Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 11, 2025

The Modified Temptation Resistance Task: A Paradigm to Elicit Children's Strategic Lie-telling
Published on: April 6, 2018
What motivates early lies? Deception in 2½- to 5-year-olds
Cynthia Xinran Guo1, Philippe Rochat1
1Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
Abstract:
What motivates young children to produce early lies? A total of 217 2½- to 5-year-old children (Mage = 44.5 months, SD = 8.45; 54% girls; 61.7% White) from the southeastern United States were tested using a modified third-party transgression paradigm to examine the motivation behind their deception. Children were assigned to one of three conditions-baseline, self-motivated, or other-motivated condition-and their propensity to lie was captured through both verbal and nonverbal measures. Results show that children's early lies are primarily driven by a self-serving motivation. However, the motivation to lie diversifies by 4 years of age, when children begin to lie for both self-serving and other-serving motivations.
Related Concept Videos
Language Development
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development
Piaget's Stage 2 of Cognitive Development
Nonconscious Mimicry
False Memories
One primary source of false memories is misattribution, where individuals incorrectly associate external information...
Observational Learning

