Desenvolvimento moral e o comportamento de mentir: uma revisão sistemática

Abstract

Moral development can be defined as a set of changes that occur througout time in the way children think and make decisions about what is right or wrong. Lying behavior, in turn, has been used in different studies on moral development in order to assess how children think about moral violations and/or dilemmas. The present systematic review aimed to provide a synthesis of findings from empirical studies investigating moral development and a possible correlation with lying behavior (i.e., engagement and moral judgment). The search was conducted in the PsycINCO, Scielo e LILACS databases, using the keywords moral development, lying, lies e moral reasoning as well as their correspondents in Portuguese. From a total of 24 papers found, 12 empirical articles, which were published between 2011 and 2020, were analyzed according to the PRISMA protocol. The findings from the selected studies point to a correlation between children’s moral development and the way in which they understand, interpret and judge lies. More specifically, their judgments on lying behavior gradually include more attributions of intentionality and reveal a less egocentric bias. Some studies also point to the role of cultural practices in this developmental process. For example, more collectivistic cultures tend to present higher levels of sensibility to the intention/ motivation for lying. A promissing future direction is to better explore how children’s initial experiences, specific to each culture, influence moral development.