The Effects Of Informant’s Group Membership And Credibility Traits On Selective Trust Of 3-to 6-Year Old Children

Selective trust refers that children use multiple cues to infer one informant’s reliability and determine whether to trust the informants’ testimony or not.This study will be divided into two experiments,took 665 3~6 years old children as research objects,using classic research paradigm to discuss that when 3~6 years old children decide to trust one informant over another,how group membership influence their tracking of informant reliability.In experiment 1 to discuss when the in-group informant had previously demonstrated positive or negative,3~5 years old children how to determine trust one informant.In experiment 2,we changed the ratio of informant’s positive behavior.Children viewed stories in which in-group and out-group informants lables with different positive traits.To discuss 5~6 years old children how to determine trust one informant.The results show that:(1)When the in-group informant had previously demonstrated positive,3~6 years old children all trust in-group informant.(2)When the in-group informant had previously demonstrated negative,the age of children impact their selective trust and mainly affect selective trust,with the growth of age,children howing a increase in their trust for the positive out-group informant significantly.3 years old is the initial period,4 years old is the transition period,5 years old is the peak period,6 years old is the stable period.(3)The ratio of positive traits affected children’s selective trust.With the decrease of the difference informants’ vague positive.Children according to positive traits to make selective trust decreased significantly.(4)When the out-group informant had previously demonstrate more positivebehavior,5 years old trusted the out-group informant only in 100% VS 0%condition.Whereas 6 years old children trusted the out-group informants in conditions in which out-group informants had been 100% positive.