About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 20. Social Cognition

Abstract

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Introduction: A particular form of parental rearing practices that could model children’s honesty is parenting by lying, which refers to parents’ lie-telling behavior to elicit children’s compliance. The existing literature shows that it’s highly prevalent, with 78% of American and 98% of Chinese parents using such lies to make children comply (Setoh et al., 2023). Nevertheless, most studies on parenting by lying were conducted on participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) nations, which differ from middle- to low-income countries, such as Romania (Morelli et al., 2018).
Aims and Method: The current study aims to investigate the relations between parenting by lying and some individual and contextual factors documented to be associated with children’s internalization of honesty (Talwar & Crossman, 2022).
Participants were 260 parents of 5-to-12-year-olds (50% between 40 and 50 years old; 208 females). We aimed to (1) evaluate parenting by lying’s prevalence and (2) explore the relation between parenting by lying and parental socialization goals, general parental practices, parental socialization of lies towards children, lie acceptability, cultural values, and religiosity.
Parenting by lying was assessed using a modified version of Jackson’s (2021) scale, which evaluates various scenarios in which parents may choose to tell lies to their children. Parents’ socialization of deception/honesty was measured using the Revised Socialization of Lying scale (Talwar et al., 2022), whereas lie acceptability was evaluated with the Revised Lie Acceptability scale (Oliveira & Levine, 2008). The Goals and Values in Adulthood Scale assessed parental socialization goals for their children when growing up (Suizzo, 2007). We also evaluated parental practices using a short version of the parental EMBU questionnaire (Castro et al., 1997). Lastly, religiosity was measured using the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL; Koenig & Bussing, 2010), while cultural values were assessed with the Singelis scale (Singelis, 1994).
Results: Preliminary results showed that most parents (over 60%) reported using different types of lies to obtain their children’s compliance. Parenting by lying total score was positively predicted by parental interdependent cultural values (β = 0.13, p = .019), parental control (β = 0.17, p = .007), and parental modeling of deceptive behavior (β = 0.27, p = .000). In addition, it was marginally negatively associated with parental educational level (β = -0.11, p = .056), adjusted R2 = .26.
Moreover, we found that parental instrumental lies (e.g., fake promises/threats lies) were uniquely predicted by parental level of involvement in children’s rearing (β = 0.12, p = .027), adjusted R2 = .25. In contrast, comparison lies (e.g., praising lies) were uniquely associated with parental emotional warmth (β = 0.15, p = .012) and parental educational level (β = -0.13, p = .025), adjusted R2 = .20.
Summarizing, Romanian parents who were more interdependent, themselves modeling deceptive behavior and using controlling parental practices, reported more frequent parenting by lying. In addition, highly involved parents used more instrumental lies, whereas less educated yet emotionally supportive ones reported using more comparison lies. Implications for the parental socialization of children’s honest or deceptive behavior are discussed.

Author information

Author	Role
Narcisa Prodan, Research in Individual Differences and Legal Psychology Lab (RIDDLE), Department of Psychology, Babeş-Bolyai University	Presenting author
Daniela Călinescu, Maple Bear School, Cluj-Napoca	Non-presenting author
Lenke Iuhoș, Onisifor Ghibu Highschool, Cluj-Napoca	Non-presenting author
Laura Visu-Petra, Research in Individual Differences and Legal Psychology Lab (RIDDLE), Department of Psychology, Babeş-Bolyai University	Non-presenting author

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