April 1, 2024

April Fools’ Day, which customarily falls on the first of April every year, is a day when one might expect to prank or be pranked. In other words, harmless lies are embraced and normalised, albeit for a day, on April Fools’. Lies and deception are not far removed from everyday life as well. On some level, lies are essential to facilitate communication and social cohesion.

Assistant Professor Xiao Pan Ding and Mr Deston Chung (both from NUS Psychology) are part of a multi-national research team studying the moral evaluations of different forms of truth and lies across Canada, Singapore, and China. Led by Assistant Professor Alison O’Connor (Mount Allison University, Canada), other members of the team are Dr Qinggong Li (Zhejiang Normal University, China) and Professor Angela D. Evans (Brock University, Canada). Research findings were published in ‘Older adults are more approving of blunt honesty than younger adults: a cross‑cultural study’ (Current Psychology, 2022).

The research team studied the attitudes of younger and older adults towards three forms of lies: antisocial lies, modesty lies, and polite lies. Antisocial lies are self-serving lies that are told to cover up one’s own transgressions, like cheating or stealing. Modesty lies are meant to benefit others and include lies which conceal or downplay one’s own achievements. Polite lies, often called white lies, are lies told to protect the feelings of another person.

The study thus provides complex insights into the dispositions people have towards lies across the dimensions of their national environment (i.e., Canada, Singapore, or China), age (i.e., younger or older adults), and lie type (i.e., antisocial, modesty, or polite lies).

In many measures, Singaporean respondents did not differ much from either Canadian or Chinese respondents. The research team found that while Canadians rated antisocial lies more harshly than the Chinese, Singaporeans’ dispositions towards this type of lie fall in the middle of the other two national groups. Nonetheless, statistical analyses done by the authors show that, for the moral evaluations of truths and lies, the Singapore sample is more similar to that of Canada than China.

In addition, Singaporeans and Canadians tended to rate modesty lies more harshly than their counterparts in China. But age matters too – older adults in Singapore rated modesty lies more harshly than younger adults. Despite these results, older adults across all three countries were more approving of blunt and immodest truth than younger adults. Finally, adults in Singapore and Canada rated polite lies more negatively than adults in China.

Read the article here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-022-03785-6