Who lies to protect another? Motivational, behavioral, and socio-cognitive predictors of children’s interventional deception

The objective of the current study was to examine how the expected rewards, theory of mind, and false praise-telling relate to interventional deception that prevents moral transgression. A sample of 114 children aged 4-7 years participated in the study. The expected rewards ratio was a statistically significant predictor of interventional deception, with the children being most likely to deceive to prevent moral transgressions when the deception involved high personal gain. Overall, children who gave false praise and who passed the hidden emotion task were more likely to deceive than those who told another individual an unpleasant truth and failed the emotion understanding task. The results are discussed with respect to diverse developmental conceptions and studies on prosocial behaviors and sociocognitive and cultural factors involved in deception.