Speaking of Psychology - The truth about why kids lie, with Victoria Talwar, PhD

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

Most parents want to raise their children to be honest adults, so the first time that they catch their child in a lie it may come as an unpleasant surprise. But psychologists’ research has found that lying is a normal part of childhood. In fact, it’s a developmental milestone. Victoria Talwar, PhD, of McGill University, talks about why kids lie, how lying is tied to cognitive development, how children understand the morality of lying (including the “gray areas” of keeping secrets and tattling), and how parents can encourage truth-telling and honesty in their children.    Links   Victoria Talwar, PhD   Speaking of Psychology Home Page Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is sponsored by Newport Healthcare, providing evidence-based results-driven treatment for teens and young adults ages 12 to 28. Newport treats clients who are struggling with mental health conditions, co-occurring disorders, and behavioral issues like lying and risk-taking. Newport's outpatient and residential programs around the country provide supportive, caring environments where adolescents and young adults can find long-term sustainable healing. Learn more at Newport Healthcare.com. From Pinocchio to the boy who cried wolf, many classic children's tales tell the stories of children who lie and get their comeuppance for it. It's no surprise that these morality tales are so popular.

Honesty is a universally valued trait, and most parents want to raise their children to be honest. So the first time that a parent catches a child in a lie, it may come as an unpleasant surprise. But psychologists' research has found that lying is a normal part of childhood. In fact, it's a developmental milestone. It's only possible once children have developed some self-control and the ability to understand another person's mental state.

So why do kids lie? And how young does lying start? Do kids lie more than adults? How do children understand the morality of lying and how does their understanding change as they get older? What kind of lies are normal for children and when does lying become a problem? How do kids think about the gray areas of telling white lies,

keeping secrets, and tattling? And how can parents encourage truth-telling and honesty in their children? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. Our guest today is Dr. Victoria Talwar, a professor in the Department of Educational and Count

Counseling Psychology at McGill University, where she studies children's truth-telling and lie-telling behavior. Her research examines the cognitive, social, and cultural factors that affect children's lying, as well as how children understand the moral implications of lying and honesty. She also studies issues related to children's eyewitness testimony in court and kids' and teen social interactions in cyberspace, including cyberbullying. Her book, The Truth About Lying, teaching honesty to children at every age and stage was published by APA in July. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Talwar. Thank you for having me.

Let's start with an idea I just mentioned, which is that lying is a normal part of children's development. At what age do kids start to lie and what cognitive abilities do they need to have in place in order to lie well? Yeah, it actually emerges along with other sort of cognitive abilities that happen in the preschool years. So that's why we say it's a normal part of development because it's part of these abilities, these positive cognitive abilities that develop in children, which are abilities like they understand that other people have other thought bubbles, I say, coming from their mind. So

the idea is that we understand that, you know, somebody else has different ideas, different thoughts, different beliefs, knowledge, and desires that are different from ours. So if you imagine in their thought bubble, they're kind of thinking their thoughts of what they think about the world and what they know about the world. But a young child doesn't understand that. They don't realize that what they know, someone else might not know, or vice versa. So they don't really yet start to understand that until about sort of the preschool years of about, you know, three, four, five, six they're starting to develop these abilities. And certainly by five that most children understand it. Once you start to understand that, that other people have sort of these mental thoughts, mental

representations in their minds, these knowledge, beliefs that are different, that can be different, you can understand that someone else could have a false belief about what is true. So, you know, if I go and put the juice in the fridge and then later you move the juice and put it on the counter, I will still have a false belief that the juice is in the fridge. but a young child doesn't have that yet knowledge. They'll think that if they saw you move it, that I will have the knowledge that they have, which is the juices on the counter.

