From Kantian to Machiavellian deceivers: Development of children’s reasoning and self-reported use of secrets and lies

Abstract

This article examines developmental differences in children’s reasoning about secrecy and lying as well as their use of these behaviors in two studies. Study 1 explored children’s (N = 66, 8–15 years) reasoning about the circumstances in which secrecy and lying are acceptable. Study 2 analyzed children’s (N = 50, 8–15 years) actual reported daily frequency of secrets and lies in relation to maladaptive behavior problems. Overall, findings suggest that children’s motivations for secrecy and lying become more nuanced, and seemingly utilitarian, with age, and that children’s use of concealment may be an adaptive tool that facilitates social relationships.

Keywords

Adolescents children concealment lies secrets

Philosophers, religious leaders, and scholars have long debated the acceptability of secrets and lies in everyday life. In many cases, these views have been diametrically opposed to each other, such that some philosophers have asserted this type of deception is never acceptable (e.g. Immanuel Kant), and some have asserted that deception is sometimes acceptable (e.g. Niccolo Machiavelli). Children are socialized into these norms by parents, educators, and other cultural influences, and these sources of influence help shape their thinking about the acceptability of such communication practices. Although philosophers have often debated the moral acceptability of lies and secrets, a related question that has emerged is at what stage do children understand these concepts? As they mature, their ability to reason about secrecy and lying provides an indication of their social and moral development. To further probe children’s understanding of secrets and lies, we interviewed children about their definitions, perceptions, and judgments of secret-keeping and lie-telling to generate a theoretical understanding of how the concept of secrets and lies develops through middle childhood to mid-adolescence.

Concept of lies and secrets

Lies have been defined as false statements spoken with the intent to deceive another person (Coleman and Kay, 1981), and are inherently deceptive in nature because they conceal the truth from one or more receivers and lead them to believe a misrepresentation of reality. Secrets have been defined as knowledge that is intentionally withheld from others (Bok, 1989); thus, secrets are an inherent form of concealment, but not necessarily deception. Given that secrets and lies share the overlapping construct of hiding information, the term concealment is used to refer to the combined construct.

Development of the concept of secrets and lies

Part of children’s ability to grasp the concept of secrecy and lying requires the cognitive skills to take another person’s perspective to determine information that another person has or does not have about a situation. Pipe and Goodman (1991) explained, “A fully mature concept of a secret requires the child to appreciate that he or she has knowledge that another person does not have” (p. 35), which is also required for a successful lie. This perspective-taking ability is known as theory of mind (ToM) (Wimmer and Perner, 1983). Children demonstrate early ToM at 2.5 years (Chandler et al., 1989), and their basic ToM emerges later, around 4–6 years of age (Wimmer and Perner, 1983).

Children’s conceptual understanding of secrecy develops between 5 and 12 years of age; first they grasp that secrets should be kept, and later they grasp that secrets are shared and kept according to trust levels shared with another individual (Watson and Valtin, 1997b). These trust levels are built on the understanding that the other individual also intends to keep the secret (Watson and Valtin, 1997b). Thus, for children to grasp the concept of secrecy, there also needs to be an understanding of trust. For example, they need to understand that trust is a mutual action, like secrecy, and that keeping confidential information builds trust whereas betraying confidences breaks trust (e.g. Rotenberg et al., 2008). As such, children’s understanding of secrecy may be related to their ability to take another person’s perspective to determine their intentions and whether the person has an equivalent understanding of trust (Watson and Valtin, 1997a).

Similar to secrecy, children’s conceptual understanding of lying develops with age. For example, Wimmer and Perner (1983) found that very few 4- to 5-year-olds were capable of correctly identifying a lie in a story setting, but that the majority of 5- to 6-year-olds were capable. Furthermore, children play an active role in shaping their understanding of both secrecy and lying as they integrate their thoughts with new experiences that continue to shape their understanding and consequently their reasoning. For example, children may be taught by their parents that lying is wrong (Lavoie et al., 2016), but they may also observe their parents lying (Heyman et al., 2013), which likely influences their understanding of the concept as well as their reasoning as to when lying may be acceptable. Overall, children’s understanding of the concept of secrecy and lying emerges in the early years and continues to develop with age and social influences.

Moral ratings of secrets and lies

Children are better able to correctly discriminate between secrets and non-secrets between the ages of 4 and 6 years (Anagnostaki et al., 2010). Their preferences for sharing secrets also change with age. One study found that children 5–6 years old were more likely to share a guilty secret when they thought that sharing was the best moral decision, but children 10–12 were more likely to keep a secret to protect social relationships (Watson and Valtin, 1997a), which suggests children rate the acceptability of secret-keeping according to the content of the secret.

