Lying and deception has become more and more prominent in society over the past few years. Due to this development, researchers and famous philosophers gained growing interest in examining linguistic aspects of lying. Investigating the complex system of language in connection with truthfulness and lying enables them to get insights into the human mind and understand possible reasons, motives and intentions of lies. Moreover, the fact that most people prefer telling the truth, while others constantly try to deceive, the question arising is, if lies can be sometimes morally accepted or if lying is always an inexcusable wrong act.Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to find out about the moral values of young people concerning lying and honesty. Moreover, the survey particularly concentrates on young adults coming from different European countries, as recent research does not seem to pay attention to cultural differences. The most effective way to get insights into the human belief system was to carry out an adapted version of the quantitative cross-cultural survey drawn from the linguist Jocelyne Vincent Marrelli (2011). The cross-cultural survey should therefore, reveal if moral perceptions of people coming from different countries do correspond or completely differ. Moreover, the research will try to outline the main criteria that might have influenced young adults moral perceptions and provide possible reasons for their choices.Besides providing the main findings of the cross-cultural survey, this paper will explain the concept of lying in further detail, will focus on role of language, the theory of mind, examine cultural differences, different lying types and how moral judgments are constituted. |