Cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between children's moral standards and their antisocial lie telling

Although researchers posit that lying is integral to morality, findings have been mixed. The goal of this study was to examine the link between children's lie-telling moral standards and their actual antisocial lie telling, across a broad age range (4–15 years) to determine whether it is more evident as children aged, as well as with both cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Results revealed that with increasing age, children rated others' antisocial lie telling more negatively, and were less inclined to tell an antisocial lie. Most importantly, children's moral standards for lying guided actual antisocial lie telling concurrently and over time (i.e., a year later), irrespective of age. These finding suggest that, across a broad age range, evaluating lying less negatively was associated with more actual antisocial lying. Finally, these findings also showed that moral standards are related to lie telling in one TRP context, but not the other. Implications are discussed.