Early roots of lying in families

Project Information

FAMI-LIES

Grant agreement ID: 949041

DOI

10.3030/949041

EC signature date 20 January 2021

Start date 1 November 2021

End date 31 October 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 498 250,00

EU contribution

€ 1 498 250,00

Coordinated by

ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - FAMI-LIES (Early roots of lying in families)

Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2024-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Children who lie typically learn this from a very young age. While some forms of lying are harmless or even adaptive, other types are maladaptive. Until now, the social origins of lying are grossly understudied. The Fami-LIES research program consists of four inter-related research projects on the early roots of lying in families. In early childhood, families provide the basis for the moral education of their children. Parents sometimes lie (for example, by claiming to leave their child behind when it’s misbehaving) or model lying to children (for example, by telling someone they love a gift while admitting to their child their dislike). Whether and how this parental deception affects children is unknown. Initial studies indicate that socialization of child lying might even be paradoxical: despite lying or modeling lying, many parents teach that lying is wrong. No studies to date have addressed the causes and consequences of these mixed messages or “moral dissonance” in families. In this series of studies, I will explore and explain how and why parents lie to children, how this contrasts with what they teach, and how lying and moral dissonance relate to child socio-emotional and moral outcomes.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Results so far shed new light on several aspects of socialization of lying. Project 1 describes a more elaborate taxonomy of parental lying, including new lie categories, e.g. lying to look better as a parent, and lying to protect the parent’s privacy. In Project 2, we discovered that most parents show inconsistencies between their teaching about lying, their own lying behavior, and their attitudes on lying (e.g. they don’t practice what they preach, or they don’t teach what they believe). Future studies should explore how and whether these inconsistencies affect both parents and children. For Project 3, a systematic review of the literature on parental lying showed that parental lying is an ill-defined concept, and that the literature is predominantly focused on exploring potential maladaptive outcomes, without considering potential adaptive outcomes. For Project 4, we conducted the first experimental study that explores whether a parental lie directly affects the chance of the child lying. This study allows us to better understand how children learn to lie from their parents.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Fami-LIES has already collected four rich datasets using different research methodologies, which will allow us in the coming years to further explore when parents lie to their children, what they lie about, how lying and moral dissonance affects parents and children, how child lying develops across childhood and how children learn about lying from their parents.
Our new taxonomy of parental lying, which broadens the scope of the current literature, and which allows for better differentiation between types of lies, will progress the field in various ways. First, we can better understand the impact of parental lying when we take into account the full spectrum of parental lies. Second, by using this broad view, we can also study potential positive outcomes of parental lying for parental and child well-being. Because societal norms to refrain from lying are so strong, there is reason to believe that there are powerful mechanisms behind the high prevalence of lying by parents to children. Fami-LIES (https://osf.io/3vm28/) aims to shed light on this intriguing reality.

With the Fami-LIES project we expect the following results in the coming years.
We will be the first to publish prevalence estimates of parental lying in Dutch families, and our strong international ties and collaborations allow us to shed light on cross-national and cross-cultural differences in parental lying across the globe. Our experimental studies, in which we explore the impact of parental lying on child lying, are a direct test of the prominent socialization theories. Our findings can thus shift the perspective on the socialization of children’s moral development. With our unique cohort data on observed parental lying in over 800 Dutch families, we will be the first to answer the question whether parental lying prospectively relates to children’s development. Our innovative perspective on lying, that includes different types of prosocial and instrumental lies, allows us to study both maladaptive as well as adaptive outcomes, which is a crucial step to understand whether and how children are affected by parental lying. The fine-grained perspective and nuanced explorations of parental lying that are central to the studies in Fami-LIES are a crucial addition to this growing research field.

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