They don't have the idea that I could have a false belief in my mind. Once you start to understand that someone can have a false belief about reality, then you also can understand that you can start to manipulate that and potentially instill a false belief in others. And this ability to understand other people's sort of thought bubbles, as I call them, is a really important part of development because we want children to be able to start understanding that other people have different thoughts and knowledge and to be able to do perspective taking, which is sort of this is building towards those sort of these building blocks

of perspective taking. This is a very important part in our social development to be able to interact with each others. So this is a positive development. And this cognitive development happens in the preschool years, but it also means that children also start to tell lies because they also understand that maybe, you know, if I lie about doing my homework, mom might believe it and I get out of doing my homework. So this is sort of a product of this positive development that's happening in children. Are there ages or stages in development when lying is more common among kids? So in that preschool years, you start to see it emerge.

And I would say that, you know, you sometimes see it emerge a little earlier for children, especially children who are, you know, have older siblings. Researchers show that children have older siblings might parents notice their children telling sort of small fibs earlier. And that's partly because, one, they may see a model by the older siblings, but also, too, you know, this is part of like sort of negotiating the social relations with their, with their siblings potentially. And also younger children with an older sibling

have more advanced sort of cognitive development happening because of all their social interactions. It advances their cognition. So you see this may see this ability a little earlier. But generally it's happening kind of, you start to see some children two and a half three. By four years of age, most children are telling occasional lies. And so it emerges at this age.

But it kind of increases in frequency as they're kind of getting a little older. They are not necessarily the best at line, so you'll notice that. But as they go through the school age years, they start to learn about when it's appropriate and not appropriate to lie. But on the other hand, they're getting better at lying. We see a decrease in some types of lies by adolescents. But on the other hand, we see an increase in lying where adolescents may be more likely to conceal information that they consider as personal information.

that they don't necessarily want to disclose. And as we go through adolescence, it seems to decline as we get into early sort of adulthood. And certainly, as we go through the age range, as we look at, for instance, seniors, they tend to lie less than sort of middle-aged adults. So there's like a downward arc as we go through. At what point does a child actually understand that he or she is not telling the truth? Young children, very, very young children. So sometimes parents say, well, my child lied to me. And we're talking about very young children, like a two-year-old. And sometimes it's not necessarily that the child understands that they lie. What they're giving is kind of what we call wish fulfillment. So like you might point off into the, you know, horizon. Hey, do you see the ferris wheel over there? And the child says yes. But of course, there's no ferris wheel in the horizon. And you say, well, that child's just lied to me. You know, they didn't see it. But what the child is saying, I want to see what you see.

Like, I want to see it. Yes, yes, where is it? You know, and they're kind of looking because they're used to adults asking them things and, you know, learning to comply with those questions. So sometimes they are giving these what people think are false answers. It's really kind of wish for them. Yeah, I want to be able to see that fear as well. Yes, yes, kind of thing.

But by the time we get to about in that four to five range, for sure by this age, they start to understand that, you know, the intentionality behind lying. And so definitely they're telling. intentional lies around that age range. So when do kids start to understand and tell what we call pro-social lies, the kind of lies that most of us will tell sometimes that are designed to avoid hurting someone's feelings, such as you say to a gift giver, gee, I really love those socks when you actually would have preferred something else or just blurting out, boy, Aunt Margie, you sure look fat.

I mean, when the kids realize that you shouldn't be saying those things and that they are more or less acceptable lies? So we did a study. Our first study we did, we did exactly like what you said, we gave them an undesirable gift. And that one, it was like a bar of soap, Lysol soap. There was like a bucket of different gifts they could get. And there were lots of neat toys, but they got like the Lysol soap. And then the gift giver asked them how they liked it after they unwrapped it.

And what we found was, and this was children between three and 11 years of age. And we found that like even some of the three-year-olds was. say, yeah, I like it. You know, yeah, the gift camera say, hey, do you like the gift I gave you? Yes. But we did find that the younger children couldn't really tell you why they liked it, whereas the older children could. But then we did a follow-up study.

