The Relationship Between Emotional Understanding And Prosocial Lying In Children Aged 3-7 Years:the Moderating Role Of Cost

In recent years,in order to understand the developmental mechanism of prosocial lying in children,researchers have gradually investigated the cognitive ability related to prosocial lying in children.The existing researches mainly focus on the influence of theory of mind and executive function on children’s prosocial lying.Early studies have found that when children tell white lies,they also involve the consideration of others’ emotions,which provides a clue for the role of emotional understanding in prosocial lying.At present,there are some indirect studies on the relationship between emotional understanding and children’s prosocial lying,but few direct studies,and there are some shortcomings such as a long span of research age and lack of discussion on the components of emotional understanding.In addition,cost is an environmental factor that children mainly consider when deciding whether to lie,so whether cost will affect the role of children’s emotional understanding in prosocial lying remains to be explored.For these purposes,this study will focus on children aged 3-7 years,and investigate the relationship between emotional understanding and prosocial lying as well as the impact of cost on the relationship.In study 1,a two-factor correlation design was used to measure children aged 3-7 years(n=90)using the modified disappointment gift task and the emotional understanding task,to investigate the developmental characteristics of children’s prosocial lying and the role of emotional understanding in it,and to explore which components of emotional understanding can predict children’s prosocial lying behavior.The results show that with the increase of age,the proportion of prosocial lying behavior increases,and the motivation of lying becomes more prosocial.Emotional understanding can significantly predict prosocial lying behavior of children.Compared with children with low emotional understanding score,children with high emotional understanding score are more likely to have prosocial lying behavior,and their scores on desire,belief and hiding are also significantly higher than those of non-prosocial lying children.Based on the results of study 1,a 3(age: 3,5,7 years old)×2(cost: high cost,low cost)inter-subject design was used in study 2 to measure children aged 3-7 years old(n=164)using a disappointment gift task with cost manipulation and an emotional understanding task to investigate whether cost moderates the relationship between children’s emotional understanding and prosocial lying.The results showed that cost significantly affected children’s prosocial lying behavior,and the proportion of prosocial lying behavior under high cost condition was significantly lower than that under low cost condition.At the same time,cost also moderates the relationship between children’s emotional understanding and prosocial lying.Specifically,in the 7-year-old group,the higher the score of emotional understanding under the low-cost condition,the more likely they are to have prosocial lying behavior;in the high cost condition,the higher the score of emotional understanding,the less likely they are to have prosocial lying behavior.In conclusion,emotional understanding can still significantly predict prosocial lying behavior among children aged 3-7 years,and the stronger the desire,belief and hiding ability,the more likely they are to tell prosocial lies,but this does not exist in the condition of high cost.