The Effect Of Informants’ Expertise And Benevolence Information On Selective Trust Of Children Aged 3-5

The basic design of the human cognitive system indicates an early ability to co-ordinate information derived from first-hand observation with information derived from testimony. Children rely extensively on others’ testimony to learn about the world. However, they are not uniformly credulous toward other people. From an early age, children’s reliance on testimony is tempered by selective trust in particular informants. The current research aims to find the impact on children’s selective trust of children’s age, informants’ expertise and benevolence information, by designing a conflicting informants paradigm.In Experiment 1, the current research found that(1) informants’ expertise could impact on children’s selective trust. Preschoolers met two experts providing conflicting claims for which only one had relevant expertise. 3 and 4-year-olds could not inference the reliable informant by informants’ expertise. Five-year-olds credited the relevant expert’s claim more often than 3-4year olds.(2) Children use taxonomically rich expertise labels(i.e.‘eagle expert’ and ‘bicycle expert’) and descriptions of expertise to choose between conflicting claims regarding broader domains(e.g. birds and vehicles). All age groups in this experiment were able to attribute knowledge to the most relevant experts. However, 5-year-olds in Experiment 1 were able to use expertise as a cue for choosing between claims, but 3-and 4-year-olds were not.In Experiment 2, niceness/meanness information was added.(3) Children weighed benevolence information(e.g. niceness/meanness) more than competence information(e.g.expertise) when evaluating informants. Children preferred the relevant expert’s claim when he was nice and often chose their relevant expert’s claim when the relevant expert was mean. Although children most strongly preferred the nice relevant expert, the children often chose the nice irrelevant expert when the relevant one was mean.(4) This benevolence bias has no age difference.Conclusion: the expertise and benevolence information of informants could both influence children’s selective trust. It is likely that children did take expertise into account when choosing between conflicting claims; however, they only preferred an expert’s claims more than chance when he was also nice. This result suggests that children of all ages seemed powerfully influenced by benevolence information when choosing between informant claims.