Truthful but Misleading: Advanced Linguistic Strategies for Lying Among Children.

We explored whether children could apply linguistic strategies for lying, i.e., manipulating linguistic content of speech to mislead others. We announced a knowledge-test entailing prizes in the classrooms of a primary school and a middle school. Altogether 79 Chinese children (6-18 years) voluntarily participated in the test: listening to a series of animal sounds before guessing the names of the animals. Meanwhile, behind the participants, a video was playing images that ostensibly corresponded to the sounds being played. In fact, this was not necessarily the case, i.e., some items cannot be solved because the sounds played are not from any animal but machine-synthesized. Participants were instructed not to look back at the video. However, 51 children peeked at the video for the unsolvable items, although the peeking behavior decreased with age. Moreover, when explaining how they correctly guessed the unsolvable items, children as young as 6 years old were able to apply a linguistic strategy (i.e., "capability attribution") for lying. Besides "capability attribution," Children also applied "fortune attribution" and "topic shift" for lying. Finally, "fortune attribution" and "topic shift" increased with age. Therefore, educators need to be aware that children are able to apply verbal strategies for lying that could involve truthful statements (i.e., "topic shift") or statements that are difficult to be proved as untruthful (i.e., "fortune attribution").

Mainland Chinese Implicit Theory of Wisdom: Generational and Cultural Differences.

Objectives: This is the first study on the Mainland Chinese implicit theory of wisdom. To understand the role of culture and social changes in the implicit theory of wisdom, cultural and generational differences were explored. Method: Two generations of Mainland Chinese, 50 older adults (age 60-80 years) and 50 younger adults (age 20-30 years), were interviewed individually. Participants first nominated personal acquaintances and historical figures as wisdom exemplars and then gave their own definition of wisdom. Results: Compared with the older generation, the younger generation nominated both acquaintance scholars and historical scholars more frequently, but acquaintance classmates & colleagues and historical leaders less frequently. Common themes of all participants' definition of wisdom partially resembled those of Western studies, yet with components that related to Chinese traditions: "Spirituality of disengagement" and "Positive mindset." Moreover, older generation emphasized "Cognitive engagement" more, but "Positive mindset" and "Spirituality of disengagement" less, than the younger generation. Discussion: Wisdom aspects of cognitive, practical, and social engagement may be more universal and intergenerational, whereas wisdom aspects of "spirituality" and "mindset" may be more culturally specific and sensitive to social change.

Differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of own and other races.

Past research has demonstrated differential recognition of emotion on faces of different races. This paper reports the first study to explore differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of different races. Chinese and Caucasian adults viewed a series of Chinese and Caucasian neutral faces and judged their outward facial expression: neutral, positive, or negative. The results showed that both Chinese and Caucasian viewers perceived more Chinese faces than Caucasian faces as neutral. Nevertheless, Chinese viewers attributed positive emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces, whereas Caucasian viewers attributed negative emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces. Moreover, Chinese viewers attributed negative and neutral emotion to the faces of both races without significant difference in frequency, whereas Caucasian viewers mostly attributed neutral emotion to the faces. These differences between Chinese and Caucasian viewers may be due to differential visual experience, culture, racial stereotype, or expectation of the experiment. We also used eye tracking among the Chinese participants to explore the relationship between face-processing strategy and emotion attribution to neutral faces. The results showed that the interaction between emotion attribution and face race was significant on face-processing strategy, such as fixation proportion on eyes and saccade amplitude. Additionally, pupil size during processing Caucasian faces was larger than during processing Chinese faces.