The Lies We Tell Our Children

This study looks at the evolutionary reasons why parents lie to their children. Although parental deceit is a common cross-cultural phenomenon, there is limited literature on the topic, none of which is from an evolutionary perspective. The research that does exist assumes parental deception has a negative impact on child development, and is limited in the scope of lies it examines. Our study gathered lies from a set of 100 participants through 30-minute interviews on parental deception and lies. Our final data set was made up of 819 lies and 321 avoidances, which were coded into nine evolutionary categories, including cultural fantasy, preserving social status, and developmental timing. We found that the most common lies told by parents were cultural fantasy lies, such as Santa Claus, hypothesized to be a form of costly signaling of group membership. The most common topic avoided was sex and reproduction. 

The poster linked below was designed by me and presented at the California Workshop of Evolutionary Social Sciences (CWESS) in May 2022.