Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Child Dev. 2022 Jul;93(4):1154-1161. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13755. Epub 2022 Mar 21.
People are sometimes tempted to lie for their own benefit if it would not harm others. For adults, dishonesty is the default response in these circumstances. The developmental origins of this phenomenon were investigated between 2019 and 2021 among 6- to 11-year-old Han Chinese children from China (N = 548, 49% female). Children had an opportunity to win prizes in a behavioral economics game (Experiment 1) or a temptation resistance game adapted from developmental psychology (Experiment 2). In each experiment, the youngest children showed a default tendency of honesty and there was an overall age-related shift toward a default tendency of dishonesty. These findings provide direct evidence of developmental change in the automatic and controlled processes that underlie moral behavior.
如果对他人没有伤害，人们有时会出于自身利益而说谎。对于成年人来说，在这种情况下不诚实是默认的反应。本研究于 2019 年至 2021 年在中国对 6 至 11 岁的汉族儿童（N=548，49%为女性）进行了调查，以探究这一现象的发展起源。在行为经济学游戏（实验 1）或改编自发展心理学的抵制诱惑游戏（实验 2）中，孩子们有机会赢得奖品。在每个实验中，最小的孩子都表现出了诚实的默认倾向，并且整体上随着年龄的增长，他们倾向于不诚实。这些发现为道德行为所基于的自动和控制过程的发展变化提供了直接证据。
