No one is born honorable. If you doubt me, just watch little
kids at play. Scholarly research has confirms the point. Michael Lewis, a
prominent psychologist at Rutgers, has conducted many studies of how children naturally
lie and deceive and are even encouraged to do so by well-meaning parents.
Certain ways of expressing emotion are taught to be acceptable while others are
not. One experiment, for example, showed that children are usually taught to
express sadness when their mother leaves them with a baby sitter. But the
reality was that children were not sad and recovered quickly when the mother
left. Other examples are how children are taught to express responses to minor
insults or injuries. Some kids are taught that it is alright to over-react.
Lewis and his colleagues
conducted some classical experiments in young children that revealed how their
tendency for false behavior changed with age. They secretly videotaped children
in an honesty test in which they were told not to peek at a toy that was placed
behind them. The child was told that the adult had to leave the room for a few
minutes, but when she comes back the two will play with the toy.
One-hundred percent of children
as young as two peeked at the toy. As evidence that self-control grows with age,
only 35% of six-year-olds peeked. However, lying seemed to increase with age as
children learned to perceive a benefit from lying. When asked if they peeked,
38% of two-year-olds lied. But among six-year-olds, one-hundred percent of
peekers lied about it. Boys generally had less self-control in resisting
peeking, but no sex differences occurred in the extent of lying.
Clear correlations were seen with
other aspects of cognitive function. For example, how quickly a child yielded
to the temptation of peeking varied with IQ. Those who peeked sooner had lower
IQ scores. They also had less emotional intelligence, that is, were less able
to name the emotions revealed by pictures of human faces and less able to
predict the kind of emotion that would be generated by certain experiences.
However, the lying varied
directly with IQ and emotional intelligence. Smarter kids were more likely to
lie. Moreover, Lewis and others contend that lying and deception are normal and
good. Lying seems to be associated with pro-social behavior and with
creativity.
Doing What Comes Naturally
Lewis and others think that children should not be condemned
for their dishonorable behavior. It comes from self-serving biology. Human
weakness is most evident in children, and they will often do things they know
they should not do.
It is hard to know how a child
really feels, because the parents are continually teaching them how they should
express feelings and reactions to life events. When children become adults, the
lifetime of conditioning about expressing emotions creates problems for mental
health workers to treat patients because true feelings are so buried and
masked.
Children learn to think and
behave in untruthful ways for three reasons:
1.
Avoid negative consequences or punishment.
2.
Protect the ego from assaults on their sense of
self-worth or confidence.
3.
Benefit oneself or take advantage of others.
Children also learn
self-deception at rates that vary with age. The development of self-esteem is
at play here. A child learns to avoid or minimize honest judgments that
unnecessarily diminish their self-esteem. At the same time, a child could learn
that honest self-appraisal serves the useful purpose of avoiding future
mistakes or taking some necessary action.
Experimentally, pretend play
provides a paradigm for studying self-deception. Very young children imitate
the actions of others around them. As they get a little older, they pretend
that one toy is doing something with another toy, as for example, toy soldiers
engaging in battle.
Pretend play begins at around age
one. Lewis gives the example of a
one-year may pretend seeing his mother talking on the phone. By age two or
three the child might pretend that her doll is talking on the phone. By three
years of age, a child is able to consider success or failure of the pretend
scenarios and to assign blame or credit for them. At this point, self-conscious
emotions have emerged that lead to shame for failure and pride in success.
Children readily learn to seek
self-benefit and to take advantage of others,
as when a child lies about a misdeed and blames it on an innocent, such as a
sibling. Unfortunately, little research seems to have been done on childhood
development of this level of dishonesty. How does it change with age? What
factors promote it? Or mitigate it? The social consequences are profound.
Children are biologically wired
to behave falsely. Where do they learn moral values and respect for truth?
Traditionally, this was in houses of worship. But as many parents have left
formal religion, this teaching is increasingly absent. But we know that
teaching of children has lasting effects, good or bad. Both Jesuits and
Communist Lenin have claimed, "give me a child until age seven, and I have
that child for life."
Knowledge and life experience do
change what a person thinks as true. Highly intelligent kids can figure a lot
of this out on their own. But they need to question, and most humans are prone
to take things at face value. This formed the basis of the life of Socrates,
whose mission was to show people the importance of asking questions and
introspection. In my decades of teaching at the college level, I have learned
that most students are intellectually compliant and do not question. Maybe they
are indoctrinated to be this way. After all, they have had 12 years of taking
multiple-choice quizzes where each question is deemed to be the right question
that has only one correct answer.
In most cases, behaving
untruthfully is stupid, because we may eventually get caught. When that
happens, who will trust us again? We are made still more stupid by life
experiences that create the illusion that clever false behavior works. We learn
our counterproductive attitudes and behaviors, and worse yet, we reinforce them
by repetition and turn them into bad habits. We do stupid things because our
brains have been programmed by our learning experiences to keep doing things
that are not in our best long-term interest.
