Many parents make it clear that honesty is good while lying is bad, and yet an adult's responses to their kid's lies aren't always consistent.
New experiments emphasize this hypocrisy by showing parents can be more judgmental of overtly honest, harshly expressed truth-tellers, than polite, subtle liars.
When a lie is made for self-serving reasons, experiments suggest it is often judged harshly by parents. In one filmed scenario, for instance, a child was asked by a parent to reveal the location of a sibling, one who happened to also be in trouble with the parents. Generally, lying was viewed more negatively by adult participants than honesty, but there were exceptions.
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