BE HONEST OR BE POLITE? THEORY-OF-MIND ON YOUNG CHILDREN?S ONLINE PROSOCIAL LYING BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

Prosocial lies are lies that are told for the benefit of others. The emergence of prosocial lying behaviour shows young children?s ability to navigate through complex situations whereby two rules of communication, to be helpful and not to harm the other, seem contradictory. Previous researches had established young children?s ability to engage in prosocial lying, but it is less researched in an online setting despite the increasing prevalence of online interactions. The present study explored 4- to 6-years-old children?s (N = 94) prosocial lying in an online setting and cognitive factors underlying it, specifically false belief and hidden emotion understanding. The art-rating paradigm was used to observe prosocial lying and the study was conducted through Zoom video-conferencing. Results showed that young children aged 4- to 6-years-old could tell prosocial lies online. However, the cognitive factors of interest were not significantly associated with online prosocial lying. It is speculated that there are different patterns of prosocial lying with different social-cognitive mechanisms underlying them and that the art-rating paradigm design used in the present study did not capture the differences. The findings offered insights on young children?s online social interaction and served as a steppingstone to understand children?s prosocial lying.