Michael Lewis and some other
psychologists think childhood lying, deceptions, and other forms of
untruthfulness are normal developmental features that even help children become more
emotionally and socially competent as an adult. I vigorous disagree. The price
to be paid for accepting childhood dishonor is that children are learning
dishonorable bad habits. Children usually have a selfish reason for being
untruthful and dishonorable. If parents and other adults do not correct such
bad behavior as it occurs because they believe it is normal for that age, children
can become spoiled brats that grow up to be self-absorbed adults who feel
entitled, make excuses, shift blame to innocents, and accept and spread false
narratives. They may demand "safe spaces," or even react violently
when their views are not accepted by others.
Social pathologies
are rooted in flaws of conscience. These flaws begin in childhood, for it is in
childhood that people develop, or fail to develop, their conscience. What’s
right and what’s wrong must be taught. In an era where the divorce rate is over
50%, where out-of-wedlock births exceed 70% in some racial groups, and where
more and more kids are raised by a single mom, it is not surprising that this
country has so much dysfunctional behavior and crime. I read somewhere that the
U.S. has the highest percentage of people in prison than any other country.
Kids learn their values from somewhere, if not from a loving two-parent family,
then from a gang of peers. Lack of conscience causes much youth violence, peer
cruelty, stealing, cheating, sexual promiscuity, and substance abuse.
Children
have a particularly hard time knowing their feelings and limitations. That is
why adult nurturing is so important to help children learn how to “grow up.” It
is also why children, especially teenagers, are so prone to angst and poor
choices. Indeed, a critical element of growing up is self-awareness, seeing
things as they really are, and resolving the things that cause problems and
unhappiness. All children develop attitudes, emotions, beliefs and behaviors
that need some degree of correction. In that sense, all children have a “bad
brain,” and they need to be taught how to develop it constructively.
Childhood Training
Children have to learn right from wrong and then develop the
discipline and character to do the right. I have a new book that should inspire
readers to include in their life purpose a pursuit of truth that goes beyond
the usual casual and superficial level. Each of us needs and should want to
know how to detect, understand, and deal with dishonorable behavior in others,
lest others betray or exploit us. Likewise, each of us needs to understand our
own character weaknesses, so that we can become better, more respected, and
trusted people. Children need to know the seven deadly forms of untruthfulness,
which I identify as:
Lying
Deception
Pretension
Denial
Cheating
Withholding
Delusion
A useful acrostic might be: “Low-Down People Don’t Care What
(they) Do”
How does one teach honorable
behavior? First, note the assertion that honor is something a person can learn
to embrace. If parents don’t teach right and wrong, children may not learn it. Teaching
anything can involve a mixture of positive and negative reinforcement. For
misbehaving children, spanking used to be the standard remedy. That does not
always work, and is subject to abuse. Alternatives include withholding
privileges. Young people frequently think they have a right to much of what
they want in life. A loving parent may need to take away these “rights” and
dole them back out as “privileges” at the pace that children grow morally.
A parent can structure rewards for
good behavior. You can keep score on a calendar or in a notebook on the
progress at developing a certain desirable behavior. The Boy Scout idea of
doing a good deed every day has great merit. Too bad it is considered old
fashioned. The merit- badge concept in both Boy and Girl Scouts is sound
psychological practice for instilling the desire to do the right thing and get
recognition for it.
The best teaching is not telling,
but of prompting students to question what is appropriate. For example, a
parent who finds her child cheating in school, should ask, “Have you thought
about what might be wrong with cheating?” Or a child who steals another kid’s
lunch money should be challenged with “Was it fair for you to take that money?
Would you mind if another kid took your lunch money?” Or when caught in a lie,
a parent could say, “Please don’t lie to me. I need to trust you. Don’t you
want me to be able to trust you?”
Of course, the best approach is to
prevent wrong behavior by setting a good personal example. We all know that
children learn more from what we do than what we say. From family and personal
relationships to practicing one's religion, what could be more destructive than
hypocrisy?
Seeking recognition or rewards for
good character is itself an unworthy motive. We should do the right thing for
the right reasons. When a child's reason is self-serving, such as seeking
praise or reward, a child may be deceiving herself and others about her real
character.
In today's world, we
are becoming accustomed to concealment, half-truths, misrepresentation, spin,
fake news, and other forms of untruthfulness. Social media spread these
distortions like a viral epidemic. I have a new inexpensive e-book at Amazon
that addresses the issues: To Tell the
Truth. Save Us from Concealment, Half-truths, Misrepresentation, Spin, and Fake
News. This book aims to show why truth matters, identifies seven kinds of
falsehood, explains the common causes, and suggests many ways we can reduce the
falsehoods we commit. A concluding chapter presents an ethics model that can be
used for a variety of real-world situations.
Reference
Lewis, Michael. (2015). The origins of lying and deception
in everyday life. American Scientist. 103: 128-135.