So that study we did, we did that in Canada, and a follow-up study we did with children in mainland China. But this time we explored whether they would, what their explanation was. And we did it with younger children, so seven, nine, and 11-year-olds. And what we found was when we later on someone asked them, well, why did you tell that person you like the gift? And what we found was younger children will tell that lie for, they're not so much telling

it for pro-social reasons when they lie in that situation. It's more like they fear that the person will get upset with them. So there's more related to their own self that they're thinking, self-preservation in a way. Now, those children were much more likely. younger children are much more likely to be blunt truth tellers. And a lot of people have funny stories about their child sort of telling the blunt truth in an inappropriate moment, right? Those children are much more likely to tell blunt truth. And those children that do tell these lies in this situation, they're much more likely to be doing it for self-preservation.

They're worried that the person's going to be upset with them if they say that they don't like it. But as you get older up to like going up to 11 years of age, you have a. significant increase in children who are telling these lies, these sort of politeness lies. And when you ask them why they're doing it, you get a significant increase in those children giving sort of other oriented answers. And when I say that, I mean, they're saying things like, she'll feel really bad if I say that, you know, she was so happy to give me the gift. I don't want to hurt her feelings. So sort of through those school years, they're definitely learning sort of the social norms and social conventions of politeness and they may start telling lies in order to preserve

another person's feelings or to protect them from feeling bad. And we did another study, a follow-up study in Canada where we had children. So in this case, they got just like your example, they got a pair of knitted woolen brown socks. And again, there was like, they could have got lots of things. And my graduate student, Mina Poplicker at the time did the study and she would give them to them and she'd say, oh, I hope you. really like this, I made them myself. And they would open it up and they'd find like woolen socks. And they kind of, oh, okay. And in one case, it was a low stakes lie. So they had previously gotten another toy, a gift toy, and they could keep both of them. But in another condition,

it was a high-stake lie, a more altruistic lie, because they could only keep one of the gifts. So if they said they didn't like them, then they could give back the socks and keep the other fun toy. but then they might be hurting her feelings. So for them to say that they like it, it was altruistic in that there was a potential cost to them for saying that, but this would sort of benefit by not hurting meanest feelings. And what we found was, again, we did this with preschool all the way into sort of 11-year-olds, and we found that with age children were much more likely in the high cost situation

where they had to give back the fun toy and had to keep the woolen socks. they were much more likely to say, oh, yes, I like them. Thank you very much. It's very nice of you to give me woolen sauce. So as children get older, they're much more likely to tell lies for the benefit of someone else at even a potential cost to themselves. You also study how kids think about the morality of lying and whether particular kinds of lies are right or wrong. How does that moral understanding develop and change as children? age? So very young children often lump lying as something that is not true, not correct. But as a result, they can sometimes overgeneralize this to, they sort of base it on factuality. So for instance, if you say something by mistake, they'll call that a lie. So for instance, if I believe

that the outdoor pool this summer is open from 11 a.m. onwards and I tell the children, Okay, we can go at 11 o'clock, and it turns out it's not open to 1 p.m., they'll say, oh, well, you told a lie. But I was just a mistaken belief. So in my thought bubble, I had what I believe was a true belief that it was open at 11am. But that was not the actual reality. The reality is at 1 p.m. So what's different here is that I did not intend to lie. I made a genuine mistake.

I made an incorrect statement based on what I believe to be the true state of reality. young children don't understand this. So they will often call this a lie. And as they go through sort of school age, like six to 11, they start to understand sort of the intentionality behind lies that the person is actually intending to deceive you. They're intending to make a false statement to make someone else believe something that that's not true. So they start to understand that as they get older. So for instance, if I decide to trick you and do a mean trick and tell you that the suing pull is open at 11am, but I know that it's open at 1 p.m. So you go along at 11 p.m. And discover to your disappointment that you can't get in, that is a lie where I know that when the

pull is open, but I've still made a false statement intending you to believe it. And therefore, I've intended to deceive you. What about navigating the line between lying and cheating? What's the best way to get children to understand that cheating is, in effect, a form of lying? And does it matter if they even understand that? We talk about lying. So lying is a verbal, usually a verbal statement made with the intention to deceive. It's under the umbrella of dishonesty. Now, we can have a range of dishonest acts, including cheating. Often cheating and lying come together because, you know, if you cheat on a test and then someone asks you, how did you know that? You lie about it or you are asked, did you cheat or something? You lie about it. So it's,

It's also about sort of the wider discussion about the importance of honesty and not engaging in dishonest acts. You mentioned a little while ago you've done studies in Canada and China. Do you find that children in different countries and cultures think differently about the morality of lying? So one thing that is universal is that people think honesty is really important. It's a highly valued behavior and we look forward in the character of others. We rate it very positively.