Children may also rate the acceptability of lie-telling according to the purpose of the lie. Sweetser’s (1987) Cultural Model of Lying asserts that both the context of the lie and the intent of the person telling the lie influence the extent to which the falsehood is judged. In this way, some lies are judged negatively as antisocial lies that have the potential to damage interpersonal relationships, and other lies are judged more positively as prosocial lies that have the potential to spare the feelings of the lie-recipient or benefit another. Children rate telling any type of lie to be worse than telling the truth, but within types of lies, they rate antisocial lies to conceal a transgression as worse than prosocial lies told to spare another’s feelings in a politeness context (Heyman et al., 2009). Children’s ratings for different types of lies may also evolve with age. In middle childhood (age 9), they are more likely to endorse lies to be polite or spare another person’s feelings than younger children (Heyman et al., 2009). Adolescents rate lies told to conceal a transgression negatively, but overall, they rate lies told to avoid parental restrictions on their activities as acceptable (Perkins and Turiel, 2007). Thus, overall children’s social and moral development may influence their reasoning about the acceptability of secrecy and lying.

Current study

Children are the most knowledgeable sources of information about their own experiences—the “experts”—especially for topics of lying and secrecy that are by nature hidden. Indeed, sociologists have asserted children are the main actors who shape and form their perceptions of reality (James, 2007; James and Prout, 1997). In the case of concealment, this active role that children play in the development of their understanding of social concepts around them indicates that they are key participants who should be consulted directly for their thoughts and perceptions about lie-telling and secret-keeping.

Children’s reasoning about concealment and deception also provides insight into their understandings of and motivations for their behavior, and can inform parents and professionals working with children about ways to support social and moral development. One method of asking children directly is through interviews to collect nuanced explanations of their reasoning. As such, Study 1 used semi-structured interviews to explore how children’s reasoning about lying and secrecy changes with age.

Study 1

Method

Participants

Participants were 66 children, 8–15 years old (M = 11.29 years, standard deviation [SD] = 2.16 years), 38% male and 62% female who came to a university research laboratory in a large metropolitan city (population greater than 4,000,000) accompanied by a parent. Parents reported ethnicities as Canadian (56%), African American (11%), Jewish (9%), Arab (5%), Latin, German, Czech, and Indian (each at 3%), and other (7%). Parents also reported their highest level of education, with the three most common as bachelor’s degree (32%), master’s degree (26%), and college diploma (i.e. pre-university studies or trade school; 24%). The three most common levels of household income were CAD75,000–CAD90,000 (65%), greater than CAD90,000 (15%) and CAD60,000–CAD75,000 (9%).

Procedure

Parents consented to their child’s participation and completed a brief demographics form while their child engaged in a semi-structured interview with a researcher. Children were informed about the interview process and provided assent. Each interview followed a protocol of open-ended questions: definitions of secrets and lies, perceptions of who keeps secrets and tells lies, discussion of their own secret-keeping and lie-telling behavior, and judgments about the acceptability of secrets and lies (see Table 1 for interview questions). The interviews were conducted in a quiet location and lasted approximately 20 minutes in total.

Table 1.

Study 1 interview questions.

Definition of a secret

What do you think a secret is?

Definition of a lie

What do you think a lie is?

Perceptions of who has secrets

Who has secrets?

Who tells secrets?

Who keeps secrets?

Perceptions of who lies

Who tells lies?

Children’s own secret-keeping

Do you keep secrets?

How many times do you think you keep something secret in a day?

Who do you tell your secrets to?

Why do you keep secrets?

Children’s own lie-telling

Do you tell lies?

How many times do you think you tell a lie in a day?

Who do you tell lies to?

Why do you tell lies?

Acceptability of keeping secrets

Are there times when it is okay to tell a secret? Not okay?

Are there times when it is okay to keep a secret? Not okay?

Acceptability of telling lies

Are there times when it is okay to tell a lie? Not okay?

Results

Analytic strategy

Descriptive information was calculated for children’s interview responses regarding the frequency of secrets they keep and lies they tell. Next, interview transcriptions were coded using analytic induction to create categories that summarized and organized the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006) according to age groups each representing a 2-year block to capture similarities and differences within and across age groups. Within each age group, interviews were further divided into three sections that corresponded to the interview questions for thematic analysis: (1) children’s definitions of secrets and lies, (2) their perceptions about who keeps secrets and who tells lies, and (3) their judgments about the acceptability of secrecy and lying.

