Posted on 06/30/2007 5:24:12 PM PDT by blam
Babies not as innocent as they pretend
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 01/07/2007
Whether lying about raiding the biscuit tin or denying they broke a toy, all children try to mislead their parents at some time. Yet it now appears that babies learn to deceive from a far younger age than anyone previously suspected.
Behavioural experts have found that infants begin to lie from as young as six months. Simple fibs help to train them for more complex deceptions in later life.
Until now, psychologists had thought the developing brains were not capable of the difficult art of lying until four years old.
Following studies of more than 50 children and interviews with parents, Dr Vasudevi Reddy, of the University of Portsmouth's psychology department, says she has identified seven categories of deception used between six months and three-years-old.
Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as concealing forbidden activities or trying to distract parents' attention.
By the age of two, toddlers could use far more devious techniques, such as bluffing when threatened with a punishment.
Dr Reddy said: "Fake crying is one of the earliest forms of deception to emerge, and infants use it to get attention even though nothing is wrong. You can tell, as they will then pause while they wait to hear if their mother is responding, before crying again.
"It demonstrates they're clearly able to distinguish that what they are doing will have an effect. This is essentially all adults do when they tell lies, except in adults it becomes more morally loaded."
She added: "Later it becomes more sophisticated by saying, 'I don't care' when threatened with a punishment - when they clearly do."
Dr Reddy thinks children use early fibs to discover what kinds of lie work in certain situations, and also learn the negative consequences of lying too much.
I suppose this is new to people who don’t have children.
new = news
Bill Clinton learned deception in the womb, and has improved on it ever since.
My pastor used to visit hospitals when a member had a newborn baby and say “I see you gave birth to a new sin nature”.
His way of saying that all are sinners in the eyes of God and need the forgiveness of Christ.
Yes, babies are “innocent” in our eyes but nobody has to teach them how to lie or be manipulative. We all pick that up pretty quickly, usually right after the first negative reinforcement.
Next we will be reading something even more surprising, like, little boys are DIFFERENT than little girls!!
Ah at least Bill and Hillary have something in common. They are both compulsive and pathological liars, they deserve each other.
or infants pee in their diapers because they can......
Well, that nails it. If Dr. Vasudevi Reddy of the U. of P. used more than 50 children and their parents to confirm this, we should all believe it.
Gee, your pastor sounds like he’d be a blast at parties.
I knew there was something about babies that I didn’t like.
All one has to do is walk into a day care center to find this out.
Jewish babies are born with guilt, but Catholic babies have to go to catechism school to learn it...
Original Sin proved right again. Like our friend said, no surprise to those of us who are parents.
This is false. Research into moral development, done as early as the 1920's, demonstrated clearly that babies are amoral little creatures who have to be taught right and wrong, and will happily lie as soon as they figure out what speech is all about. Psychology has lost some great research and profound insights due to the shallowness of current training, which devalues anything published more than five years ago, and which emphasizes garbage like "multicultural competence" instead of good empirical study.
Is that a deception or simply a version of, "Hey Mom, come here!"?
It’s called original sin!
TT, I'd punch your pastor in the face if he said that about either of my children after they were first born. To whatever extent that the ability to lie is hardwired, it's because it is very useful for our personal survival. I can't believe your pastor actually reminds his flock that their newborn is bound for Hell because God created such a system to punish two people 6000 years ago, willfully.
Hey, you ever notice how lefties and their ilk always feature children in their advocacy ads when they wanna tell a real whopper about socialized medicine or some other bullet on their liberal agenda. That because even they couldn’t tell it with a straight face. But they can always sell it ‘from the mouth of babes’.
Not unless they’re really retarded.
I still remember my oldest, just after he learned to walk, taking me by the hand, leading me out of the room, and shutting the door on me so he could fiddle with the stereo. Tricky, but not much in the way of theory of mind ;)
Mrs VS
I've noticed that as well as their "we are friends of all ethnicities" kind of symbolism.
On a similar but different note, you see similar traits between young children lieing and liberals when they start throwing a tantrum. As least the baby has the excuse it doesn't know any better. What the liberal's excuse?
Children ARE innocent - they’re completely innocent of anything resembling a conscience and they will lie and misbehave withhout shame until they develop one.
I have two girls...
Which sex learns fake crying first?
I can believe it. I just hope there are some Christians better than that.
With me, they usually are. Generally what I'm really thinking is "Oh, Lord, what do YOU want??"
I suppose this is new to people who don’t have children.
Funny thing about youngins’,,in our case 5 different stories on how something happened..
