The analysis of perception of lying by Mandarin Chinese speakers

Abstract

Subjective falsity, or speaker’s belief that a statement is false, has been argued by philosophers to be the necessary condition for a lie. Results from an empirical study with English (Coleman and Kay, 1981), Arabic (Cole, 1996) and Spanish speakers (Hardin, 2010) support the philosophers’ argument. Indonesians, however, perceive objective falsity as the most important element to define a lie (Adha, 2020). This led us to repeat the investigation with Mandarin Chinese speakers. We wanted to know, first, if the Chinese word huanghuà “lie” covered the three prototypical elements of lie as suggested by Coleman and Kay. And what is the most important element for Mandarin Chinese speakers in a prototypical lie? Secondly, how do Chinese people demonstrate the categorisation and the evaluation of lying compared to the speakers of other languages. We found that Mandarin Chinese speakers also consider objective falsity as the strongest element. However, Mandarin Chinese speakers perceive intention to be a stronger element to determine whether a story contains a lie or not compared to Indonesians.