The goal of each of these themes was to capture the commonality of participants’ responses at each age group to facilitate a developmental comparison (Breakwell, 2006). As such, to be an emerging theme, the idea had to be repeated across several participants and had to capture the essence of participants’ responses within that particular section. There were three to five emerging themes per section per age group. Next, the emerging themes within the same sections were compared by age group to generate a main theme that represented the developmental trajectory of children’s thoughts within each section. Overall, the emerging themes were similar in the youngest two categories (8–9 and 10–11), and in the oldest two categories (12–13 and 14–15) across sections. From the emerging themes analysis, three main developmental themes for secrets and three main developmental themes for lies surfaced and are described below.

Frequency of secrets and lies

On average, children estimated that they kept 2.71 secrets (SD = 2.82, median = 1.50, range = 0–10), and 4.25 lies (SD = 10.69, median = 1.50, range = 0–78) per day. A negative binomial Poisson regression for overdispersed count variables (Cameron and Trivedi, 1990) was used to determine whether there were age and gender differences in the estimated frequency of secrets children kept and lies they told. Age and gender did predict the estimated daily frequency of secrets children kept daily, χ²(2, N = 63) = 7.87, p = .020 (Table 2), but only gender significantly contributed to the model, b = 0.31, p = .015. Specifically, girls estimated keeping more secrets than boys. Next, a negative binomial Poisson regression was used to analyze age and gender differences in the estimated frequency of lies that children told daily. The model was significant, χ²(2, N = 63) = 6.51, p = .039 (Table 2), and age significantly contributed to the model, b = 0.03, p = .026, such that children estimated telling more lies with age.

Table 2.

Unstandardized regression coefficients for Poisson regression models.

	Coefficient	SE	p	95% CI
Study 1
Children’s estimates of secrecy; χ²(2, N = 63) = 7.87, p = .020
Age	0.03	0.02	.169	−0.01	0.08
Gender	0.31	0.13	.015	0.06	0.57
Children’s estimates of lying; χ²(2, N = 63) = 6.51, p = .039
Age	0.03	0.02	.026	0.004	0.064
Gender	−0.04	0.06	.480	−0.17	0.08
Study 2
Children’s self-reported use of secrecy and lying; χ²(1, N = 50) = 4.04, p = .045
Total problematic behaviors	−0.33	0.17	.056	−0.66	0.01
Children’s self-reported use of secrecy and lying; χ²(2, N = 50) = 10.90, p = .004
Internalizing	−0.32	0.14	.022	−0.59	−0.05
Externalizing	−0.21	0.25	.410	−0.70	0.29

SE: standard error; CI: confidence interval.

Defining secrets

Three main developmental themes emerged from participants’ responses that captured their reasoning about secrecy. The first centered around their definitions of secrets. The youngest participants (ages 8–11) defined secrets as restricting the flow of information between good friends; “A secret is something you tell a friend or someone that you trust and then you ask them not to tell anyone” (female, age 11). They added that secrets were about mean things (i.e. gossip) and were meant to be kept. The oldest participants (ages 12–15) differed from the youngest in their views of secrets. They defined secrets as information that has not been shared with anyone, and that is usually about personal information that would be embarrassing if known. One participant explained, “A secret is […] something you keep for yourself because it’s very important and you don’t want to share it with other people because you are afraid of their reaction” (male, age 15).

Perceiving secrecy in others

Children had several ideas of who they thought kept secrets. The younger children (ages 8–11) asserted that kids have a lot of secrets, more than adults, because they do a lot of bad things that they want to hide from their parents especially. For example, “Kids have more secrets than adults […] because kids get into more trouble, and parents are more responsible than kids” (female, age 9). One participant provided an example, “if the kid broke something and they didn’t want to get in trouble, they would hide it and it would be a secret” (female, age 11). In this theme, the 12- to 13-year-old age group was similar to the 14- to 15-year-old age group, with some nuanced differences regarding their thoughts about secrecy. Both groups thought that everyone had their own secrets, but the 12- to 13-year-olds stated that adults keep secrets more than children because adults are more responsible. One child mentioned, “Adults … are more mature so they know not to keep so many secrets, but teenagers keep a lot of them” (female, age 13). Whereas the 12- to 13-year-olds cited confidence in adults as being mature and trustworthy, the 14- to 15-year-olds asserted that it was the complexity and gravity of adult secrets that increases the need for secrecy.

