The Development Of3-to5-year-olds’ Trust Judgment Based On Face

Trust was very important to individuals’ survival and development. But it would bringserious consequences if people trust others indiscriminately, especially to preschool children.Previous research had proved that young children, even from3years old, had already madetrust judgments based on others’ behavioral characters. But when children contacted withstrangers, they usually couldn’t get strangers’ behavioral information at once. At this time, howcould they make trust judgments on strangers? In this study, four experiments were designed toexplore the ability which children made trust judgments based on strangers’ faces and itsdevelopment. Totally354children aged between3to5were enrolled in the study.In Experiment1-3, we used different paradigms to explore the trust belief judgmentswhich children made and its age difference systematically:In the experiment1, two different kinds of faces (trustworthy and untrustworthy faces)were shown one by one. Children were asked “Is he trustworthy or untrustworthy?” The resultsshowed that4-to5-year-olds could use facial characters to make trust judgment as adults, but3-year-olds could not.In the experiment2, children were asked to judge whether to trust the person with atrustworthy or untrustworthy face in daily trust situations. The results were similar toexperiment1. Moreover, as age increasing, children showed particular reactions bias: No matterface was trustworthy or untrustworthy, young children judged them trustworthy more, while oldchildren judged them untrustworthy more.In the experiment3, children were asked to judge which one to trust between a pair offaces(one trustworthy face and one untrustworthy face) in daily trust situations. The resultsshowed that the accuracy which3-to5-year-olds could make trust belief judgment based onface was higher than random level. With age increased, the accuracy of judgments becamehigher.In the experiment4, we used dual choice paradigm and further explored the trust behaviorjudgments based on face and its age differences. The results showed that the accuracy of3-to5-year-olds could make trust behavior judgment based on face was higher than random level. With age increasing, the accuracy of judgments became higher. Besides, compared with thetrust belief judgment in experiment3, the accuracy of3-to5-year-olds trust behavior judgmentswas significantly higher.The study explored the characters of3-to5-year-olds made trust judgment based on faceand its age difference with four experiments. The results showed that, just like adults, childrencan make trust judgments based on strangers’ faces from3year olds when they contacted withstrangers. These judgments can guide their following behavior decision-making. With ageincreasing, the ability of trust judgment was developing.