Children s understanding about white lies

Transcription

1 47 British Journal of Developmental Psychology (2002), 20, The British Psychological Society Children s understanding about white lies K. A. Broomfield 1, E. J. Robinson 2 * and W. P. Robinson 3 1 University of Birmingham, UK 2 Keele University, UK 3 University of Bristol, UK In three experiments, children suggested and justified a verbal response for a story character who received a disappointing gift. In Experiment 1, responses suggesting falsely that the recipient liked the gift were increasingly common over the ages 4 9 years. Children who suggested false responses judged that the giver would believe the gift was liked and would be happy following the falsehood. They also predicted that the giver would be unhappy had the truth been told, and passed a test of second-order false belief. However, many children who suggested truthful responses, that the gift was disliked, also revealed a full understanding of the consequences of giving true and false responses, and also passed second-order false belief. Mental-state understanding was developmentally prior to suggesting a false response. In Experiment 2, involving 6-, 8- and 10-year-olds, more children suggested false verbal than false facial responses. In Experiments 2 and 3, giving children the pro-social reason for falsifying increased the incidence of false responses, even amongst children who appeared not to be able to handle second-order mental states. In Experiment 3, 6-year-olds suggested truthful responses just as frequently, whether the speaker was an adult or a child. Many young children apparently place more weight on truth-telling than on protecting the feelings of a gift-giver. In their everyday lives, adults routinely make false or at least equivocal statements in order to protect the feelings of the hearer (e.g. Bavelas, Black, Chovil, & Mullett, 1990; Camden, Mothey, & Wilson, 1984; Lippard, 1988; Turner, Edgley, & Olmstead, 1975), and presumably, these white lies play a crucial role in maintaining social relationships. For example, on receiving a disappointing gift, adults normally attempt to disguise their disappointment and avoid announcing their true feelings, perhaps by saying something such as That s really kind of you. Indeed, in a pilot study, we found that only one from 28 university students said they would tell the truth in a disappointing gift situation. At what age do children answer in a similar way? Bavelas et al. (1990) report a series of * Requests for reprints should be addressed to E. J. Robinson, Department of Psychology, Keele University, Keele ST5 5BG, UK ( e.j.robinson@keele.ac.uk).

2 48 K. A. Broomfield et al. exploratory studies involving a few children aged between 6 and 13 years. When asked to respond as if they had just received a disappointing gift, some children suggested or selected false or equivocal statements such as Oh it s very nice, though some were more truthful, Well I don t really like it. In other vignettes, which, for an adult, would require similar equivocation, children often opted for a truthful response. We do not know, though, what the children assumed about the consequences of their truthful or false responses. They might, for example, have assumed that the giver would be pleased that they were truthful, or would not be taken in by a false statement. In the research reported here, we investigated age-related differences in children s suggested responses in circumstances under which adults would commonly judge it appropriate to tell a white lie. Our main focus was on the relationship between children s suggested responses, and their understanding of the mental-state consequences of both truthful and false responses. Note that our focus was not on children s spontaneous deceptive utterances in real-life (as studied by Newton, Reddy, & Bull, 2000, for example), but rather on more reflective responses given in story settings. We aimed to identify whether an understanding of the mental-state consequences of truthful and false responses was necessary for children to suggest false responses, and if so, whether such understanding was sufficient for children to prefer a false response over a truthful response. One possibility is that such understanding is not necessary for children to suggest telling the giver that a disappointing gift is liked. Just as children learn that they should say Thank you on receiving a gift, they might also learn the convention that recipients are expected to express pleasure. If so, young children may suggest a false response to receiving a disappointing gift without yet understanding that the gift-giver would be pleased if s/he falsely believed the gift was liked. If children do not understand the mental state consequences of falsely suggesting that a gift is liked, it would be inappropriate to label the false statements they suggest white lies. Another possibility is that children effectively give more weight to being truthful than to being polite at least until they understand the negative consequences of truthfulness in a gift-giving situation. Although we know very little about children s views about how to respond verbally to a disappointing gift, several studies have focused on children s suggestions of false facial displays of sentiment or emotion, and have examined their understanding of the mental-state consequences of such displays. Saarni and Von Salisch (1993) claim that understanding the role of emotion regulation is essential for learning to be socially competent and developing a private domain of self. Following studies by Saarni (1984) and Cole (1986), Gross and Harris (1988) told children stories involving a protagonist receiving a disappointing gift, and asked 4- and 6-year-old children to indicate how the protagonist would react facially in the presence of the giver. Six-year-olds often suggested that story protagonists would show false facial responses and also correctly predicted that the onlooker would subsequently have a false belief about the protagonist s emotion. Four-year-olds typically did not predict a false response for the protagonist. Harris and Gross (1988) argue that 6-year-olds correct predictions of an onlooker s false belief after a false facial response require an appreciation of secondorder mental states in which the desire of the protagonist is directed at the actual or possible beliefs of another person (p. 297): A wants B to believe X. Harris and Gross (1988) proposed that the change in performance between 4- and 6-year-olds was linked to social-cognitive development in four areas: understanding the possibility of false beliefs about emotional states, understanding the causal chain of events that comprise emotional experience, understanding that emotion can be a private internal