Judging the act of secret-keeping

Children had several ideas about when it is okay to keep versus tell a secret. The 8- to 11-year-olds were confident that it is not okay to tell secrets that belong to other people, but that it is okay, and necessary, to tell secrets that are dangerous or that could result in someone being hurt. They also mentioned that secrets should be shared “when you can really trust someone” (male, age 9), but that overall “you should keep a secret because secrets are meant to be kept” (male, age 10). The 10- to 11-year-olds added secrets were okay to keep when they were really personal: “if [the secret] is something really really personal you shouldn’t share it” (female, age 11). The adolescents had stronger ideas about when it is acceptable to keep secrets. For this age group, the main idea to emerge was that it is okay to keep a secret if the individual wants to keep it a secret. For example, they said that it is okay to keep secrets to protect other people, such as an incarcerated parent: “it would be a good secret to keep so she wouldn’t be hurt or anything” (female, age 12). Overall, there was a sense that the individual determined when secrets were acceptable to keep, and that this was not governed by an overarching sense of obligation or moral duty. The 14- to 15-year-olds made explicit mention that they determined whether secrets were acceptable to keep according to the perceived consequences of keeping versus sharing. For example,

When someone tells you a secret, it’s because they think you will be able to keep it. If you tell it to someone else, the trust of this person in you will disappear. So this person won’t really want to tell you any secrets, or even be your friend anymore because you told her secret. (Male, age 14)

Several adolescents clarified that really big secrets should be shared. For example, “if someone wants to suicide […] this person can have a lot of trouble […] so now is not a case where you have to keep a secret” (male, age 15), which suggests that in some cases they felt an obligation to share, but overall, there was more of an emphasis on the dual relationship of trust that was dependent on not sharing information.

Defining lies

The younger children defined lies in terms of mistaken statements or concealing misdeeds; they asserted that lies were “when you say something wrong” (female, age 8) or “when you do something bad and you are going to say [something different] to your parents” (male, age 9). Older children (10–15) defined lies as the opposite of reality and explained that you have to know the reality to be able to tell a lie. In this way, they distinguished between a lie and a mistake, whereas the youngest children (8–9) did not. One participant explained a fully actualized concept of lying, “a lie is something where someone is trying to deceive another person by giving them false information. And it doesn’t have to be false information, just what they think is false information” (male, age 10). Apart from the youngest participants (ages 8–9), children (ages 10–15) also defined lies as a tool or excuse to get out of trouble. For example, “[a lie is] say you didn’t do your homework and you tell your teacher ‘I left my homework at home’” (male, age 11). The older participant group (ages 12–15) also defined lies as something that leads to more lies and to bigger consequences. The adolescent group (14–15) further defined lies as a tool used to avoid the fear of judgment, “[a lie is] not the truth … because they’re too scared to tell the truth, scared that people will judge them” (male, age 14).

Perceiving lying behavior

The 8- to 9-year-olds perceived that adults “don’t really tell lies” (female, age 9), or that “sometimes” adults might tell lies (male, age 9). Children who did assert that adults tell lies explained that the lies that adults tell are often about fictional characters, such as Santa Clause, and about things that they do not follow through on, such as stating a leaving time that is later changed. The youngest participants also stated that children do tell lies, especially out of fear that another individual would be angry by something they had done, “they want to get away with like buying a game on their mom’s iPad or their dad’s” (female, age 9). The 10- to 11-year-olds thought that adults might tell some lies, “maybe like small little things, but not big lies that would affect their whole life or anything,” (female, age 11) and “but only sometimes, not normally” (female, age 11). They thought that “adults are more mature” (male, age 10), and “if they are appropriate adults, I don’t think they would tell a lie” (male, age 11), which suggests that even the 10- to 11-year-olds thought that lying is more typical for children because they are less mature than adults. The 12- to 13-year-olds thought similarly to the 10- to 11-year-olds that children tell more lies than adults, but this group perceived adults’ lies to be more serious than children’s lies. For example, “kids probably tell more lies, but adults’ lies are like bigger lies” (female, age 13). The 14- to 15-year-olds asserted that everyone tells lies, regardless of age, and that people lie when they are afraid of the consequences, for example, “A person who tells lies is a person that is afraid of facing the consequences of his acts so he’s lying … to not fac[e] the consequences” (male, age 15).

Judging the moral acceptability of lie-telling

Children had several thoughts regarding the acceptability of lie-telling. The youngest participants, 8–9 years, asserted that lying is categorically wrong. However, they also added that they tell lies to get out of trouble, despite the fact that they believed it to be wrong. To explain why lying is never acceptable, they added someone would find out about their misdeeds and that they would be in even more trouble, which suggests that they conceptualize other people, in particular, parents and adults, as having an ability to determine whether children are lying. The 10- to 11-year-olds also asserted that lying is categorically wrong, but added that they might be okay to protect someone or to not hurt someone. They added that it was better to tell the truth and find a solution to the problem than to tell a lie. For example,

It’s not okay to tell a lie. It’s not okay, even if you did something wrong you should tell the truth because as soon as you lie, if this person eventually finds out, they will forgive you when you tell the truth at the beginning. (Female, age 10)

