The Developmental Characteristics Of4-to5-year-old Children’s Selective Trust Judgment Based On Pro-social Traits

Trust is the thing that like ligament which tie our complicated social networks，and thatto be the antifriction and adhesive for human society. Up to now, the adult-basedinvestigations of trust have bring us a lot of valuable achievements in many areas.Furthermore, the research about children’s trust have raised more and moredevelopmentalism investigators’ interest. And most of researchers focus on children’sselective trust ability. Selective trust ability is a kind of social cognitive ability, it makesindividual can make selective trust according to different traits’ informants to the informantwho convey information.4-to5-year-olds is the critical period of selective trust ability, and the pro-social traitsare one of the most common positive-traits among the social groups. Investigate the4-to5-year-old children’s trust based on the pro-social traits will help us to understand thecharacters of children’s selective trust ability.In this paper, we investigated the ability to selective trust based on informants’pro-social traits(such as helper, cooperator and social morality) of814-to5-year-oldchildren. Furthermore, we have analyzed the differences between pro-social traits,differences between ages, and differences between new types of young children’s selectivetrust, at last, this paper discussed which factor influence children’s selective trust. In thisexperiment, every child accepted3-pair-stories had two informants who varied on theirtraits. In Helper Story，two puppets varied in help will (helper vs. never helper). InCooperator Story， two puppets varied in will of cooperate (cooperator vs.noncooperationist). Finally, in Social Morality Story, two puppets varied in social morality(social morality vs. without social morality). At first, children be asked to make judgmentabout which kid to trust. And later, they would be asked to make evaluation on thesepuppets.The results are as follows:(1)4-year-olds can make selective trust judgment based onhelp or cooperate traits,and5-year-olds can make selective trust judgment based on all prosocial traits.(2)There is a significant difference on development of4-to5year-oldchildren’s selective trust based on pro-social traits. A significant age differences exist incooperate and social morality conditions. In the helper conditions, kids prefer to establishthe helper(pro-social)’s testimony above choice rather than avoid the never helpone(dis-prosocial).4-to5-year-olds is the critical period of selective trust based onpro-social traits.(3)4-year-olds have the selective trust ability based on some pro-socialtraits, especially the cooperator-trait.；In the social morality conditions, kids have not shownany selective trust to the pro-social or dis-prosocial informants.(4) The effect of trait wasfound in the selective trust ability of4-year-olds based on informants’ pro-social traits，butno such effect of trait was found in5-year-olds children.(5) To the4-year-olds, is thebenevolence property but moral property relative to the selective trust.