Abstract

The current study investigated whether parents are accurate judges of their own children’s lie-telling behavior. Participants included 250 mother–child dyads. Children were between three and 11 years of age. A temptation resistance paradigm was used to elicit a minor transgressive behavior from the children involving peeking at a forbidden toy and children were subsequently questioned about the transgressive event. Mothers were asked to make predictions about whether their child would peek and then watched a video of their child being questioned about their peeking behavior. Mothers were asked to detect whether or not they thought their child was lying. Overall, 59.6% of parents accurately predicted their child’s lie-telling behavior. Mothers had more difficulty detecting older children’s lies. Signal detection analyses revealed parents had a strong tendency to believe their child was honest. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for parent–child relationships.