Honesty really is the best policy! Lying to your kids about doing well in a school play could make them liars later in life, research shows
Whether it’s the Nativity or an amateur production of Cats, most parents have had to endure their fair share of school plays.
If your child participated, you probably told them it was great, regardless of their performance.
But a new study suggests this could actually be harmful.
Researchers from Nanyang Technological University say lying to your children can turn them into liars later in life.
“The bad news for parents is that honesty can sometimes be the best policy,” said Peipei Setoh, lead author of the study.
Whether it’s the Nativity or an amateur production of Cats, most parents have had to endure their fair share of school plays (stock image)
Most parents are guilty of telling a few lies to their children.
So far, however, the consequences of these lies remain largely unexplored.
For their research, the team enlisted the help of 564 children aged 11 to 12 years old, as well as their parents.
The participants were asked about their use of two different types of lies: instrumental lies and white lies.
Instrumental lies are lies told to increase the child’s compliance, such as “Eat all your food or you’ll be short!”
Meanwhile, white lies are told to evoke positive emotions, such as “You were great in that school play!”
The studies showed that parents used instrumental lies more often than white lies, and that the children believed more in instrumental lies than in white lies.
“Instrumental lies are used to get a child to misbehave, for example when a parent threatens to call the police if the child is naughty,” Setoh said.
The studies found that parents used instrumental lies more often than white lies, and that the children reported greater belief in instrumental lies than in white lies (stock image)
However, children exposed to these types of lies were significantly more likely to lie to their parents.
Meanwhile, white lies usually come from a good place, but can also turn your child into a liar.
However, they will only do this if they realize that what you have told them is not true.
“White lies can be motivated by good intentions, but when children realize they have been lied to, it can also lead to the child lying,” Setoh added.
The researchers hope the findings will encourage parents to think twice before lying to their children.
“Our findings underscore the value of differentiating parental lies by type when examining its role in children’s socialization of lying, as well as the importance of considering children’s perceptions and interpretations of parental lies,” wrote the team in their research, published in The Guardian magazine. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.