When I was in fifth grade the teacher used to pull kids out of class into a small adjoining room and leave the rest of us unsupervised. One day this turned into a battle to see who could make the rudest fake fart noises by blowing on their arm. I don't know if she seriously thought we were farting that much (she did have a history of being clueless and nosy, a terrible combination) or if she thought that playing along would teach us a lesson, but when she came back she lined us all up and LECTURED US ON PERSONAL HYGIENE well into recess. All about how as we got older we would find we needed to SHOWER MORE. It was painfully awkward and bizarre. If the principal of that school needs some help, I can probably track her down ;-p
A two-year-old lying to get a cookie doesn't map onto art criticism unless the artist has cookies for them. I assume they weren't at a wine and cheese opening :) I mean, this stuff illustrates that there is a developmental gap between "I have learned what you want me to say in exchange for a cookie" and "I have learned that you want me to say 'nice' things about anything connected to you to your face."
I would like to read the study sometime and see if they made a distinction between tact and straight-up lying. You can choose to share the truthful nice reactions you have with an artist or phrase the "negative" ones constructively, without lying. To me, four-year-olds doing that are learning about manners - being socialized - whereas if they are lying about their reactions they are showing that they've found people will not be nice to them if they say something negative - which is a whole other world.
It's not staggeringly coincidental; there have been studies done that show that humans are hardwired to see faces in pretty much anything we possibly can. If it has two dots in the upper portion that we can see as eyes, the whole darn thing is a face to us. This one happens to have a more or less semicircular squiggle we can see as a face, too. It's only surprising if we buy into the idea that this configuration of makrs has some kind of relevance.
I was going to say - they can already make babies by banging two eggs together (or something more delicate and scientifical along those lines) - why are they fiddling around with making sperm?
I would like to read the study sometime and see if they made a distinction between tact and straight-up lying. You can choose to share the truthful nice reactions you have with an artist or phrase the "negative" ones constructively, without lying. To me, four-year-olds doing that are learning about manners - being socialized - whereas if they are lying about their reactions they are showing that they've found people will not be nice to them if they say something negative - which is a whole other world.