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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

By Shivali Best for Mailonline

Published: | Updated:

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)

How to catch a liar

  1. Focus on the details given when someone tells a story. Can they provide a rich description? Do they seem emotional?
  2. Stick to one good cue. Researchers found that participants could identify lies more easily when they examined one feature instead of a handful.
  3. Don’t always adhere to eye contact cues. It was said that details were an easy indicator of honesty.

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.

WHAT ARE THE NINE WAYS TO DISCOVER A LIAR?

The big break: Lying is a quite complex process that the body and brain have to deal with. First your brain produces the truth, which it must then suppress before inventing the lie and executing the lie.

This often leads to a longer pause than normal before answering, plus a verbal delay technique such as “Why are you asking that?” instead of a direct and open response.

The eye arrow: Humans have more eye expressions than any other animal, and our eyes can give away when we’re trying to hide something.

If we look to the left and think we often access remembered memories, but if our eyes roll to the right, we can think more creatively. In addition, guilt over a lie often causes people to make a gesture to cut off eye contact, such as looking down or away.

The lost breath: Bending the truth causes an immediate stress response in most people, meaning the fight or flight mechanisms are activated.

The mouth dries out, the body sweats more, the heart rate increases, and the rhythm of breathing changes to shorter, shallower breaths that can often be seen as well as heard.

Overcompensation: A liar will often overachieve, both by talking and gesticulating too much in an attempt to be more convincing. These exaggerated body language rituals can involve too much eye contact (often without blinking!) and overly emphatic gestures.

The more someone gestures, the more likely they are to lie (stock image)

The poker face: While some people prefer to use the poker face, many assume that less is more and almost shut down when it comes to movement and eye contact if they are careful with the truth.

Hide the face: When someone tells a lie, they often have a strong desire to hide their face from their audience. This can lead to a partially cut off gesture, such as the well-known nose touch or mouth covering.

Self-comfort accents: The stress and discomfort of lying often trigger gestures designed to comfort the liar, such as rocking, hair stroking, spinning, or playing with wedding rings. We all tend to use gestures for self-comfort, but this will increase dramatically if someone is lying.

Micro-gestures: These are very small gestures or facial expressions that can flash across the face so quickly that they are difficult to see. Experts often use filmed footage that is then slowed down to capture the actual body language reaction that emerges in the middle of the performed lie.

The best time to spot these in real life is to look for the facial expression that occurs after the liar has finished speaking. The mouth may go askew or the eyes may roll in an instant.

Annoying hands: The most difficult body parts to act on are the hands or feet, and liars often have difficulty keeping them informed while they lie.

When the gestures and the words conflict, it is called incongruent gestures and it is often the hands or feet that tell the truth.

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