Conversely, the older participants held that lying is sometimes acceptable, such as to make people feel good about themselves. For example, “When it benefits somebody, like saying they did something that they were supposed to do when they didn’t, so it benefits them in the short run” (male, age 12). They also added the qualifiers that lies should be simple, so as not to get caught, as well as infrequent:

[Lying is not okay] when it’s such drastic measures that you are lying about. Or just if other people are interwoven in the lie, or like it just becomes bigger than something you can handle. Or if it’s bigger than something that you can make an excuse about. (Female, age 15)

Finally, they asserted that any lies told should serve a purpose, such as to protect oneself or another person, and should not be told simply for the sake of telling a lie.

Discussion

Children’s responses suggest that their reasoning about secrecy and lying, such as who uses this behavior and when it is acceptable to do so, becomes more nuanced with age. Additionally, their motivations for keeping secrets and telling lies also appear to shift as they enter early adolescence.

Theoretical implications for secrecy

There were several developmental differences in children’s ideas about secrets. Older children both defined secrets in terms of personal information and asserted that secrets did not have to be shared unless the individual wants to share the information. Their responses suggest that they had a heightened sense of self-awareness that their secrets belonged to them and that they were in control of information shared. For them, keeping a secret was a way of maintaining personal peer relationships, perhaps due in part to the bond of trust that was formed when secrets were kept. In this way, guarding secrets that one was asked to keep can be understood as a trust-building activity that contributes to social bonding and maintaining personal relationships (i.e. Watson and Valtin, 1997b). The younger children did not demonstrate this same sense of self in their responses. They had a sense of obligation that secrets needed to be shared when an individual could be hurt, thus for them the determining factor for sharing versus keeping a secret seemed to be out of an external sense of duty or obligation to share, rather than an internalized decision of how sharing versus keeping would affect personal relationships and trust.

The older participants (12–15 years) also commented that they determine whether or not to keep a secret according to the perceived reaction of the information receiver. One way this finding can be understood is through the social cognitive theory of morality (Bandura, 1991), which posits an individual’s actions are the result of the individual’s ability to cognitively process social cues and expectations of the consequences of their behavior. The individual uses these social cues to determine how to act in a particular situation that encompasses a salient moral component. For example, one participant explained that if she thought that a parent would be angry about information she was keeping a secret, she would conceal it and not share. However, if she thought the parent would not react negatively, she would be more inclined to share the secret. Thus, adolescents may be using the social cues in their environments to process whether or not to share information that they are keeping secret. For the older participants, this was largely determined according to the anticipated reactions of the secret-receiver, which is similar to previous findings that adolescents who perceive that their parents will disagree with their leisure activities are more likely to omit or conceal information than those who do not perceive that their parents will disagree (Darling et al., 2006).

Theoretical implications for lying

Overall, the youngest participants perceived that adults do not really tell lies, but the oldest participants thought that everyone tells lies. There was also a developmental shift in children’s moral judgment of the acceptability of lie-telling from asserting that lying is categorically wrong to thinking that lying is sometimes acceptable when it serves a purpose. These themes imply that children’s reasoning about lying is affected by their ability to look past their own behavior to understand others’ behavior.

One aspect that might influence this developmental shift in reasoning is children’s ability to take another’s perspective. As they age, children’s ability to understand the hidden nature of others’ thoughts and actions reveals to them that lying is a social behavior that is more ubiquitous than they might have been socialized to believe. In fact, previous research findings indicate that lying is likely a daily occurrence for many adults (DePaulo et al., 1996); indeed, the adolescents (12–15) in our sample were confident that everyone tells lies at least at some point. Conversely, the younger participants (8–11) indicated that they did not think that adults tell lies.

Despite the fact that it is likely a common social behavior for many adults, the overwhelming majority of parents indicate that they teach their children lying is never acceptable (Lavoie et al., 2016). Yet, although they may teach that lying is never acceptable, many parents think that lying is actually sometimes acceptable in everyday life (Lavoie et al., 2016), and many parents admit that they have lied to their children to obtain compliance in daily activities, such as leaving locations (Heyman et al., 2013). Together, the younger children’s assertions that lying is never acceptable and that adults do not tell lies suggests that their perspective-taking ability is not developed enough to challenge the socialization messages that they are taught by parents to be able to see the disconnect between parents’ teaching (lying is never acceptable) and the behavior of the people around them (lying is a common social behavior).

