Stefan Szuman Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, 30-060 Kraków, Poland.
Stefan Szuman Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, 30-060 Kraków, Poland.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 Jul;207:105128. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105128. Epub 2021 Mar 21.
Preschool children engage in flattery behaviors, including expressing opinions toward other people or objects that-although favorable-are not truly held. Research shows that in the following years, the number and complexity of motives underlying such insincere behavior increase. The current study focused on children's overt behavior, examining two aspects of the development of false praise-telling: individual stability and group-level discontinuity. Using an art-rating task, a total of 164 children aged 5 to 7 years were tested at three points in time (T1/2/3): M age = 5.66 years, SD = 0.1; M age = 6.65 years, SD = 0.16; M age = 7.61 years, SD = 0.14. The results show that, having become capable of giving false praise in politeness settings at 5.5 years of age, children continue to flatter others in this way at later ages, indicating that false praise-telling is an individually stable characteristic. In addition, a statistically significant increase in the proportion of false praise-telling to non-lying behavior in children over the 2-year study period was observed. This indicates that the discontinuity, namely the growth in children's flattery behavior, occurs from 5 to 7 years of age. The findings are discussed with respect to the diverse factors that might underlie and affect children's tendency to praise others falsely in politeness settings.
学龄前儿童会表现出阿谀奉承的行为，包括对他人或事物表达赞赏，但这些赞赏并非出于真心。研究表明，在接下来的几年里，这种不真诚行为背后的动机数量和复杂性会增加。本研究关注儿童的公开行为，考察了虚假表扬行为发展的两个方面：个体稳定性和群体水平不连续性。使用艺术评分任务，对 164 名 5 至 7 岁的儿童在三个时间点（T1/2/3）进行了测试：M 年龄= 5.66 岁，SD= 0.1；M 年龄= 6.65 岁，SD= 0.16；M 年龄= 7.61 岁，SD= 0.14。结果表明，5.5 岁的儿童已经能够在礼貌环境中进行虚假表扬，而在之后的年龄阶段，他们仍会以这种方式取悦他人，这表明虚假表扬是一种个体稳定的特征。此外，在 2 年的研究期间，观察到儿童虚假表扬行为与非说谎行为的比例呈显著增加。这表明，从 5 岁到 7 岁，儿童的奉承行为的不连续性（即增长）发生了。研究结果结合了可能影响儿童在礼貌环境中虚假表扬他人倾向的多种因素进行了讨论。
