Practice what you preach? Children’s evaluations of parents’ verbal messages and social modeling of honesty and lie-telling

Though studies have highlighted the effect of social information (i.e., verbal messages/preaching and social modeling) on children's moral reasoning and behaviors, the simultaneous presentation of two contradictory social messages has yet to be studied in the moral context. Parents, as primary socializers, often provide conflicting information about honesty and lie-telling, yet how this incongruence influences children's moral reasoning remains unclear. Using moral vignettes, this study investigated the influence of congruent and incongruent social information from a parent on children's moral evaluations and beliefs. Participants were 127 children (age range: 5-12 years, M = 116.46 months, SD = 24.85). Children's moral evaluations of vignette parents were significantly influenced by whether the parent told a lie or told the truth, and whether their words and actions were consistent. However, children's trust evaluations of parents were only significantly influenced by parents' moral behaviors. Findings indicate that when both verbal and behavioral information from parents are presented, they influence aspects of children's moral reasoning in distinct ways. In cases of verbal-behavioral inconsistency, most children found parents' moral behaviors to be more salient than the verbal messages they shared about honesty and lie-telling. Results also highlight the importance that everyday parent-child interactions may have for informing not only children's moral reasoning, and likely their own future moral behaviors, but also how children view their parents.