Are they saying that Liberalism begins at a very young age?
LOL disingenuous perhaps then but lying sounds too harsh.
St. Augustine was wise to this--in his Confessions, Book I, Chapter 7, he says:
"It is clear, indeed, that infants are harmless because of physical weakness, not because of any innocence of mind. I myself have seen and known a baby who was envious; it could not yet speak, but it turned pale and looked bitterly at another baby sharing its milk."
(Translation by Rex Warner, Mentor Books, 1963)
so, this genius is just finding this out now.....
One thing that you learn in a big family that is lost to those from the two-fers. How babies act.
Dr Reddy said: "Fake crying is one of the earliest forms of deception to emerge, and infants use it to get attention even though nothing is wrong. You can tell, as they will then pause while they wait to hear if their mother is responding, before crying again.
And if the infant experiencing no pain wants to be held and loved, what's he going to do, say "somebody hold me." The infant has learned that crying gains attention. Period.
The infant isn't learning deception. He is learning how to get people's attention. Crying for attention eventually transitions to saying "mom" and "dad" to get attention. Is there a noticeable decline in crying once a baby starts talking?
I don't have children so what do I know, right?
Well, I was a child so I know a great deal about being a child. I know it effected me greatly to learn that my parents lied to me. It had the great effect of thinking for myself and question everything people told me, Even my parents. For I knew that they could be wrong because three times they lied to me. And they did that thinking it would be fun.
I learned how to lie with sincerity from my parents. Santa Clause, Easter bunny and tooth fairy. They (parents) taught me by example how to lie effectively. When lying, direct your attention in the opposite direction of deception. Virtually all high ranking politicians have mastered it. Most mid level politicians have mastered it as well.
A young innocent mind struggles to accurately identify reality. They mostly look to parents to help them in this most important endeavor. And what do parents do? They inject non-reality into the process. Which to the innocent young mind, it just confuses it when it begins figuring it out. In the penultimate end the child learns that it is okay to lie if it's in the name of having fun. The ends justify the means is what they take away from it.
In the end, it stunts the child's development.
The following happened about eight years ago on FreeRepublic. The discussion of the Santa Clause lie was challenged. The opponent said that if I was a grandfather and my grandson sang me a song that was, artistically speaking, lacking artistry -- in other words they boy couldn't sing worth a darn -- because of my throbbing heartfelt love for my grandson at that very moment wouldn't I tell the boy he was a superb singer?
My response: Why would I do that when if he chose to sing in school -- or wherever -- because his grandpa said he was a terrific singer, the other young children, having not learned the "finer art" of adult deception techniques would be honest with the boy and tell him the truth. They wouldn't be anywhere near as kind in telling the truth as grandpa would have been. As a grandfather, the boy who so warmed my heart with his song, I have broken his heart.
See post 39.
Experts ain’t !
But you probably wouldn't belong to our church so you wouldn't understand the pastor's sense of humor. You sound like the idiot liberals who don't understand when Rush is tweaking them.
My pastor used to visit hospitals when a member had a newborn baby and say “I see you gave birth to a new sin nature”.
He wouldn’t be my pastor very long. How about instead he say: “Congratulations...you have the greatest gift from God.”
.
I once saw a nature film in which a young, low-status chimp (I think) was fooling around with a female to which he was not entitled. They were behind a bush or something.
Along comes an alpha male and the young guy manages to disengage just in the nick of time. He quickly assumes this ridiculous, very casual, relaxed posture that seems to say, "Oh, HEY, big guy! Sally and I were just whiling away a humid afternoon back here."
And he has this ridiculous grin on his face. Only problem was, he also had a...uh...stiffy.
Truly hilarious. The chimp was lying through his grinning teeth. (Can't remember what the big guy did.)
(Reminds me of a sight common to cat owners who have floor-length draperies. No cat visible anywhere! Except for this ridiculous tail sticking out from under the drapes!)
St. Augustine, who first used the phrase “original sin” in the “Confessions,” has some very acute observations on babies.
Among other things he points out that babies learn how to communicate almost entirely so they can get what they want. Even before they learn to speak, they move their arms and legs or cry to get what they want. The origin of language is insatiable desire to get what we want.
In other words, babies are human, too. And wonderful. But innocent they are not.
Original sin.
vaudine
The trick is to be smarter than the kid. One would think that adults have much more sophisticated strategies.
I’d like to confirm many FReeper suspicions and confess that I was a pretty rotten kid.
I did grow up into a pretty rotten adult, though.
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