The Development Of Selective Trust Of Preschool Children In The Context Of Personality Traits Judgment

Selective trust is that when facing an unknown situation, individual can use a series of clues to distinguish different informants, so as to selectively trust the testimony of reliable informant. Young children is a rational agent who can selectively trust reliable informant by monitoring their cognitive or non cognitive characteristics of informants in the conventional knowledge domain. The aim of this study is to extend the study of children' selective trust to the social domain, exactly, in the context of personality judgments. Moreover, It's questionable whether children' positivity bias will affect their selective trust in this situation.Based on the adaptation of "familiar-test" paradigm,141 children aged 4 to 6 were investigated in study 1, in order to explore the ability of children making use of the non cognitive characteristics(as personality trait) of different informants to guide their selective trust. Results indicated that:In the context of personality judgments,4 to 6 years old children were able to selectively trust the nice person instead of the mean one. This kind of ability developed with age, the performance of children aged 6 was better than 4 and 5.Study 2 measured the the ability of children aged 5 to 6 making use of the cognitive characteristics (like the ability of trait inference) of different informants to guide their selective trust. Results showed that:5 to 6 years old children could selectively trust the person who make trait inference accurately instead of inferring trait inaccurately in the history phase, this kind of ability developed with age, the age difference between 5 and 6 was remarkable.Study 1 and study 2 showed that:a) children aged 4 to 6 could extended their ability of selective trust to the field of social knowledge, exactly, the context of personality judgments, and this ability developed with age. b) In the context of personality judgments, children aged 4-6 exhibited a positivity bias, this bias made children unwilling to believe the negative testimony provided by reliable informant, but this effect decreased with age gradually.4 or 5 years old children tended to distrust the negative statement offered by reliable informant,6 years old children no longer blindly rejected his negative argument, d) The positivity bias in the context of personality judgments could also be adjusted by the reliability of informants. When the positive testimony was provided by the unreliable informant, children's preference for his positive statement declined with age gradually,4,5 years old children tended to endorse the positive statement offered by the unreliable speaker,6 years old children no longer blindly endorsed his positive statement.In short, the children's selective trust in the context of personality judgments was the result of the interaction between informant'characteristics, testimony types, and their own cognitive biases.