Associate Professor of Psychology Angela Evans’ research about children’s honesty has helped her earn the 2020 Chancellor’s Chair for Research Excellence to investigate what lie-telling looks like in the next stage of life: adolescence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to be able to mount this research program, adolescents\u2019 lie-telling behaviours, with the award funds,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a very understudied population in terms of lie-telling and I\u2019m looking forward to contributing this understudied group with my graduate students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evans’ research has shown that children start to lie at around two years of age<\/a> and that children ages three to five<\/a> will make an effort to keep their word on something they promised.\u00a0It\u2019s a topic she originally pursued at the start of her career, where her PhD dissertation was one of the first experimental studies to look at adolescents\u2019 lie-telling behaviours.<\/p>\n Evans’ subsequent work focused on how and why deception develops in children<\/a> through studies conducted in her\u00a0Social and Cognitive Development Lab<\/a>. In the process, she became a widely-quoted expert on children\u2019s lie-telling.<\/p>\n She says past research has shown that there\u2019s an increased rate of lying during adolescence that she and her team are interested in examining more closely.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think two things are going on: they\u2019re likely telling lies to their parents to gain autonomy,” says Evans. “This is when they\u2019re going out and exploring new things, creating new friendships, trying to assert that independence from their parents.\u00a0We also think that, as they\u2019re exploring their identity in adolescence, they\u2019re telling lies to their peers in order to build those relationships: to fit in.”<\/p>\n Her proposed research program is a multi-stage process. In the first study, adolescent research participants will have an app installed on their phones that will ping multiple times during the day.\u00a0When they hear the ping, the research participants will record what lies they\u2019ve told and to who, as well as in what context in a real-time diary of sorts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re hoping that if we can catch the lies in the moment or within a few hours, that will reduce participants\u2019 memory demands so that we can more accurately see how many lies the participants are telling and what they\u2019re lying about,\u201d says Evans.<\/p>\n The second set of studies will examine the influence of peers on adolescents lie-telling, assessing both their moral evaluations of lies told in various contexts as well as their own lie-telling behaviours in a lab context.<\/p>\n Evans calls lie-telling a \u201ctricky topic.\u201d While lying in general is widely considered to be bad, some lies are used to maintain relationships and are part of the developmental process at certain points during the lifespan.<\/p>\n High rates of lying damage relationships and are associated with delinquency and anti-social behaviours, says Evans. In contrast, complete honesty can also pose challenges for maintaining relationships, so finding the right balance of honesty is important for interpersonal relationships.<\/p>\n She says the ultimate aim of her research program is to use the increased understanding of adolescent lie-telling behaviours, their motivation for telling lies and the social costs of lie-telling to create moral educational programs that will teach young people about honesty.<\/p>\n Tim Kenyon, Vice-President, Research, says Evans’ “influential research has made her a\u00a0widely recognized expert on children\u2019s lie-telling.”<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m excited to see that the Chancellor\u2019s Chair will enable her to take her work to the next level,” says Kenyon. “Evans’ broad and creative research program gives us insights into social and cognitive development in children and in older adults.\u201d<\/p>\n