagonist’s lie- and truth-telling. Participants answered a series of questions after listening to stories in which the protagonist lied or told the truth during a transgression (e.g., not brushing his/her teeth) or a polite interaction (e.g., thinking his/her friend’s new shoes look awful). Children more positively evaluated lying during a politeness context than during a transgression context. Children also evaluated lying more positively than truth-telling during the politeness context. However, children attributed more positive emotions to protagonists who lied than to those who told the truth, regardless of context. In addition, there seemed to be gender differences in the development of moral evaluation and emotion inference at the age of 4. The results demonstrate that preschoolers understand the influence of contextual factors when evaluating moral value of lying and truth telling but not when inferring a protagonist’s emotions after lying or truth telling.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.