3 Understanding of white lies experience, and understanding the recursive nature of mental states required for second-order understanding of deception. Both Perner and Wimmer (1985) and Sullivan, Zaitchik, and Tager-Flusberg (1994) found evidence to suggest that 4-year-olds are unlikely to be able to understand second-order mental states, whilst most 6-year-olds could. In contrast, Banerjee and Yuill (1999) claim that second-order understanding of an intention towards the belief is not necessary for suggesting false prosocial facial displays. They claim that all that is necessary for understanding prosocial motivation is understanding that one s expressive behaviour affects another s emotions, and a firstorder understanding of mental states. Children can predict false responses by matching the response (happy face) to the goal (make B happy), and answer the onlooker s belief question as a first-order belief question (what does B believe now?). According to Banerjee and Yuill (1999), the development in this ability between 4 and 6 years old reflects greater social experience rather than the development of social-cognitive understanding. Banerjee and Yuill (1999) contrast this analysis of children s understanding of prosocial motivation with understanding self-presentational motivation (such as A wants B to think A is kind/brave ), which, they argue, must involve secondorder understanding of mental states. Here, the child cannot simply match the necessary false response (happy face), onto the goal (the positive evaluation of A); the child must represent the goal and understand Awants B to think Ais x, where x might be brave or kind for example. Using a task similar to Gross and Harris s, Banerjee and Yuill (1999) found that 4-to 6- year-old children who passed a test of second-order belief suggested more false responses than those who failed, both on stories involving pro-social and on selfpresentational reasons for false responses. However, analysis of covariance revealed a somewhat stronger relationship between suggesting self-presentational false expressions and understanding second-order beliefs, than between pro-social false expressions and second-order beliefs, in line with Banerjee and Yuill s argument. In addition, the great majority of the children were able to answer the onlooker s belief question correctly, regardless of whether they had passed the second-order belief task, in line with their suggestion that it requires only a first-order mentalizing ability. To summarize, research to date suggests that most children who suggest false facial expressions in a disappointing gift situation do expect that an onlooker would be misled and would hold a false belief about the protagonist s emotion. It is not yet clear, though, what is the role of understanding of second-order mental states. Nor do we know the relationship between suggesting false verbal responses and understanding their mental state consequences. In Experiment 1, we examined children s suggested verbal responses to a disappointing gift and how these related to their understanding of the consequences of truthful and false statements for the gift-giver s mental state. Our assessment of this understanding included a question about the giver s belief following a false statement that the present was liked: would the giver think that the recipient liked the gift? Formally, this assessed second-order understanding of mental states (a belief about a sentiment), rather than just first-order understanding of beliefs about the world. Nevertheless, we accept the empirical possibility raised by Banerjee and Yuill (1999) that it may be answered correctly without understanding of beliefs about beliefs. To check, we included a separate standard test of understanding of second-order false belief. In Experiment 2, we examined the conflicting claims of Harris and Gross (1988) and Banerjee and Yuill (1999) by comparing suggested verbal and facial responses and by 49

4 50 K. A. Broomfield et al. giving children the pro-social motivation for falsifying. In Experiment 3, we combined elements of the first two experiments: we looked at the relationship between children s suggested verbal responses to a disappointing gift, their understanding of the mental state consequences of truthful and false statements when the reason for falsifying was given or not given. In addition, we compared children s suggested verbal responses for an adult and for a child recipient of a disappointing gift, to check the possibility that truthful responses suggested for the child recipient in Experiments 1 and 2 masked a recognition of how adults would behave. EXPERIMENT 1 We list below the requirements for crediting children with a full understanding of the mental-state consequences of making a false response in a disappointing gift scenario. False responses backed with such understanding could be appropriately labelled white lies. Children must be able to: (1) Predict that truth telling would cause a negative emotion for the gift-giver. This involves understanding: (i) Giver s desire: the giver wants to please the recipient with the gift. (ii) Giver s emotion (following a truthful response): if the giver is told that the recipient does not like the gift, the giver will be upset. (2) Predict that a false statement will cause a positive emotion for the giver: this involves the additional understanding that: (i) Sentiment check: the recipient can say that s/he likes the gift when s/he does not. (ii) Giver s belief (equivalent to onlooker s belief discussed above in connection with the previous studies on facial expressions): the giver (iii) will believe that the recipient likes the gift. Giver s emotion (following a false response): if the giver falsely believes that the gift was liked, s/he will feel positive. We assessed children s understanding of each of the above, and children also completed a test of second-order belief closely based on one used by Sullivan et al. (1994). This was the test used by Banerjee and Yuill (1999) and therefore permitted comparison between our results and theirs. Unlike a facial expression, a verbal pro-social statement has a content that is intended to manipulate the belief of the hearer. The simple matching strategy, which, Banerjee and Yuill (1999) suggest, could be used for pro-social facial displays, could not be used, therefore, for false verbal statements. If so, we might expect success on a second-order task to be necessary for children to suggest false verbal statements. However, we also mentioned above the possibility that children suggest false responses without yet understanding their mental state consequences, if they have learned a convention that the recipient of a gift should offer a verbal expression of pleasure as well as of gratitude. Method Participants Sixty children from a school in a predominately middle-class area in Birmingham, UK, participated in the experiment. There were 20 children in each of three age groups, and