Finally, the girls in our sample estimated keeping more secrets on a daily basis than the boys in our sample. A previous study with adolescents found that girls reported more secret-keeping than boys (Frijns and Finkenauer, 2009), which may suggest that secret-keeping is more salient for girls than boys; however, further research is needed to test this hypothesis. In terms of lie-telling, children estimated that the frequency of their lie-telling increased with age. Experimental research with children and adolescents has generally found that children are less likely to tell an antisocial lie in a laboratory setting with age (i.e. Evans and Lee, 2011), but more likely to tell a prosocial lie in early adolescence (Popliger et al., 2011). Overall, children’s estimates of their secret-keeping and lie-telling behavior suggest that girls may keep secrets more frequently and adolescents may tell lies more frequently, but children’s estimates of their deceptive behavior may not accurately reflect their actual secret-keeping and lie-telling. As such, the purpose of Study 2 was to follow-up with children’s perceived estimates of secret-keeping and lie-telling to explore children’s self-reports of secret-keeping and lie-telling in relation to maladaptive behavior.

Study 2

The results of Study 1 suggest that lie-telling and secret-keeping is a daily occurrence for children and that their motivations for using these types of concealment change with age. However, a further question that remains is how do children’s estimates of secret-keeping and lie-telling compare to their actual records of these concealment strategies? Additionally, based on the results of Study 1 that suggest children’s lying and secrecy can be motivated by selfish or thoughtful intent for others, how do children’s reported frequency of lie-telling and secret-keeping correspond to parent reports of children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior? These questions can provide further information about children’s use of concealment as a maladaptive or adaptive tool that can impede or facilitate interpersonal relationships.

Method

Participants

Participants were 50 children, ages 8–15 years (M = 10.89 years, SD = 2.19 years), 42% male and 56% female who were recruited from a large metropolitan city (population greater than 4,000,000) accompanied by a parent. Parents reported their own and child’s ethnicities as primarily Canadian (56%), Italian (8%), African American or Greek (each at 6%), German, Latin, Arab, or Czech (each at 4%), and other (8%). Parents also reported their own level of education and the three most common were bachelor’s degree (36%), master’s degree (26%), and college diploma (22%). Finally, the three most common levels of household income were CAD75,000–CAD90,000 (64%), greater than CAD90,000 (20%), and CAD60,000–CAD75,000 (10%).

Measures

Children’s behavior problems

Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1999) to indicate the levels of problematic behavior for their child, which was divided into three domains: internalizing (e.g. behaviors suggesting anxiety, depression, social withdrawal or isolation, somatic problems), externalizing (e.g. aggression, disregard for external rules), and total problems.

Children’s daily records of lying or secrecy

Children kept a daily record of the number of secrets they kept or lies they told (56% kept a record of secrets kept, 44% kept a record of lies told) over 3 days in a standard diary recording package using a small finger tally counter, which children wore on a finger or kept in a pocket. In the diary package, children recorded the day of the week, the number of secrets or lies per day, and whether they had any challenges while keeping the tally record. After the 3-day report was complete, children returned the package in a postage-paid envelope to the research institution.

Results

Children recorded a mean average of 2.08 secrets per day over three consecutive days (n = 28, median = 2.00, SD = 1.80, range = 0–7.3), and a mean average of 1.90 lies per day (n = 22, median = 1.30, SD = 2.07, range = 0–7.7). An independent samples t-test was conducted to test for significant differences in mean frequency between secrets and lies, and was not significant, t(48) = −0.35, p = .731, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [−1.29, 0.91]. Consequently, the average daily frequency of secrets and lies were collapsed in further analyses to examine overall concealment.

A negative binomial Poisson regression was conducted to analyze age and gender differences in the average daily frequency of children’s concealment, however no significant differences emerged, χ²(3, N = 49) = 0.92, p = .822, 95% CI age = [−0.70, 0.66], gender = [−0.91, 1.10], and age by gender interaction = [−0.36, 0.43], as such age and gender were not considered further.

A negative binomial Poisson regression was also used to examine the relation between children’s total problematic behaviors and the average daily frequency of their self-reported concealment. Children’s grouping as “normal,” “borderline,” or “clinical” based on their total problematic behaviors score was the predictor and their average daily frequency score was the outcome. The overall model was significant, χ²(1, N = 50) = 4.04, p = .045 (Table 2), but the total problems grouping was outside of the alpha = .05 significance range (b = −0.33, p = .056, 95% CI = [−0.66, 0.01]).