Honesty is really important. What changes from culture to culture is the situations where it may be acceptable to not always be honest, for instance. And we have sort of culturally sanctioned situations where we tell sort of what we perceive as not necessarily being lies. So, for instance, in North America, it's very common to tell children about Santa Claus. yet few pairs think about it as potentially lying because it's a culturally sanctioned kind of story that we tell children, and we don't even see it often in the realm of deception. So we have these sort of areas where we may be less negative about lying. To give you another example, well, actually, this is a study by Kong Lee. He did a study in China and in Canada, where they gave vignettes, And the children had to evaluate whether they thought what the character said was good or bad.

And in some of the vignettes, like the story character would clean up the room while the teacher was out of the room. And the teacher would come back in the room and ask them who did it. And in some of the stories the child said they did it truthfully. And some of the stories the child would lie and not say that they did it. In Canada, children always rated the truth telling positively and the lying negatively, whether it was about doing some of the story. something bad, transgressive, or doing this positive thing, cleaning up a room, for instance. But in China, with age, children were increasingly more likely to rate the truth-telling about cleaning up the room less positively, and they were more likely to rate the lying more positively

with age. So they were more likely to say it was okay to lie in this situation as they got older. And that's because within that culture, the principle of modesty is very important. And so it becomes more acceptable to lie in that situation because it's seen as being more self-effacing and more modest. So we have social situations where we may consider lying a less negative thing. So just like the example we gave a moment ago with getting a gift, often children, for instance, in North America, are socialized by parents to, you know, say, oh, thank you very much. And to say they like the gift because it's considered really. rude to tell a person, ah, I don't like this or, you know, why did you get me this? I wanted something else. So there are situations that culturally may vary from place to place in terms of

how we condone or we sort of excuse certain lies. This episode is sponsored by Newport Healthcare, delivering accessible and ethical treatment to young people ages 12 to 28 who are struggling with mental health conditions and behavioral issues. Newport's integrated whole-person approach addresses the underlying trauma that can lead to depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse, and eating disorders. With outpatient and residential programs, Newport provides tailored treatment plans designed for each client's individual needs and history, incorporating a blend of clinical, experiential, and academic programming. Teens and young adults learn skills for building honest, authentic relationships with family, peers, mentors, and themselves.

Learn more at Newport Healthcare.com. Here's a question that's at the crux of your new book. How can parents encourage truth-telling in their children? What works and what doesn't work if you want to raise your children to be honest? First of all, if this is really important to you, that you want your child to be honest, and you want them to tell you the truth, then you need to actively teach children about it. Just thinking that they'll pick it up by osmosis is not the way to go.

We actively teach children about a lot of behaviors. We actively teach them their numbers. We actively teach them how to read. If you want them to engage in pro-social behaviors like honesty, you can also teach those. And in fact, that's the most effective thing to do is to really stress those, talk about them, emphasize them, and teach children them. So that means what does that mean that? How do you teach them?