5 Understanding of white lies each group included 8 or 9 girls. The youngest group had a mean age of 5 years (5;0), and ages ranged from 4;9 to 5;5. The middle group had a mean age of 7;1 with a range from 6;9 to 7;6. The mean age of children in the oldest group was 9;2, and ages ranged from 8;7 to 9;6. 51 Procedure The children were tested individually in a quiet room. The order in which the two stories were presented was counterbalanced across participants. Before the disappointing gift story began, children were told that they would get to choose what happened at the end of the story. During the story, they were shown pictures of each character and the story events. Facial expressions were not apparent in any picture. The child character was called Jane for girls and John for boys. Children were asked several check questions to ensure they understood the story and five test questions relating to the five points, (1i) (2iii), listed above. The experimenter narrated: This story is about two people, John and John s Auntie. John s Auntie lives far away, and so John doesn t get to see her very much. The last time that John saw his Auntie, John was only 4 years old. When John was four, he liked to colour in pictures. The last time that John saw his Auntie, she helped John with his colouring in. Now, John is 7 1. He doesn t like colouring in at all now, but he loves reading. John s Auntie doesn t know that John has changed though, because she hasn t seen him. (First check: What did John used to like doing when he was 4?) He doesn t like colouring in any more though. (Second check: What does John like doing now that he is 7? Prompt: Auntie doesn t know that John has changed, does she?). One day, John s Auntie came to visit him again. She was very happy to see John because she hadn t seen him for such a long time. Hello John, she said, I ve brought a great present for you I think you are going to like it. John was excited. He liked to get presents, and he really wanted to get a new reading book because he loved reading so much. John unwraps the present. It s some colouring pencils. (Third check: Does John like colouring in? Prompt: So he doesn t like this present then, does he?). (1i) Giver s desire: Does Auntie want John to like the present? John s Auntie watched John unwrap the present. So, says John s Auntie, do you like it? Response choice 1: What do you think John will say to his Auntie? Justification 1: Why do you think he d say that? All children were then shown picture cards with standard truthful and false responses and were asked questions about them. Each child was asked first about the standard response, which was in line with their response at choice 1, and subsequently about the alternative. For the standard truthful response, the child recipient was shown, saying to the giver, Thank you, but I don t like them very much ; the standard false response was, Thank you, they are very nice. The experimenter narrated: OK, well done. The answer you chose is a bit like the one I ve got here (read appropriate standard choice). This one is a bit like yours because John says (give appropriate justification). 1 We kept the age of the recipient constant rather than matched with the age of the child participant just in case children expected different-aged recipients to respond differently to a disappointing gift.

6 52 K. A. Broomfield et al. When introducing the second standard response, the experimenter said: Now I d like to talk about a different thing that John could have said. Let s pretend that John never said (first standard response) but instead, decided to say (second standard response) to his Auntie. Following the standard truthful response, children were asked: (1ii) Giver s emotion (truthful response) if John says this to his Auntie, Thank-you, but I don t like it very much, how do you think his Auntie will feel? (The prompt happy, sad, or just OK? was given if necessary.) Following the standard false response, children were asked: (2i) Sentiment check: Does John really like the colouring pencils when he says this? Good, John just tells his Auntie he thinks the colouring pencils are nice. (2ii) Giver s belief: After John tells his Auntie, the colouring pencils are nice, does Auntie think John (really likes/does not like) the colouring pencils? (The order of the two bracketed options was counterbalanced across children.) (2iii) Giver s emotion (false response): After John says Thank-you, they are very nice to his Auntie, how will his Auntie feel? I have one last thing to ask you. (Both standard responses are displayed.) Response choice 2: When John gets the colouring pencils present he did not like, do you still think John would say, Thank you, but I don t like them very much, or do you think he would say, Yes thank you, they are very nice? Justification 2: Good. Why will John say that? The purpose of including response choice 2 was to check whether, having reflected on the consequences of truthful and false responses, children were more inclined to opt for a false response than they had been at the outset (response choice 1). The Birthday Puppy story from Sullivan et al. s (1994) procedure was used to assess children s understanding of second-order false belief. The story was about a boy whose Mum told him that he was going to get a toy for his birthday, when in fact he was going to get a puppy. Without Mum knowing, the boy found out that he was really going to get a puppy. Children were shown pictures of each character and four pictures of the story events. Two control questions are asked: Peter s belief (labelled Non-linguistic control in previous research): Does Peter know that his Mum got him a puppy for his birthday now? Mum s belief about Peter (labelled Linguistic control in previous research): Does Mum know that Peter saw the birthday puppy in the garden shed? Grandma then phones Mum, and asks her the two test questions: Second-order ignorance: Does Peter know what you really got him for his birthday? Second-order false belief: What does Peter think you got him for his birthday? In both cases, the children are asked to predict what Mum would say to Grandma. Results and discussion Disappointing gift task The children appeared to follow the story as intended: they all answered the check questions correctly. No gender differences were found in response choice or the frequency of correct responses to questions (1i) (2iii).