Next, we probed children’s internalizing and externalizing grouping to determine which cluster of problematic behaviors might be influencing the relation between problematic behaviors and concealment. Children’s internalizing and externalizing groupings as “normal,” “borderline,” or “clinical,” were the predictors and the child’s average daily frequency score was the outcome. The overall model was significant, χ²(2, N = 50) = 10.90, p = .004 (Table 2). Children’s internalizing grouping (b = −0.32, p = .022, 95% CI = [−0.59, −0.05]) significantly contributed to the model, but their externalizing grouping did not (b = −0.21, p = .410, 95% CI = [−0.70, 0.29]), which suggests that children’s internalizing behaviors were driving the negative relation between behavior problems and average daily concealment reported.

Discussion

To further explore children’s use of concealment on a daily basis, Study 2 examined children’s reported daily frequency of keeping secrets and telling lies in relation to adaptive or maladaptive behavior. Study 2 found that children reported similar daily frequencies of secret-keeping and lie-telling at approximately two per day. Children with higher internalizing behavior problems subscores recorded fewer instances of concealment.

We found that children estimated the frequency of their concealment behavior at a higher rate in Study 1 than they reported in Study 2. It is likely that Study 2 reflects a more accurate depiction of the frequency of children’s secret-keeping and lie-telling than their estimates in Study 1 because tally records were kept daily as the deceptive behavior occurred. In comparison to studies that have measured parent perceptions of the frequency of their child’s lying behavior, children’s self-reports indicate a higher frequency than previously reported by parents (e.g. Lavoie et al., 2016). Specifically, in this study, children reported a daily average concealment rate of two secrets or lies, but a previous study with parent reports of their children’s lies indicated an average rate of one lie every 2 days (Lavoie et al., 2016). As such, it is possible that children may overestimate their daily secret-keeping and lie-telling (Study 1) in comparison to their own self-reports kept over several days (Study 2).

We found that the total frequency of children’s self-reported concealment was negatively associated with parent-reported internalizing behavior problems. Previous studies have found that higher endorsements of secret-keeping (i.e. Laird and Marrero, 2010) and perceived frequent lie-telling (Ostrov et al., 2008; Warr, 2007) are associated with higher levels of behavior problems, but our results suggest that children with higher internalizing behaviors report fewer instances of concealment. One possibility is children with higher internalizing behaviors are less aware and in tune with the social norms of their surroundings (Achenbach and Edelbrock, 1978), and because of this they may not use concealment for the same purposes as children without internalizing problems. For example, in Study 1 many children explained they use secrets as a tool for building and maintaining relationships, but it is possible that children with internalizing behaviors do not use secrets as a relational tool. Also in Study 1, children asserted that lies could be used to make others feel good about themselves, but children with internalizing behaviors may not have the social awareness to use lies to facilitate social relationships by making others feel good despite their own honest opinions. Children with internalizing problems may also be more socially withdrawn, and based on this they may not have the same number of social relationships, in which case it is quite possible that they would record fewer instances of secrecy or lying because they may have fewer social interactions. Alternatively, it is possible that children who had higher levels of behavior problems were less accurate in reporting the frequency of concealment they used, either out of fear of possible punishment (i.e. Talwar et al., 2015) or by being generally less self-aware. Overall, Study 2 provides support using children’s own self-reports that a higher frequency of deceptive behavior may cluster with other problematic behaviors, which highlights the need to further pursue frequent deceptive behavior as a possible adaptive interpersonal communication tool.

Conclusion

There are several factors that limit the scope of these studies. One limiting factor was we did not ask children to report the content and purpose of their lies to determine whether motivations for lying vary according to internalizing or externalizing behavior in Study 2. An area for future research is to consider exploring the content of children’s secrets and lies, which could provide further information about concealment as a maladaptive or relational tool. Another limiting factor was children may have been more attentive about their use of secrecy and lying after being asked to record their daily use, which may have artificially decreased the frequency with which they used, and consequently reported, lie-telling and secret-keeping. This is a general problem with self-reports; however, with concealment behavior, other informants may miss a child’s secret or lie and thus be unaware of the concealment. For this reason, children’s own reports are also a valuable source of information. Finally, the sample size in both studies, along with the comparable family demographics (parent education and income level) across the sample limits definitive conclusions, and future studies can further explore children’s secret-keeping and lie-telling in a larger and more demographically diverse sample.

Overall, we found developmental differences in children’s reasoning about secrecy and lying, and in the frequency of lies that they reported. Children’s understanding of secrets shifted from information that is shared with others to information that is personal, which suggests that children’s motivations for secrecy are closely associated with a heightened sense of self-awareness and identity development. Children’s reasoning about lying may begin as moral assertions that lying is never acceptable and evolve into concessions that lying is a common social behavior that can be acceptable as an instrumental tool when used infrequently. Together, children’s reasoning about secrecy and lying provides insight into their thoughts about when concealment and deception are acceptable. Finally, we found that children’s self-reported frequency of concealment was comparable between secrets and lies, and that infrequent concealment clustered with internalizing behavior problems, which suggests that children’s concealment may be used as a communicative tool to maintain social relationships.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

Achenbach

(1999) The child behavior checklist and related instruments. In: Maruish

(ed.) The Use of Psychological Testing for Treatment Planning and Outcomes Assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 429–466.

