Preschool children engage in flattery behaviors, including expressing opinions toward other people or objects that—although favorable—are not truly held. Research shows that in the following years, the number and complexity of motives underlying such insincere behavior increase. The current study focused on children’s overt behavior, examining two aspects of the development of false praise-telling: individual stability and group-level discontinuity. Using an art-rating task, a total of 164 children aged 5 to 7 years were tested at three points in time (T1/2/3): M_T1 age = 5.66 years, SD = 0.1; M_T2 age = 6.65 years, SD = 0.16; M_T3 age = 7.61 years, SD = 0.14. The results show that, having become capable of giving false praise in politeness settings at 5.5 years of age, children continue to flatter others in this way at later ages, indicating that false praise-telling is an individually stable characteristic. In addition, a statistically significant increase in the proportion of false praise-telling to non-lying behavior in children over the 2-year study period was observed. This indicates that the discontinuity, namely the growth in children’s flattery behavior, occurs from 5 to 7 years of age. The findings are discussed with respect to the diverse factors that might underlie and affect children’s tendency to praise others falsely in politeness settings.

学龄前儿童有奉承行为，包括对其他人或物体表达意见，尽管这些意见是有利的，但并非真正持有。研究表明，在接下来的几年里，这种不诚实行为背后的动机数量和复杂性都会增加。目前的研究侧重于儿童的公开行为，检查虚假表扬发展的两个方面：个体稳定性和群体层面的不连续性。使用艺术评分任务，在三个时间点（T1/2/3）对164名5-7岁儿童进行了测试：M _T1年龄=5.66岁，SD  =0.1；M _T2年龄 = 6.65 岁，SD  = 0.16；M _T3年龄 = 7.61 岁，SD = 0.14。结果表明，在 5.5 岁时，儿童已经能够在礼貌环境中给予虚假赞美，并且在以后的年龄继续以这种方式奉承他人，表明虚假赞美是个体稳定的特征。此外，在 2 年的研究期间，观察到儿童虚假表扬与不说谎行为的比例在统计上显着增加。这表明不连续性，即儿童奉承行为的增长，发生在 5 至 7 岁之间。研究结果针对可能构成和影响儿童在礼貌环境中错误地赞美他人的倾向的各种因素进行了讨论。