7 Understanding of white lies Response choice 1 Children were asked What do you think John will say to his Auntie?, whose question had been Do you like it?. Forty-four children (73.3%) suggested a truthful response, typically, No, and 16 (26.7%) suggested a false response, typically, Yes. There was a strong age-related difference in the frequency of false responses: of the 20 children in each age group, none of the 5-year-olds, 4 of the 7-year-olds, and 12 of the 9-year-olds suggested a false response (w 2 (2, N = 60) = 19.1, p <.0001). 53 Justifications Justifications were categorized according to whether they referred to the gift-giver or whether they referred only to the recipient. All justifications fell straightforwardly into one of these two categories. There was a clear relationship between response choice and the justification given. Fifteen of the 16 children who suggested a false response referred to the gift-giver in their justifications, for example Cos she doesn t want to upset her Auntie. Hence, the children who suggested a false response were apparently aware of the pro-social reason for doing so. In marked contrast, all of the 44 children who suggested a truthful response and the remaining one child who suggested a false response mentioned only the receiver of the gift, for example Because he doesn t like colouring any more. Table 1. Frequencies of correct and incorrect answers to mental-state questions for children suggesting false and truthful statements at response choice 1, Experiment 1 Response choice 1 Giver s desire Sentiment check Giver s belief Emotion (false response) False (N = 16) Correct Incorrect Truthful (N = 44) Correct Incorrect Understanding mental-state consequences There were no age effects for any of the individual questions since most children at all ages performed well. The giver s emotion (following truthful response) question (1ii) is not included in Table 1 because all 60 children agreed that the giver would be sad. All the questions were answered correctly above chance, both by children who suggested a false response and by children who suggested a truthful response. Table 1 shows that the number of correct responses to the prerequisite questions is especially high for the children who suggested a false response. Three-quarters (12) of the false group answered all the questions (1i) (2iii) correctly, whilst only 45.5%(20) of the truthful group did the same. Using the results in Table 1, we found that children who suggested truthful responses were less likely than those who suggested false responses to answer questions (1i) (2iii) correctly (w 2 (N = 60, 1) = 4.115, p <.05). However, importantly, 20 of the 32 individuals who answered all the questions correctly did not suggest false responses. The mental-state understanding assessed here may be necessary but is clearly not sufficient for suggesting a false response.

8 54 K. A. Broomfield et al. Response choice 2 After answering the questions about the consequences of truthful and false responses, children had a second opportunity to suggest a response. It could have been that most children who understood the mental-state consequences of truthful and false responses now judged that it was better to falsify. This was clearly not the case, even if we allow for the possible confusion and unreliability introduced by repeating the choice question. Twelve of the 20 children (60%) who had incorrectly suggested a truthful response at choice 1 and went on to answer correctly all the pre-requisite questions again chose the truthful response at choice 2. Despite having been prompted to reflect on the negative consequences of a truthful response and the positive consequences of a false response, these children still preferred to tell the truth. Overall, there was an increased incidence of false responses at choice 2 compared with choice 1: 21 children (48% of response choice 1 truth-tellers) changed from a truthful to a false response, and 4 (25%of the children to suggest a false response at choice 1) made the opposite move. AMcNemar test on the frequencies with which true and false responses were suggested at choice 1 and choice 2 showed a higher frequency of false responses at choice 2 (w 2 (1, N = 60) = 11.6, p <.001). However, 6 (29%) of the 21 children who changed from a truthful to a false response answered the sentiment check question incorrectly (they judged that the recipient did in fact like the gift), so presumably, they chose the false response not as a false response but as a truthful response in a changed situation. Second-order belief task All of the participants answered the memory and Peter s belief (non-linguistic control) questions correctly. Three children answered the question about Mum s belief about Peter (linguistic control) incorrectly and were therefore excluded from the analysis. The ignorance question was answered correctly 52/57 times. The belief question was answered correctly 40/57 times; more of the older children were able to answer this question than the younger children (w 2 (2, N = 57) = 15.8, p <.0001). AMcNemar test showed that the ignorance question was answered correctly more often than the belief question (w 2 (1, N = 57) = 10.3, p <.01). These results are compatible with Sullivan et al. s (1994) findings. Between-task comparisons As well as excluding children who answered incorrectly the question about Mum s belief about Peter (linguistic control) in the second-order task, we excluded those who answered the sentiment check question incorrectly in the disappointing gift task. This left 45 children. Table 2 shows the comparison between performance on the second-order belief question with the giver s belief question in the disappointing gift task. This latter formally assesses second-order understanding of mental states: understanding a belief about a sentiment, as opposed to a belief about a belief. The majority of children (29 out of 45) passed both tasks, and this clearly limits the conclusions that we can draw and reduces the possibility of obtaining a significant correlation. However, the data provide no evidence that handling a belief about another person s belief (What does Mum think Peter thinks he has for his birthday?) differs in difficulty from handling a belief about another s sentiment (What does the giver think the recipient feels about the present?).

