White Lie: Article Analysis

White Lies Biziou-van-Pol, Haenen, Novaro, Liberman, and Capraro (2015) define a white lie as “a lie that benefits another person” (p. 538). Hsu and Cheung (2013) define white lies as “untruthful statements concerning an opinion, or personal preference, for a prosocial purpose, such as protecting the lie recipient’s feelings or maintaining politeness” (Hsu & Cheung, 2013, p. 1651). Whichever way it is defined, a white lie is used in a prosocial context to maintain cohesion within a relationship or social group. As Biziou-van-Pol et al. (2015) questioned, the telling of white lies may indicate an individual’s prosocial tendencies. Broomfield, Robinson, and Robinson (2002) investigated whether age impacted children’s tendencies to tell white lies. The researchers found that as children grew older, they were more likely to give false responses to questions asked of them and to tell …show more content…
This finding is interpreted in meaning that older children are more inclined to lie than younger children, a result that is consistent with the results of the research of Warneken and Orlins (2015). These two researchers found that “children told a white lie to someone who needed cheering up, but had no hesitation to tell the blunt truth to a person who was neutral” (Warneken & Orlins, 2015, p. 267). The results of the study of white lies by Broomfield et al. (2002) were consistent with the results of the study of white lies by Warneken and Orlins (2015). Broomfield et al. (2002) concluded that not only are children more likely to lie as they age, but they are more likely to tell a white lie that would make someone feel better about themselves if they were feeling sad. These researchers found that children are able to assess emotions and how white lie-telling would influence