Social and mental factors that affect reasonability of prosocial lies in middle childhood

It is known that people's attitudes towards lying behaviors are negative. However, in daily life, they do not only tell lies frequently, but also consider such behaviors reasonable. Accordingly, it was aimed to investigate the social and mental factors affecting the reasonability level of prosocial lies in children between 9-13 age-old. Based on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems approach, the aim of the present study is to examine the degree to which values that parents want to transmit to their children, children's mental state understanding and children's value priorities explain the acceptability of prosocial lies. A total of 154 children (79 girls) between the ages of 9-13 and their mothers participated in the study. The "Value Transfer Questionnaire" was applied to the mothers. "The Reasonability of Prosocial Lie Test-Child Form" was used to evaluate the level of acceptability of lies by the children, the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test" and the "Strange Stories Test" were used for the assessment of mental state understanding abilities of children, and the "Picture Based Values Survey for Children" was used to determine the value priorities of children. As a result of the analysis, it was found that children evaluated prosocial lies more appropriate than others. Correlation analysis showed that self-transcendence and conservatism values, which children prioritize and parents want to transmit, are positively correlated with the level of acceptability of politeness and collaborative prosocial lies; besides, analysis also showed that there is a negative relationship between self-enhancement and openness to change values. As a result of the regression analysis, it was found that the values of openness to change and self- transcendence that parents wanted to transmit to their children were significant predictors in explaining the level of acceptability of prosocial lies. The findings were discussed over the social factors explaining the children's acceptance of prosocial lying. In addition to this, suggestions were made based on the possible factors which are thought to be important in politeness and collaborative prosocial lies.