9 Understanding of white lies Table 2. Frequencies of correct and incorrect answers to second-order belief question for children who suggested truthful and false statements at response choice 1, Experiment 1 Second-order belief Giver s belief Response choice 1 Response choice 2 Incorrect Correct Truthful False Truthful False Incorrect Correct Seven children passed the second-order belief question but failed the giver s belief, compared with 6 who showed the opposite pattern (n.s.). This result is consistent with Harris and Gross s (1988) argument that for false facial expressions, the ability to answer the onlooker s belief question correctly involves second-order understanding of mental states. Our pattern of results differs, though, from Banerjee and Yuill s (1999) finding, also with facial rather than verbal expressions, that many children passed the onlooker s belief question but failed second-order false belief. Next, we compared answers to the second-order belief question with response choice 1 (Table 2): we were interested in whether passing second-order false belief could be necessary for suggesting a false response at choice 1. Amongst the 22 children who gave the mature response in only one of the two tasks, 21 did so only on secondorder false belief, while only 1 did so only at response choice 1 (McNemar w 2 (1, N = 45) = 7.2, p <.01). That is, children were very unlikely to suggest a false response if they had failed the second-order belief test, but many passed second-order false belief without suggesting a false response. Several conclusions can be drawn from this experiment. It was not until the age of around 8 9 years that it became common for children to suggest false responses. Those who did, justified doing so by referring to the consequences for the gift-giver. They also demonstrated understanding of the effects of both truthful and false responses for the mental state and emotion for the gift-giver. It was therefore appropriate to label their statements white lies. We have no evidence that children suggest false responses to a disappointing gift simply to comply with expectations, without understanding the mental state consequences for the giver. However, many children who did understand the mental-state consequences of both truthful and false responses, preferred to be truthful. Many of these maintained this preference at response choice 2, after having been prompted to reflect on the positive consequences of falsifying and negative consequences of being truthful. Children who suggested false responses generally understood second-order false belief, though many children passed the test of second-order belief yet suggested truthful responses. The results of Experiment 1 are consistent with the suggestion that an understanding of white lies requires the ability to handle second-order mental states, which Banerjee and Yuill (1999) reserve for self-presentational, rather than pro-social, displays. Experiment 2 was designed to assess possible reasons for the discrepancy between the results of Experiment 1 and Banerjee and Yuill s (1999) conclusions.

10 56 K. A. Broomfield et al. EXPERIMENT 2 There are two obvious differences between the disappointing gift task used in Experiment 1 and Banerjee and Yuill s (1999) tasks, both of which could influence the ease or difficulty of demonstrating understanding of prosocial false displays. The first is whether the display was facial, as in Banerjee and Yuill s (1999) task, or verbal, as in Experiment 1. A verbal prosocial display has a content that intended to manipulate the belief of the hearer, so arguably, it cannot be produced simply by matching false action to goal in the way that Banerjee and Yuill (1999) suggest for false facial displays with a prosocial motivation. The second difference is that Banerjee and Yuill (1999) told children the pro-social reason for choosing a false response (e.g. he did not want to upset his Auntie), whereas the pro-social reason for falsity was not provided in Experiment 1. Being told that A does not want to upset B could encourage use of the type of heuristic that Banerjee and Yuill (1999) suggest: the goal is to make B happy, therefore choose happy face. When children have to work out whether the situation is suitable for being untruthful themselves, they may have to make a more detailed analysis with reference to the intentions and beliefs of the story characters. To our knowledge, only Gnepp and Hess (1986) have investigated these variables together (facial vs. verbal; reason given or not). Contrary to the expectation from the analysis above, these authors found that verbal false responses were suggested more often than facial false responses. They attributed this to greater socialization of verbal as opposed to facial expression. With regard to telling the pro-social reason for falsity, unlike Banerjee and Yuill (1999), Gnepp and Hess (1986) did not tell children explicitly why the protagonist s wanted to hide his/her feelings, but did tell half the children that the protagonist wanted to hide his/her feelings. Gnepp and Hess (1986) found that the children who were given this prompt suggested more false responses than those who were not. They interpreted this as showing that the prompt helped children who did not have the relevant social experience to realize that the story situations were appropriate for false expression. From Gnepp and Hess s (1986) results, we would expect that telling the pro-social reason, not the verbal/facial difference, would explain why second-order mental-state understanding was not necessary in Banerjee and Yuill s (1999) task but was developmentally prior to falsifying in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, we assessed the effect of telling the pro-social reason on the incidence of children s suggestions of both false verbal and facial responses. Method Participants One-hundred and twenty-four children from a primary school in a predominantly middle-class area of Birmingham, UK, participated in the study. Two of the oldest children were excluded because they did not accept that the child character was unhappy with the gift, leaving a sample size of 122. There were 38 children, 21 boys and 17 girls in the youngest group of children; the mean age was 5;11 years, and ages ranged between 5;6 and 6;5. There were 40 children, 14 boys and 26 girls in the middle group; the mean age was 7;11 years, and ages ranged between 7.6 and 8;5. In the oldest group, there were 44 children, 23 boys and 21 girls; the mean age was 9;11 years, and ages ranged between 9;6 and 10;5.

