February 24, 2025

Children often observe interactions between informants and receivers, providing them with insights into complex social dynamics. For example, a child might witness their father hide a diamond necklace and later overhear him tell his wife a white lie about forgetting her birthday gift, or they might see a sibling eat the last cookie and then overhear the same sibling lie to their mother about it. As third-party observers, children become privy to these dynamics, and understanding them is crucial for their effective navigation of social situations. Misjudgements in evaluating a receiver’s beliefs about an informant can land children in difficult social predicaments. 

In “Detecting Lies through Others’ Eyes: Children use perceptual access cues to evaluate listeners’ beliefs about informants’ deception” (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2024), Cleo Tay (NUS Psychology), Ray Ng (NUS Psychology), Assistant Professor Xiao Pan Ding (NUS Psychology), and Nina Ni Ye (Boston University) conducted a sticker-hiding task to examine how children perceive a receiver’s beliefs regarding an informant’s deception, when the informant provides a false testimony. In this task, receivers either peeked and knew the true location of the sticker or remained oblivious to it. The informant then lied about the sticker’s location, and the children were asked if they believed that the receiver would trust the informant’s false testimony about the sticker’s location. 

The authors discovered that children navigate social interactions not solely based on their own knowledge but also by considering what they believe other receivers know. When receivers are knowledgeable, children accurately predict that the receiver would express disbelief in a speaker’s lie; however, when receivers are ignorant, children expect the receiver to believe in the lie, despite personally knowing its falsehood. Understanding whether a receiver trusts an informant is essential for children’s navigation of the social world. For instance, children might be able to inform an unwitting receiver of an informant’s deceptive intent and thereby gain the receiver’s trust. Conversely, children may help maintain an informant’s prosocial lie to avoid hurting the receiver’s feelings. By observing the interactions of those around them and reasoning about the interlocutors’ mental states, children can make accurate deductions about social contexts in which receiving and giving false testimony may be appropriate. 

Furthermore, the study revealed that children with a better understanding of others’ thoughts and stronger executive functioning skills were more adept at determining if the receiver would believe the lie. This underscores the role of cognitive development in children’s social understanding. As children mature, they draw upon various cues and become more discerning at assessing the trust judgments made by interlocutors. Overall, this study provides interesting findings about the processes underlying selective trust in children.  

Read the full article here.