Children's confession- and lying-related emotion expectancies: Developmental differences and connections to parent-reported confession behavior

- Four-to-five-year-olds associate relatively positive emotions with lying.
- Seven-to-nine-year-olds associate relatively positive emotions with confession.
- Four-to-five-year-olds expect negative parental reactions to a confession.
- Seven-to-nine-year-olds expect positive parental reactions to a confession.
- Confession more common in children who expect a positive parent reaction.

Young children understand that lying is wrong, yet little is known about the emotions children connect to the acts of lying and confessing and how children's emotion expectancies relate to real-world behavior. In the current study, 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 48) heard stories about protagonists (a) committing transgressions, (b) failing to disclose their misdeeds, and (c) subsequently lying or confessing. Younger children (4-5 years) expected relatively positive feelings to follow self-serving transgressions, failure to disclose, and lying, and they often used gains-oriented and punishment-avoidance reasoning when justifying their responses. Older children (7-9 years) had the opposite pattern of emotional responses (better feelings linked to confession compared with lying). Older children expected a more positive parental response to a confession than younger children. Furthermore, children who expected more positive parental responses to confession were reported by parents to confess more in real life than children who expected more negative parental responses to confession. Thus, the current research demonstrates a link between children's emotion expectancies and actual confession behavior.