Achenbach

Edelbrock

(1978) The classification of child psychopathology: A review and analysis of empirical efforts. Psychological Bulletin 85(6): 1275–1301.

Anagnostaki

Wright

Bourchier-Sutton

(2010) The semantics of secrecy: Young children’s classification of secret content. Journal of Genetic Psychology 171(4): 279–299.

Bandura

(1991) Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In: Kurtines

Gewirtz

(eds) Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 45–103.

Bok

(1989) Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation. New York: Pantheon Books.

Braun

Clarke

(2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2): 77–101.

Breakwell

(2006) Interviewing methods. In: Breakwell

Hammond

Fife-Schaw

. (eds) Research Methods in Psychology. London: SAGE, pp. 232–253.

Cameron

Trivedi

(1990) Regression-based tests for overdispersion in the poisson model. Journal of Econometrics 46(3): 347–364.

Chandler

Fritz

Hala

(1989) Small-scale deceit: Deception as a marker of two-, three-, and four-year-olds’ early theories of mind. Child Development 60(6): 1263–1277.

10.

Coleman

Kay

(1981) Prototype semantics: The English word lie. Language 57(1): 26–44.

11.

Darling

Cumsille

Caldwell

. (2006) Predictors of adolescents’ disclosure to parents and perceived parental knowledge: Between- and within-person differences. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 35(4): 659–670.

12.

DePaulo

Kashy

Kirkendol

. (1996) Lying in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70(5): 979–995.

13.

Evans

Lee

(2011) Verbal deception from late childhood to middle adolescence and its relation to executive functioning skills. Developmental Psychology 47(4): 1108–1116.

14.

Frijns

Finkenauer

(2009) Longitudinal associations between keeping a secret and psychosocial adjustment in adolescence. International Journal of Behavioral Development 33(2): 145–154.

15.

Heyman

Hsu

. (2013) Instrumental lying by parents in the US and China. International Journal of Psychology 48(6): 1176–1184.

16.

Heyman

Sweet

Lee

(2009) Children’s reasoning about lie-telling and truth-telling in politeness contexts. Social Development 18(3): 728–746.

17.

James

(2007) Giving voice to children’s voices: Practices and problems, pitfalls and potentials. American Anthropologist 109(2): 261–272.

18.

James

Prout

(1997) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. London; Washington, DC: Falmer Press.

19.

Laird

Marrero

(2010) Information management and behavior problems: Is concealing misbehavior necessarily a sign of trouble? Journal of Adolescence 33(2): 297–308.

20.

Lavoie

Leduc

Crossman

. (2016) Do as I say and not as I think: Parent socialisation of lie-telling behaviour. Children & Society 30(4): 253–264.

21.

Ostrov

Ries

Stauffacher

. (2008) Relational aggression, physical aggression and deception during early childhood: A multimethod, multi-informant short-term longitudinal study. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 37(3): 664–675.

22.

Perkins

Turiel

(2007) To lie or not to lie: To whom and under what circumstances. Child Development 78(2): 609–621.

23.

Pipe

M-E

Goodman

(1991) Elements of secrecy: Implications for children’s testimony. Behavioral Sciences & the Law 9(1): 33–41.

24.

Popliger

Talwar

Crossman

(2011) Predictors of children’s prosocial lie-telling: Motivation, socialization variables, and moral understanding. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 110(3): 373–392.

25.

Rotenberg

Michalik

Eisenberg

. (2008) The relations among young children’s peer-reported trustworthiness, inhibitory control, and preschool adjustment. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 23(2): 288–298.

26.

Sweetser

(1987) The definition of lie: An examination of the folk models underlying a semantic prototype. In: Hollard

(ed.) Cultural Models in Language and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 43–66.

27.

Talwar

Arruda

Yachison

(2015) The effects of punishment and appeals for honesty on children’s truth-telling behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 130: 209–217.

28.

Warr

(2007) The tangled web: Delinquency, deception, and parental attachment. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36(5): 607–622.

29.

Watson

Valtin

(1997a) Secrecy in middle childhood. International Journal of Behavioral Development 21(3): 431–452.

30.

Watson

Valtin

(1997b) A structural analysis of children’s concepts of secrecy. Australian Journal of Psychology 49(1): 49–54.

31.

Wimmer

Perner

(1983) Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition 13(1): 103–128.