Well, it means like from an early age doing things that emphasize that and give you the message about why you value this behavior. That means you can read stories. You can read stories at a very young age with children. Children are particularly loved stories. and they can be really good mechanisms to sort of give them that message and also to make it understandable to them. It also can be a catalyst for you to have conversations with them about these different principles and about how the story characters behaved and why they behave like that. And that's something you can do throughout as they get older too. You know, younger age,

you're going to have picture books as you get older, you know, even an older age child. older elementary or, you know, middle school child, you may still be engaging in reading with them for entertainment, even though they can read themselves, you can talk about things, or just be interested in the books they're doing, you can talk about student characters, and when they show behaviors like honesty, you can talk about them, or when they're dishonest and talk about those situations. And of course, as they get older, the situations where they see lying and truth-telling become more nuanced, and you can have. have an ongoing conversation about that. So having an ongoing conversation also make sure that if you,

you know, if honesty is something you value, then you want to recognize it in your children. You know, if they're honest, we often forget to recognize it. Like, because they're sometimes being honest about a transgression, right? So we jump right to the transgression. What? You did what? But we want to say, like, we should take a moment to at least give them recognition that they've done the brave thing and told you the truth about it. So say, you know, I'm not happy that you, you know, broke my, you know, my phone, but I'm glad. I'm happy that you at least told me the truth about it. And then you can have a conversation about, you know, why they broke the phone or whatever. But giving them some recognition when they're honest is important.

because it's not only important to say, you know, have conversations about the importance of honesty, but then if you never recognize it when they do it, it's like, well, it doesn't actually matter at all when I'm honest. I don't get any positive feedback on it. And we often just give negative feedback when they're lying. But we also have to give the positive feedback. And also, finally, a really important piece of this is modeling the behavior. If you say honesty is really important, but then you are like being dishonest in front of your child, your child's going to observe that. So, you know, if you're lying, you know, they hear you lying on the phone and they know it's an obvious lie or you're lying, you know, to get into the movies for cheaper price because you lie about their age or whatever.

Those are little things they pick up them and they're just communicating. Yeah, honesty is really the best policy. Honesty is important, but we can fudge it too. And so you have to model that behavior as well. If it's really important to you, you should also be showing them how to be honest. What about punishing kids for lying? Does that work in the sense that it will make them stop lying going forward? So we often do punish lying.

And it's not that you shouldn't necessarily let them just lie without any consequence. But part of that is also the flip side. of it is recognizing the truth-telling when they have it. So if you're only punishing lie-telling and you're never giving any recognition for truth-telling, then you may not be actually communicating the value of truth-telling or showing them what the desired behavior is. And also, really sort of authoritarian punishment for lying doesn't necessarily, it may stop them lying in that moment, but it doesn't necessarily distinguish the behavior because, for instance, we did a study where we found children who had really strict sort of punitive kind of corporal

punishment in a school setting compared to children who didn't, they learned to lie earlier and they learned to lie better. And part of that is, well, if you're going to get into a lot out of trouble, and these children would get into a lot of trouble for all sorts of transgressions, not just lying. But if you're getting into a lot, potentially have some really harsh punishments for whatever you do, lying can actually. actually be a way to mitigate those negative consequences to you. But then if you're going to try that strategy, you might as well go for broke and really learn to do it well for it to be effective. So it might backfire on you. So it's not that you should not just ignore lying completely all

the time and never have consequences for it. But you have to think about it within a wider framework of reinforcing honesty and demonstrating what the desired behavior is and also having conversations sort of outside the situations where they're lying, when there's other times when you're not in an emotional state, also having conversations about why honesty is important and why you should tell the truth and what does truth-telling look like in different types of situations? There's a section of your book called gray areas where you talk about two special types of situations involving honesty and truth-telling, and that's secrets and tattles. How do you suggest parents talk with their kids about when it's over?

okay to keep a secret or tell it, and when it's necessary, really necessary to tattle on somebody. So I call these gray areas, because they're really the difficult areas, I think, that a lot of parents like myself have struggled with, right? Because not all secrets are bad secrets. Like, you know, having a surprise birthday party for your, you know, your husband or one of somebody, a friend. It's not a bad secret, right? So there are secrets that are fine. And also children have like little secrets about like they have their secret hideout that they make and things like that. So often they can be very innocent and just are even positive little things that are helped for short periods of time. But on the other hand, there are harmful secrets. So it's

