Table Of ContentCOGNITIVE AND
SOCIAL FACTORS
IN
EARLY
DECEPTION
COGNITNE AND
SOCIAL FACTORS
IN
EARLY
DECEPTIO.N
Edited by
Stephen J. Ceci
Michelle DeSimone Leichtman
Maribeth Putnick
Cornell University
M
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS
1992 Hillsdale, New Jersey Hove and London
Copyright© 1992 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in
any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other
means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
365 Broadway
Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cognitive and social factors in early deception I edited by Stephen J. Ceci, Michelle DeSimone
Leichtman, Maribeth Putnick
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-0953-8
I. Truthfulness and falsehood in children. 2. Cognition in children. 3. Truthfulness and
falsehood in children-Social aspects.
BF723.T8C65 1992
155.4' 18-dc20 92-1120
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
Contents
Introduction: Ellie the Elephant Meets Mommy's Accuser vii
1 "I Know That You Know That I Know That You Broke the
Toy": A Brief Report of Recursive Awareness Among 3-Year-Olds
Stephen J Ceci and Michelle DeSimone Leichtman 1
2 Uar! Liar! Pants Afire!
Roger V. Burton and Abigail F. Strichartz 11
3 Children and the Truth
jeffrey J Haugaard and N. Dickon Reppucci 29
4 Believing and Deceiving: Steps to Becoming a Good Liar
Susan R Leekam 47
5 Sex, Lies, and Smiling Faces: A Brief Report on Gender
Differences in 3-Year-Olds' Deceptions
Georgia N. Nigro and Andrea L. Snow 63
6 Adults' Liability for Children's "Lie-Ability": Can Adults Coach
Children to Lie Successfully?
Carol Satterfield Tate, Amye R Warren, and Thomas M Hess 69
7 Children's Lying and Truthfulness: Implications
for Children's Testimony
Kay Bussey 89
v
vi CONTENTS
8 Other Minds, Obligation, and Honesty
Owen Flanagan 111
9 Commentary: On the Structure of Lies
and Deception Experiments
Mark G. Frank 127
10 Commentary: The Occasions of Perjury
Lucy S. McGough 147
Author Index 169
Subject Index 175
Introduction:
Ellie the Elephant Meets
Mommy's Accuser
Our beliefs about children's use and understanding of deception have been forged
largely from data gathered in emotionally neutral and motivationally weak stud
ies. Like the decades of structuralist studies of children's logical abilities that
started in Geneva but soon spread elsewhere, studies of deception have long been
tests of whether children would be willing to tell small lies or recognize small
deceits, with little or no motive for doing so. And like those studies of logical
ability that were conducted in a limited range of contexts, studies of deception
are being challenged by researchers who have added strong motives and supplied
rich contexts. Recently, researchers using strong motivational manipulations
(e.g., protecting loved ones, avoiding embarrassment, keeping a promise), have
begun to provide evidence that even very young children use deception. What is
not so clear is whether this same research demonstrates that these children
understand their behavior as deceptive or whether it is merely an unwitting
means to some end. This is a problem that has occupied the attention of some
"theory-of-mind" researchers, who have debated the logical prerequisites and
the developmental trajectory of understanding deception. But like their earlier
counterparts, who were interested in the development of logical abilities, these
researchers have forged their opinions on data gathered from emotionally neutral
and motivationally weak settings. A contextualist account of cognitive develop
ment suggests that children may be more likely to exhibit an understanding of
deception when they are assessed in settings that are highly meaningful and
affectively laden than when they are studied in weak or affectively limited con
texts.
Two years ago, a colleague recounted a humorous story involving his daughter
and her 3-year-old son. The latter had been watching his favorite television
vii
viii INTRODUCTION
program, "Mr. Rogers," when he went to his mother, who was in an adjoining
room, and reported that "Mr. Rogers touched my pee-pee." The colleague
thought his grandson's story was delightfully funny, though he realized the
implications of such behavior for allegations of sexual abuse. (Suppose, for
example, that his grandson had reported that his babysitter had touched his "pee
pee" or took his photograph in the bathroom while the mother was gone; his
mother's and grandfather's reactions might have been far different.) But it may be
that a 3-year-old would never have made such an allegation about a "real"
person, due to the belief that such a report would engender alarm rather than
humor in a listener. If correct, this would imply that 3-year-old children have
the ability to read the minds of their audiences and systematically differentiate
their statements in light of such realizations. This is where Ellie the Elephant
comes in.
One of the most fundamental abilities an individual can possess is that of
inferring the contents of another's mind. It is this ability more than any other that
allows us to navigate our everyday social environment and accurately predict the
cognitive and affective states of those around us. It is this ability that is said to be
lacking in persons with autism and to be absent in very young children, though
the latter claim is a source of current contention (see Harris, 1991).
Theory-of-mind researchers have studied the ability of preschool-aged chil
dren to infer the mental states of their listeners, employing paradigms that resem
ble those used by early cognitive developmental researchers to study logical
reasoning skills. And like the research on children's logical skills, each new
claim about young children's theories of mind seems to arouse a counter-claim.
In the typical study, a 4-year-old is told that Ellie the Elephant likes to drink
Coca-Cola. As she is about to enter a room where there is a can of Coke, a
mischievous monkey empties the Coke and replaces it with milk, a substance that
Ellie does not like. Children are asked to judge how Ellie would feel when she first
entered the room and spotted the can of Coca-Cola on the table (but before she
actually took a sip and discovered the ruse), and they are also asked to judge how
Ellie would feel after she drank from the Coca-Cola can and discovered the trick.
