Investigating the Attitudes and Beliefs of School Psychologists Toward Deception

Deception within different types of relationships has been assessed in past research. The current research investigated the attitudes and beliefs that School Psychologists have toward deceptive children and their parents. Questionnaires were provided to 50 participants that asked them to indicate their knowledge in detecting deception and their attitudes toward deceptive children and parents. The findings of this study show that School Psychologists hold a number of inaccurate beliefs about the detection of deception. The study also revealed that School Psychologists hold negative attitudes towards children and parents that are deceptive. School Psychologists hold a significant amount of more negative attitudes towards parents that lie than children that lie. The implications of deception within a child-School Psychologist relationships and parent-School Psychologists relationship are further discussed.