The Development Characteristics And Reasons Of The 3-5 Year Olds' Selective Trust In The Familiar

As we all know,trust is the cognitive basis for children's social intercourse,which is an important factor of human's personality,intelligence and social development.For adults,they have the ability to critically trust the informations provided by others,which is one of the important strategies to protect themselves from uncertain world.At the same time,young children are not indiscriminate trust all information providers,but can Identify the differences between two different information providers,at the same time,they own the ability to use different strategies to evaluate the characteristics of information providers,eventually to decide which one to trust--this is the children's selective trust.In the field of selective trust,young children tend to believe in the familiar,and the trust preference varies with children's age.This trust preference to the familiari may be two reasons: one is from children's familiarity with the emotion,they prefer believe in individuals with whom they have emotional connection;another is from children's familiarity with the background of knowledge,those childrens have realized the familiar can provide accurate informations and therefore more willing to believe them.A total of 303 children(33-68 months old,M=50.64)take part in this study,To investigate the development characteristics and reasons of the 3 to 5 year olds' selective trust in the familiar.The first study select a children's teaching teacher and a stranger as information providers,to explore in situation of unknown accuracy and in the situation of familiarity with low accuracy,which one children prefer to ask and to trust.The second study select a children's teaching teacher,a onther's teaching teacher and a children's caring teacher as information providers,to explore the reason of childrens' trust in the familiar is familiarity with the emotion or the background of knowledge.We find that:(1)The development characteristics of 3-5 years old children's selective trust in the familiar: In the accuracy unknown situation,children of different ages chose to believe in the familiar.In the accuracy known situation,3-4 years oldchildren continue to choose to believe in the familiar,5 years old children turn to trust stranger.(2)The reasons of 3-5 years old children's selective trust in the familiar: In the accuracy unknown situation,the reasons why 3-5 year old children choose to trust in the familiar is emotional familiarity.In the accuracy known situation,3 years old children are still based on emotional familiarity,4 year old children are influenced by emotional familiarity and accuracy or knowledge background familiarity and accuracy,show no preference to the two information providers,5 years old children are less influenced by emotional familiarity and knowledge familiarity,they base on the accuracy of information to decide whom to trust in.