关键词: 幼儿 白谎行为 心理理论 认知移情 情绪移情

Abstract: Children are taught, explicitly or implicitly, not to tell the blunt truth in some social situations where the truth may be hurtful to the recipient. White lies can help children to develop their social skills and establish more positive social ties with others. When children are confronted with a situation in which their true thoughts and altruistic wishes conflict, they not only need to understand wishes, intentions, emotions and social norms from others, but also need to experience other people’s emotional responses. Thus white lie behavior involves theory of mind (a “cold process” at the cognitive level) and empathy (a “heat treatment” at the emotional level ). The vast majority of studies do not distinguish between white lies and black lies, indicating that theory of mind is the cognitive basis of lying behavior, and empathy has a positive predictive effect on pro-social behavior. However, no attempt has been made to evaluate the relationship among theory of mind, empathy and white lie behavior in a model simultaneously. In addition, existing research on empathy has paid less attention on the emotional component of empathy. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effects of children's theory of mind, cognitive and emotional empathy on white lie behavior, and whether cognitive and emotional empathy may play mediating roles between children’s theory of mind and white lie behavior. A total of 308 children (age range 3~6 years, 152 boys and 156 girls) with an average age of 53.76 months old from three kindergartens in Tianjin participated this study. These children examine sequences of ToM, the Measure of Empathy Continum and white lie behavior. In order to measure children's verbal comprehension and expression ability, children asked to test the vocabulary in WPPSI before the test. Results indicated that: (1) Compared with children in younger age groups, those in older age groups showed higher levels of white lie behavior, the ability of cognitive empathy, emotional empathy and theory of mind; (2) With age and verbal ability controlled, the theory of mind was positively associated with cognitive empathy and white lies, and cognitive empathy was positively related to white lies; (3) Cognitive empathy played a partial mediating role between theory of mind and white lie behavior. These findings suggested that theory of mind has a positive effect on children’s white lies behavior, and cognitive empathy can provide an explanation for this effect. However, this study did not support the mediating role of emotional empathy on the relationship between children's theory of mind and white lie behavior, and the possible reasons have been discussed. To sum up, theory of mind not only has a direct effect on white lie behavior among children, but also influences white lie behavior by the mediating effect of cognitive empathy. The findings in the study contribute to understanding the mechanism underlying children’s white lies behavior, and improving children’s theory of mind and cognitive empathy can be a promising approach to promote development of pro-social behavior. Meanwhile, it provides some evidence for educators to understand the process of children's socialization.

Key words: young children, white lie behavior, theory of mind, cognitive empathy, emotional empathy