11 Understanding of white lies Design Each child completed three tasks under one of two conditions. Children alternately entered either pro-social reason told or pro-social reason not told conditions. The first and third tasks were emotional expression tasks in both of which children suggested a facial and a verbal response. The story themes of the tasks were the disappointing gift used in Experiment 1, and a disappointing cake. The order of gift and cake themes was counterbalanced between children and crossed with condition. Crossed with both was whether children were asked about facial or verbal response first. The middle task was a test of second-order false belief. 57 Materials During each emotional expression task, children were shown pictures of each story character and three pictures of the story events. When answering the questions, the children were shown a picture of the adult character looking at the child character who had a question mark over his/her face and a speech bubble with a question mark. The expressive options were a schematic happy face, a schematic sad face, the word yes and the word no. The child characters were male for boy participants and female for girl participants. Procedure The experimenter introduced the session saying: I m going to tell you three stories; two of the stories are about this boy/girl called John/Jane. At the end of the stories about Jane, I m going to show you a picture of Jane like this (Jane has a question mark over her face and has a speech bubble with a question mark). Then I am going to ask you some questions about Jane. First of all, I m going to ask you about how Jane really feels on the inside. She could be feeling happy, or she could be feeling sad in the stories; you have to listen to find out. I am also going to ask you about what she will show on her face. She could show a... (wait for identification of schematic happy/sad face by child), or she might show a... (wait for identification of other schematic face by child). Then, I am going to ask you about what Jane says. She might say... (wait for child to read Yes or No caption) or she might say... (wait for child to read other caption). You get to choose which one of these Jane does OK? There s no wrong or right answer, just listen carefully and say which you think would be best. In all cases, the children were able to identify/read the response options appropriately. The emotional expression task story with the disappointing gift theme was a shortened version of that used in Experiment 1: This story is about John and John s Auntie. Today is John s birthday, so Auntie wants to buy him a present. Auntie thinks that John likes colouring so she buys John some brand new colouring pencils as a present for his birthday. Auntie goes to see John to give him the present of the colouring pencils. She says, Hello John, I ve brought a great present for you I hope you like it. John unwraps the present. It s the colouring pencils. John doesn t like colouring at all, and so he does not like the colouring pencils. Auntie doesn t know that though. Auntie watches John unwrap the present. Reality: How does John really feel on the inside about the colouring pencils present? Does he feel happy or sad?

12 58 K. A. Broomfield et al. Reason told: John knows that if he shows that he is sad about the present to his Auntie, then his Auntie will be sad as well, so John decides to hide how he really feels about the present. Or Reason not told: John has to decide what to show Auntie about his feelings. Facial: What will John show on his face? Verbal: Auntie says, Do you like the present? What will John say to Auntie about the present? Justification: Why did you choose for John to do that? Belief: How does Auntie think John feels about the present? Happy, sad, or just OK? Emotion prediction: How will Auntie feel? Happy, sad, or just OK? Why? The cake emotional expression story followed exactly the same format as above, and was about a child character who disliked a special cake his/her grandmother had made for him/her. The second-order belief task used the Birthday Puppy story taken from Sullivan et al. (1994) and used in Experiment 1. Results and discussion Emotional expression tasks Concerning the facial and verbal responses, 103 of the 122 children (84%) answered in the same way for their two stories; of the 19 who scored differently, 16 gave more false responses on their second story (N = 122, t = 72.99, p <.005). There were no effects of story theme or gender. Each child was given two scores out of two according to the number of false facial and false verbal responses suggested. Table 3 shows the verbal and facial expression scores for children from the three age groups, in the two conditions. Table 3. Frequencies of false verbal and facial responses for children in each age 6 reason condition in Experiment 2 No reason Reason told Number of false Facial Verbal Facial Verbal responses years years years Total An ANOVA with one repeated measure (facial/verbal) and three between-group measures: age (5 6, 7 8, 9 10 years), condition (reason told/not told) and question order (verbal asked first/facial asked first) was carried out. Main effects showed: more c hildren sugge ste d false verbal ex pre ssions than false fac ial ex pressions (F(1,110) = 5.01, p <.05); more older than younger children suggested false responses (F(2,110) = 20.1, p <.001); more children suggested false responses if they were told the reason than if they were not (F(1,110) = 34.9, p <.001). The only significant

