Babies Show Deception by 10 Months, Study Finds
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Elena Hoicka led a study of over 750 children across the UK, US, Australia, and Canada, finding that by 10 months, about a quarter of infants engage in early deception such as hiding objects or ignoring parents.
- Parents reported that half of children who had begun deceiving did something sneaky within the previous day, indicating frequent and recurring deceptive behavior starting in infancy.
- Children as young as eight months were observed recognizing the concept of deception, with action-based tactics like hiding forbidden food or denying actions through gestures or simple denials.
- By age three, children begin using more complex deception including exaggeration, understatement, fabricated stories like 'a ghost ate the chocolate,' and selective withholding of information.
- Elena Hoicka noted that early deception likely stems not from moral failing but from developmental drives to 'get away with things' or gain rewards, comparing it to nonverbal deception seen in chimpanzees and birds.
- Jennifer Saul highlighted that philosophical and psychological research has largely ignored early deception, focusing instead on adult verbal lies, thus overlooking the developmental roots of deceptive behavior.
Why it matters: Parents and educators gain insight into deception as a normal part of cognitive development rather than misbehavior, with implications for how they respond to young children's actions. The findings shift the understanding of when and how strategic thinking emerges, showing it begins earlier and more subtly than previously documented.
