When do children begin to recognize hypocrisy?

Practice what you preach. Suit your actions to your words. Walk the talk. Hypocrisy is ingrained as a moral failing for most adults, but when do children learn to make the same distinction? According to a new study from University of Chicago psychologists, the shift seems to happen early in elementary school. The researchers discovered that children who were at least 7 years old began to predict future behavior based on a person's statement about morals. Unlike their younger peers, those children thought that someone who said stealing was bad would be less likely to steal-and also thought that thefts by those individuals should be punished more harshly. "Our findings suggest that children of this age are thinking critically about people falsely representing themselves in some way," said UChicago doctoral student Hannah Hok, the first author on the study.