Because knowledge of the second question requires only that children imagine
Ellie's desires, it is cognitively less sophisticated than the first question (Harris,
1991), which requires not only that children imagine her desires but also her
reaction to the ruse, given her belief in an alternate reality-namely, that the can
contains Coca-Cola. Although 4-year-olds can answer the second question with a
very high degree of accuracy, it is not until the age of 6 that they answer over
50% of the first type of question correctly.
Thus, it is claimed that, prior to the age of 6 or 7, children substitute their own
knowledge for another's ignorance when trying to read his or her mind. Accord
ing to this genre of research, a full-blown theory of mind probably does not
emerge before middle childhood, although Harris (1991) suggested that a
INTRODUCTION ix
"model of mind" exists much earlier that permits children to run mental simula
tions of their listeners' desires.
After nearly a half century of doing studies of this sort, psychologists are now
discovering that the type of materials and procedures used to infer a theory of
mind can greatly influence whether children will be able to read the mind of
another. For example, Dias and Harris (1988) showed that young children could
deduce from counterfactual premises (e.g., if all cats bark, and if Rex is a cat,
then does Rex bark?) but only when the premises are presented as a story or with
storylike intonation. When children are presented the same material in a matter
of-fact tone of voice, they give no evidence of being able to re?.son from counter
factuals. It is yet another illustration of the importance of context in cognitive
development, a growing trend among cognitivists (Ceci, 1990). Several of the
chapters of this volume provide evidence that even very young children demon
strate a theory of mind when the motivational salience of the procedures is tilted
toward mind reading.
For children to engage in full-blown deception they must be able to read the
listener's mind. And to read another's mind, they must be able to do two things at
once. First, they must be able to conjure up an alternative reality that they can
temporarily substitute for the reality they know to be authentic. (For example,
they can appreciate that a sponge looks like a rock to someone viewing it from
another angle.) Second, they must be able to set aside their own beliefs in the
unreality of the alternative state (e.g., that it is a rock), and assume the perspec
tive of the individual who believes this to be a reality. In short, they must be able
to substitute belief for disbelief, in accepting the stance of another. This is also
necessary for children to appreciate that their own prior mental states were false
(e.g., realizing that at one time they also thought that the sponge was a rock).
What is interesting about the new work on early deception, much of which is
described in this volume, is that researchers have ventured outside the standard
paradigms and started embedding their studies in affectively laden contexts,
contexts that in some cases push the outer envelope of ethical permissability by
subjecting young children to what seem like stressful and disturbing choices
between protecting those they love and being honest. This is where "mommy's
accuser" comes in. As can be seen in the following chapters, children's behav
iors in such contexts have often resulted in a far different picture of their ability to
infer the contents of their listener's minds than research has carried out in sani
tized settings about mythical animals and games. For example, Haugaard and his
colleagues (chapter 3) show that children who watch a film in which a child is
told by his mother to tell a lie will often distort what the mother told the child in
order to avoid disclosing the mother's lie. That is, they will claim that the
fictional event that the mother told the child to say he saw, really did happen.
These preschoolers seem to be saying that "mothers do not lie, therefore I must
have seen it somewhere even though it did not appear to occur in the video."
X INTRODUCTION
Even if one contests this interpretation, it is clear that these young children do not
substitute a character's ignorance with their own knowledge, but do exactly what
has been the source of dispute; that is, they take the stance of another and
imagine an alternate reality, one that they did not observe or even believe, but
that they accept in order to conform to their stereotypes about mothers' honesty.
To the extent that researchers have delved into emotionally strong contexts in
which the protection of loved ones, the avoidance of embarrassment, and the
acquisition of sought-after material rewards are at stake, the results suggest that
preschool-aged children not only use deception but also understand it.
Laypersons use the term lying promiscuously, to refer to false words or deeds.
Little consideration is given to the intention or to the cognitive awareness of the
"liar." Lay definitions of lies run into serious difficulty, because they do not
distinguish statements that are obvious lies from those that are decidedly less
than lies. In part, such definitional morass has spawned an entire industry of
semiotic analysis. Unlike the layperson, psychological researchers often use the
term lying to refer to the deliberate, conscious production of a response that the
child believes to be incorrect for the purpose of achieving a goal, namely,
misleading the listener to believe it is correct. They do not assume the malintent
on the part of the "liar" that the term sometimes connotes, nor do they assume
that the liar has solved the philosophical problem of inferring the contents of the
listener's mind (Chandler, 1989). Their definition is operational and functional,
as far as it goes.
In chapter 8, Flanagan provides an interesting philosophical analysis of de
ception. To engage in a minimal lie, he argues, the perpetrator who believes X
must do something or omit something with the intent of making the listener think
"not X." Thus, a minimal lie requires understanding the complex relation be
tween actions (pointing in the wrong direction, speaking falsely), and the pro
duction of false beliefs in one's audience. Flanagan's definition of deceit moves
the debate over children's use and u.nderstanding of deception squarely into the
realm of theory of mind. To deceive, according to his analysis, children must
read at least some of their listener's mind. His analysis holds promise for re
searchers in this area by posing the issue of what is meant by deception in more
precise language than heretofore has been the case.
A full-blown theory of mind allows individuals to engage in activities such as
deception, impression management, marketing, and various forms of suasion.
There are many methods of assessing whether a child possesses a theory of mind,
depending on whether one wishes to examine the ability to infer emotions,
beliefs, or perceptual knowledge. But, as was asserted earlier, most of what we
know about this topic has been the product of fairly sanitized settings in which
children are asked to make judgments about events that hold little interest or
emotion for them. It is of interest, therefore, to examine whether very young
children can exhibit a model of mind when the context is one that is highly
meaningful to them, such as deceiving others to achieve some important goal.