about teaching children about the difference between sort of, you know, secrets that are not harmful and harmful. And to understand that as a general role with very young children, the preschool children, early elementary kindergarten that age, they're not necessarily going to understand that distinction. So it's better in that case to maybe just be careful not to use a lot of secret keeping them at that age. And just to be a little bit understanding that they're still trying to understand those distinctions. So they're not also, if they're keeping little, you know, child play secrets, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Don't be harsh on them. There's still, still understanding that. But what you do want to have is a conversation about, you know,

that there are harmful secrets that we shouldn't keep. As they get older, you can have more and more discussion with that. For instance, you know, like no one's supposed to touch their private parts, for instance, even if that someone told them, don't tell anyone, that is something that they should always tell you, that the only person who's allowed to touch their private parts is like their parents, when they're washing them or whatever, or the doctor, you know, examining them, but this is, you know, if anyone tells them, don't tell, they should always tell their parent. But on the other hand, a secret that is kept for a short amount of time, like, you know, a short amount of time, like for a surprise party, where there's no harm attached

to it, these are sort of harmless secrets that are okay to keep, but this shouldn't be kept forever, right? So, sort of teaching them with that. And that has an ongoing kind of conversation as children develop. And they start to also understand the difference between sort of what is something that is bad to keep secret and what is something that's okay. But maybe it's not a good idea to tell you a three-year-old about the surprise party. Yes, because they're more likely to be blunt truth tellers. So they're likely to blurt it out. Do you know what mommy has?

She's got your present. And you know what it is? So we've talked a lot about how lying is a normal part of development, but sometimes it develops into a problem. So what's the difference between normal and problematic lying in children? And how can parents be really attuned and react appropriately? I mean, not overreact. Some kids will lie and that's okay. But how do you know when you've really got a problem?

So I have to say that most cases, there's not a problem. The first time you observe your child lying, you're not happy about it. it. But on the other hand, you know, don't freak out about it. It's a, like I said, at the start, it's a normal thing that they start to understand that they can do and they start to learn. And over time, you're talking to them about honesty and they get socialized that they understand that this is not, you know, something that they should do frequently. And to also understand that, you know, as a behavior, the majority of adults tell occasional lies. So by and large, most adults are honest most of the time, but the research with adults show that adults tell

the occasional lie here and there. So also keep that in mind, right? To be more, you know, understanding with your child and also not to freak out that the first time you see a lie, it doesn't mean your child is going to have a problem. Also, you're going to see your child go through periods of time where they're like trying that behavior. You know, they've learned that they can do it. And you have to just keep on teach thing in them. and reinforcing the importance of honesty with them and be patient. And by and large, most of them will start to be less likely to lie and only lie occasionally may be in a situation where they're trying to be polite

in situations like that. For a very small percentage of children, it may become a problem behavior. And this may be related, it can be a number of reasons. It could be because it's related to some other, problem behaviors, such as children who have conduct disorder or oppositional defined disorder, they are more likely to lie. In fact, this is one of the symptoms of it of these disorders, but very small percentage. And then you're going to see in a constellation of other behaviors, like being aggressive or engaging in sort of more antisocial behavior, being defined of authority,

etc. So if you're seeing a range of these behaviors including a line, you may wish to seek help just to find out, you know, if your child. And this should be like over a period of time, it shouldn't be like, you know, just one day or one week, but we're talking about, you know, over a period of time, you're seeing this pattern developing. Then you should seek help. The other time that you should seek help is when you are having trouble coping with your child's behavior. Your child's line behavior, you're having difficult coping with it. And it's at a state where you're, you are not able to deal with it. Then also seek help because whether it's a problematic or it's just a phase they're going through or whatever,

that's a good time to get some help for you to how to deal with it and also help with the child if there is anything else. Because really important as children develop, if you really want to maintain honesty and open, honest communication between you and your child, as they go from preschool through elementary school into high school and up into their adult life, you want to have a relationship with them that is based on open and honest communication. And to do that, it's really important to the bond between you and your child is maintained. And there's this bond of trust that's maintained. And if that bond is being compromised and you're having difficulty coping with it,