13 Understanding of white lies interaction showed that the oldest age group suggested more false responses when facial expressions were asked for first (F(2,110) = 3.23, p =.043). We do not attempt to interpret this interaction, which may not be replicable and is unlikely to be of theoretical interest. Justifications were only examined for responses in which the verbal and facial expressions matched (either both false or both truthful) in a story; this caused between 1 and 5 children s data to be excluded from each age 6 reason condition for each story. The pattern of justifications for responses for the no reason told group was consistent with the findings in Experiment 1: of the 39 false responses to be suggested in either story, all but 4 (10%) were justified with reference to the adult character, whilst only 8 of 67 truthful responses were justified in this way. The justifications from children who were told the reason differed slightly in that fewer justifications for false responses referred to the adult character: 16 of the 66 false responses (24%) were not justified in this way. However, when these children referred to the child character, they tended to do so appropriately. Rather than saying the child character disliked the gift, they said that s/he was hiding her/his feelings, or was pretending. This was especially prevalent in the middle age group where 11/32 (34.4%) false responses were justified in this way (none of the youngest and 10%of the oldest group s justifications were of this type). There were no other differences in the pattern of justifications between reason told and not told conditions, or between age groups. Children chose both false verbal and false facial responses in a story 125 times. On these occasions, the giver s belief question was always answered correctly (Auntie thinks John feels happy about the present), and the emotion prediction question was answered correctly 121 times (Auntie feels happy). False responses were apparently given with understanding of their consequences for the mental state of the giver. 59 Second-order belief task All the children answered the control questions correctly. Only 7 children (6 from the youngest group, 1 from the oldest) answered the second-order ignorance question incorrectly, and none of these went on to answer the second-order belief question correctly. Most children (96 out of 122, 78.7%) answered the second-order belief question correctly; 17 of the 26 who did not were in the youngest age group. Between-task comparison The frequency of verbal and facial false expressions (maximum 4 per child) was compared with responses to the second-order belief question. Table 4 shows this comparison for children who had and had not been given the pro-social reason for falsifying. First, we checked whether the results in the no-reason condition replicated those from Experiment 1. In line with Experiment 1, only 2 children who failed second order, suggested any false responses, in contrast with 19 children who passed second order but suggested no false responses (McNemar w 2 (1, N = 61) = 7.67, p <.01). Passing second-order false belief seemed to be developmentally prior to be suggesting a false response when the reason for falsifying was not given. In contrast, this pattern of results does not hold within the group who were given the reason for falsifying. The data in Table 4 offer no evidence that when the reason for falsifying was given, children required second-order understanding to suggest false responses: 7 children who failed the second-order test in the reason-told condition still

14 60 K. A. Broomfield et al. Table 4. Frequencies of false responses from children who had/had not been told the pro-social reason and had/had not answered the second-order belief question correctly Number of false responses Second-order belief No reason Incorrect 10 2 Correct Reason told Incorrect Correct suggested false responses, while only 2 who passed the second-order test suggested no false responses (n.s.). Given the main effect from the parametric analysis reported above, that children were more likely to suggest false responses in the reason given condition, we checked whether this was true for second-order failers and passers considered separately. For the second-order failers, we had very low frequencies. Though the results were nonsignificant, they were in the expected direction: giving children the reason for falsifying may have increased the incidence of false responses, comparing those who suggested no false responses with those who suggested at least one (Fisher s Exact test p =.073). For the children who passed second-order false belief, the majority of the sample, there was a significantly higher incidence of falsifying when the reason was given (w 2 (1, N = 96) = 16.7, p <.001). In summary, the results from Experiment 2 support Gnepp and Hess s (1986) findings that children suggest more false verbal than false facial expressions, and suggest more false responses when they have been told the pro-social reason for falsity. Our proposal that the content of verbal false expressions might make them more difficult to understand than facial false expressions must be rejected. Gnepp and Hess (1986) suggest that verbal expressions are socialized and directed more often than facial expressions, and a few of the older children in Experiment 2 made comments that implied that they thought facial expressions were more difficult to control. The effect of giving children the pro-social motivation for false responses could explain the discrepancy between Banerjee and Yuill s (1999) findings and the results of Experiment 1. The results are compatible with the possibility that giving children the reason for falsifying allows use of the simple matching strategy discussed by Banerjee and Yuill (1999), and so second-order understanding is not necessary for suggesting false responses when the children are given the reason for falsifying. However, telling children the reason increased the incidence of false responses amongst children who did understand second-order belief, and these children were perhaps less likely to have used a simple matching strategy. Gnepp and Hess (1986) claimed that the prompt made the requirements of the situation more obvious to children. The prompt may also make the false response appear more socially acceptable. These possibilities suggest avenues for future investigations into what additional factors besides those tested are sufficient for children to value the false response more highly than the truthful response when they are deciding on a strategy without such prompting.

