The Relation Between Cognitive Control And Lying Among Primary And Secondary Students : The Role Of Lying Frequency

Lying is a deliberate act of concealing,fabricating or manipulating facts to create and maintain false beliefs in the minds of others through verbal or non-verbal means.Lying can destroy trust and interpersonal relationships and even have a negative impact on the mental health of primary and secondary school students.Therefore,it is of great significance to discuss lying among primary and middle school students.In studies of lying,the relationship between lying and cognitive control has always been one of the most interesting questions.At present,there are two opposing theories about the relationship between lying and cognitive control.Grace’s theory holds that lying and cognitive control have significant positive correlation,that is,lying requires cognitive control.According to Will’s theory,lying behavior has a significant negative correlation with cognitive control,that is,lying does not require the involvement of cognitive control,and honesty requires cognitive control to resist the temptation of lying.Facing the argument,Speer et al.(2022)proposed a theory of individual differences to reconcile the two theories.Specifically,Speer et al.suggest that an individual’s propensity to lie(frequency)influences the relationship between lying and cognitive control: for individuals who tend to lie,lying requires no cognitive control whereas honesty requires cognitive control,and for individuals who tend to be honest,lying requires no cognitive control whereas honesty does not.This theory of individual differences is supported by some evidence from adult studies.This study focuses on how this theory of individual differences in lying develops with age.Specifically,it focuses on how the relationship between lying tendency and cognitive control changes with age.A total of 439 children participated in two studies in this paper.In the first study,the "difference-finding" paradigm was adopted to induce children’s lying behavior,taking reaction time as an indicator to measure cognitive control(the longer the reaction time,the more cognitive control is required),and the subjects were divided into high lying group and low lying group according to the frequency of lying.The results showed that there was a large individual difference in the lying behavior of 8-15 years old children.Further analysis showed that children with high frequency of lying had a significantly smaller response to lying than the honest response,and children with low frequency of lying had a significantly larger response to lying than the honest response,and there was no age effect in this result pattern.This study supports the theory of individual differences,suggesting that the relationship between lying and cognitive control is influenced by the tendency to lie from elementary school onwards.In study 2,based on study 1,the experimental method was used to manipulate the lying tendency of the subjects,and the influence of lying frequency on the relationship between lying and cognitive control was further investigated.Since no age effect was found in Study 1,Study 2 used only one age group.The pretest adopted the "find different" paradigm to induce children to lie,and according to the average frequency of lying in study 1,the subjects were divided into high lying group and low lying group,and then through the social norm information to manipulate the experimental group of children’s lying tendency,the post-test still used the "find different" paradigm to investigate children’s lying behavior.The results showed that the experimental group with cross-group variation in frequency of lying increased significantly when the frequency of lying changed from high to low.When the frequency of lying went from low to high,the response to lying decreased significantly.There was no significant difference in the control group’s response to lying before and after the test.The study further showed that the frequency of lying affects the cognitive control of lying behavior.Based on the above two studies,this study draws the following conclusions:1.There are individual differences in children’s lying behavior between 8 and 15 years old.Children with high frequency of lying have significantly lower response time to lying than to honest response time,and children with low frequency of lying have significantly higher response time to lying than to honest response time,indicating that children with different frequency of lying have different ways of cognitive control on lying.2.Children with high levels of lying increased their response to lying significantly after the frequency of lying decreased.In children with low frequency of lying,the response to lying decreased significantly after the frequency of lying increased.It shows that when the tendency to lie changes,the relationship between cognitive control and lying also changes,indicating that the relationship between cognitive control and lying depends on the situation.