Lee – lying for the group

There’s another kind of motivation that also happens in North America but not very widely, is about lying for your group.  It’s called a blue lie.  So telling blue lie is really for the benefit of a group and in these collective societies such as China, Korea, Taiwan, what’s happening in these cultures is that you have to learn to be a member of the group and the group’s interests, the group’s goals are more important than personal goals and at some point you may have to sacrifice honesty in the name of collective.  And it turns out that also motivates kids in these cultures to tell lies to protect the group’s interests and benefits.  So sometimes these kinds of lies actually are immoral because sometimes they violate certain rules but it’s because you are telling it for the group, it’s sanctioned by the culture.  It happens also in North America, for example, sometimes police officers have been reported to tell these kind of lies as well in the name of justice.  And the team sports – sometimes a whole team cheats in a game but nobody tells the truth about it because they want to protect the team so that happens in North America as well.  So this is yet another kind of motivation that would drive people, including kids, to tell lies. 

So only by about nine years of age they start to do that and because they have understood what is expectation from their culture.