15 EXPERIMENT 3 Understanding of white lies 61 Experiment 3 had two aims. First, we followed up the tentative finding from Experiment 2 that that second-order understanding about mental states may not be a necessary prerequisite of suggesting a false response when children are told the prosocial reason for falsity. In Experiment 3, we checked whether telling children the prosocial reason leads them to suggest false responses without having the mental state understanding assessed in Experiment 1. Our test of understanding second-order mental states was the giver s belief question as used in Experiment 1, which assessed understanding a belief about a sentiment. Second, we aimed to check on the possibility that children suggested that the recipient be truthful simply because they did not think it was appropriate for a child recipient to lie to an adult, or because they thought a child protagonist would not have the responsibility for maintaining a positive interaction. Child participants might be more inclined to suggest a false response if the recipient of the disappointing gift were an adult rather than a child. In Experiment 3, we compared the incidence of suggested false responses for child and adult speakers. Method Participants Eighty-four 6 7-year-olds (44 girls and 40 boys) from two schools in Birmingham, UK participated in the experiment. The mean age was 6;7 years, range 6;1 7;1 years. Procedure The same story format was used as in Experiment 1, but this time, each child completed tasks with both gift and cake, with the order counterbalanced between children. Children were assigned alternately to adult or child recipient conditions and, within these conditions, were then alternately designated to pro-social reason-told or not-told conditions. The reason was told immediately before response choice 1. Results and discussion There were no effects of story theme (cake or gift) or gender. Again, each false response scored one point, so each child could gain a maximum score of 2 for their choice 1 responses, and 2 for their choice 2 responses. Response choice Table 5 shows the response choices for children in each condition. Choice 1 responses were entered into an ANOVAwith between-group variables of condition (reason told or not) and recipient (adult or child). We replicated the finding of Experiment 2, that children who were told the reason suggested false responses more frequently (F(1,80) = 70.4, p < 0.001). There was no effect of recipient and no interactions. A second ANOVA with reason, recipient and choice 2 scores also found an effect of reason (F(1,80) = 10.7, p <.005) and no other effects. These results provide no

16 62 K. A. Broomfield et al. Table 5. Frequencies of truthful and false responses at choice 1 and choice 2 from both stories in each reason 6 recipient condition, Experiment 3 Child recipient Adult recipient Choice 1 Choice 2 Choice 1 Choice 2 Reason Truthful False Truthful False Truthful False Truthful False Not told Told support for the suggestion that children may consider it more appropriate for an adult than a child recipient to tell a white lie. Justifications The justifications followed the same pattern found in Experiments 1 and 2, and there was little variation between conditions. Understanding of consequences In line with Experiment 1, understanding the mental-state consequences of both responses was developmentally prior to suggesting a false response when children were not told the reason for falsity: all 11 false responses in the no-reason condition were from children who passed all questions (1i) (2iii). In contrast, when the reason was told, 15/63 (24%) false responses were from children who had answered one or more question incorrectly (the sentiment check question was answered incorrectly once, the onlooker s belief was predicted incorrectly 13 times, and the emotion after a false response was predicted incorrectly 4 times). This suggests that telling the reason leads some children to suggest false responses without a full understanding of the mental-state consequences of so doing. As in Experiment 1, understanding the mental-state consequences was again insufficient for children to suggest false responses. Throughout both stories in the noreason condition, questions (1i) (2iii) were answered correctly 65 times; 54 of these 65 responses (83%) were truthful. When children were told the reason, questions (1i) (2iii) were answered correctly 58 times; still, 10 of the 58 responses (19%) were truthful. In summary, Experiment 3 supports the findings from Experiment 1 that understanding the mental-state consequences of truthful and false responses is not sufficient for children to prefer false responses when they are not told the prosocial reason for falsity. This was the case whether the recipient was an adult or a child. Telling children the pro-social reason for falsity increased the frequency of false responses and led some children to suggest false responses without fully understanding the mental-state consequences. In particular, children suggested false responses without revealing the second-order understanding of mental states assessed by the giver s belief question. If we assume that understanding a belief about a sentiment is about as difficult as understanding a belief about a belief, this result is consistent with the suggestion from Experiment 2 that children who failed the test of second-order false belief nevertheless suggested false responses when given the reason for falsifying.