【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 so to refrain from telling the blunt truth to others (., the pictures were poorly drawn). However, because the children were not probed about their motivation for inflating their ratings, it is not clear whether they did so for the benefit of the confederate (., sparing the feelings of the confederate) or for themselves (., avoiding negative consequences if the truth was told).In the third study, Talwar, Murphy, and Lee (2007) used a disappointing gift paradigm to examine children’s prosocial lietelling. Children played a game where they were promised a gift from a gift basket that contained a range of different toys and gifts. After the task, children received an undesirable gift of soap instead of a toy and were questioned by the giftgiver about whether they liked the gift. In this situation, children had to reconcile their desire for a better gift with the peting social and moral requirement to be polite. When asked if they liked the gift, the majority of children told the giftgiver untruthfully that they liked the disappointing gift, despite having told their parents that they did not like the gift. Schoolaged children were more likely to lie than were preschool children. However, this study also did not systematically probe children’s justifications for their lies. Thus, it is again not clear whether some children were more motivated to lie for selfprotection (., avoiding negative responses from the giftgiver if the truth was told) or to be polite and protect the giftgiver’s feelings.In contrast to the paucity of research on children’s actual prosocial lietelling behaviors, there is some, albeit limited, research on children’s conceptual understanding of prosocial lies. With regard to children’s concept of prosocial lies, Lee and Ross (1997) found that adolescents aged between 12 and 14 years and college students were less inclined to classify untruthful statements as lies when told with the intent to help another individual than when told to harm. Their results confirmed Sweetser’s (1987) theoretical contention that untruthful statements deliberately told to help another individual and to be polite may not be considered lies. In contrast, Bussey (1999) reported that most children aged between 4 and 11 years classify all types of untruthful statements as lies regardless of their anti or prosocial nature. This finding suggests a possible developmental change in terms of the concept of prosocial lies during adolescence.With regard to moral judgments, Bussey (1999) found that children during preschool and elementary school years tended to give negative ratings to prosocial lies. Nevertheless, beginning from 4 years of age, their ratings of prosocial lies were not as negative as those given to trickery or antisocial lies. Broomfield, Robinson, and Robinson (2002) further found that children aged between 4 and 9 years would suggest that a story character should tell a lie about liking an unwanted gift to make the giver believe the gift was liked. The children also judged that the giftgiver would be happy when hearing the lie. The results of Broomfield et al. (2002) were replicated in China (Zeng, 2004). However, Walper and Valtin (1992) found that children only began to give prosocial lies positive evaluations at the end of the elementary school years. These findings taken together suggest that children’s conceptual understanding of prosocial lies begins in preschool years and develops throughout the childhood. They appear to be able to consider the contradictory rules evoked by the politeness situation when evaluating prosocial lies, but only in late childhood do children appear to allow the need to be polite and avoid hurting another’s feelings override the need to be truthful. It should be noted that this conclusion is tentative because these studies did not probe children about the underlying rationales for their evaluations.No studies have examined the relationship between children’s conceptions of prosocial lietelling and their actual lying behavior. Research on the general relationship between children’s social and moral conceptions and their actual behaviors is of significant importance because the ultimate purpose of socialization is to ensure that children not only know morally what is right or wrong and conventionally what is appropriate or inappropriate, but that they also act accordingly. Existing studies with children and adults concerning Kolhbergian moral dilemmas as well as antisocial lying have shown either weak or no linkages between individuals’ moral knowledge and moral action (Arnold, 1989。 Blasi, 1980。 Talwar et al., 2002, 2004。 Thoma amp。 Rest, 1986). Multiple theories have provided a variety of explanations as to why individuals fail to act according to their conceptual knowledge about moral or social rules (Arsenio amp。 Lemerise, 2004。 Crick amp。 Dodge, 1994。 Huesmann, 1998。 Rest, 1986。 Walker, 2002), including situations