it's important to seek help to help you with that because as a parent, you're a really important part of that child's life. You're the first educator of the child. The parent is their very first educator from when they're small and you play a significant role in their life, even in the teenage years when they are engaged with the wider world, you still can play a significant role when you have a strong relationship and bond with that child. So you really, if you're there's anything that's compromising that or you just feel you can't cope, just reach out and ask for some help. In addition to studying lying and honesty, you also research children's online interactions,

including cyberbullying. Is there a connection between that work and your work on lying and truth-telling? Yeah. So part of the reason, like way back when now, when we were early days, early days of smartphones and everything, somebody asked. me about children, you know, posting, you know, false rumors and lies on the internet about other children, which is part of one way of cyberbullying. There's other ways to do it too. And so that sort of started me on that road. And since then we've sort of continued and looked

at wider aspects of children's online engagement in the digital world. But there is sort of a connection here in that, you know, even more so. It was even more so just before the the pandemic. And now it's just, you know, just a just normal everyday part of our lives. The digital world is really part of it. Youth engage constantly with the online world through their smartphones, through the computers, many, many different ways. And it's with them at all times. And there are many positive aspects of that. There are many ways we can harness digital technology to help them with their education to help with mental health, too. We can deliver interventions, telehealth, all sorts of positive ways.

But the downside of it is you can have negative interactions online too. And before, if your child was being bullied at school, they could come home, they could shut the door, and they could be safe in the cocoon of your home. But now, with that smartphone, it can follow them right up into their bed. and be with them all night long. You can't escape it. So it is of concern to parents and to children and youth. And that's also something that parents have to engage in.

This is part of our reality and part of youth's regular life. So talking about what's happening online and having conversations about what to do if they see something inappropriate or if they are the target is important even prior to such events. But when we talk to youth about why they don't tell their parents, if they're being bullied online, a lot of times they say that they conceal that information because they're afraid that parents will take their devices away from them. And often the reason the parent takes a device is not because the parent's trying to punish the child, although it feels like punishment to the child.

They're just very worried about the child and they're trying to keep the child safe. And they see this device as, you know, okay, I'm going to, you better not have the phone. So we had like a 12-year-old had the phone. The parent had given the phone because the child was going to and from school. And they thought for safety reasons. And then the child was being bullied and the parent took the phone away. But that felt like a punishment to that 12-year-old. And so they felt not only were they bullied, but now they've lost this phone that they're so prized.

Right. So we have to think about how we are communicating about, you know, cyberbullying and online engagement. And also when we discover that children are. doing it, we need to be careful not to sort of punish them inadvertently. Because this is the kind of thing that is that fear of those precautions that we hear from youth, why they often lie or don't tell about what's happening online. So what are you working on now? What are the next big questions you want to answer? So the biggest questions are, you know, we know a lot about how it emerges in line. so we know about preschool children and early elementary,

that it really is related to their sort of social cognition, what I was saying before, their understanding of other people's minds, their other thought bubbles, understanding their cognition. But what we are interested in is how it then develops over time. For most people, lying is an infrequent occasional behavior, and a lot of people are honest. But for some children and some adults,

lying does become a problematic behavior. So we're interested in looking at that sort of trajectory over time of what is it that predicts why most people learn not to lie, how that may, you know, materialize into different profiles where you have people who are very honest. You have people who are kind of honest some of the time, but dishonest also some of the time. And then you have some people who are being dishonest. And those may be for different reasons. Some may be doing it because it's social. They want people to think well of them. And so they're pathologically lying to make people think that they're great.

And so they're often telling lies to make themselves appear better. Or there may be people who are lying for very manipulative reasons. And so looking at how that develops over time and how the social factors lead to different profiles of being honest or dishonest. And then what are the most effective ways to intervene to prevent sort of any mass? maladaptive development in children. Well, Dr. Talwar, this has been really interesting. I know you've given a lot of good information to parents and caregivers out there, so I want to thank you for joining me today.

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