| Selective trust is a process of making judgment that which informant is a reliable source.When young children learn about something new from different informants,he has to make a choice between the two informants based on the relevant background information.Finally young children will select one informant to ask the new information and endorse the information which the reliable informant provided.The biased selective trust is related to prejudice.That is to say the informant that children trust hasn’t any features of trustworthiness.The judgment about the informant is exposed to the prejudice in social perception.We conducted 3 experiments to explore the characteristics of the biased selective trust and its epistemic regulatory factors among 4 to 6 years old children.In Experiment 1,we solved the problem about the materials in previous study to verify whether the 4 to 6 years old children would selective trust the female informants who have attractive faces.In Experiment 2,we set different supporting degrees of children themselves’perception.The purpose is to explore how children’s perception clues affect on selective trust based on facial attractivenss.In Experiment 3,we changed the decision conditions in experiment 1 and 2,in which children faced the informants is different every time.The first objective is to investigate whether 4-6 years old children will trust the attractive informant in faced with the same two female informants who had different face attractiveness.On the basis of this,we also explored the regulatory mechanism of cognitive factors,which refers to whether the reliability strength of the informants modified young children’s selective trusting to attractive informant.According to the above 3 experiments,we come to the following results:①4-6 years old girls and aged 5 and 6 boys in China exist stable biased selective trust based on the attractiveness of the informants’ faces.And there exists difference beteeen the elder and young girls.Besides there is difference between boys and girls at age 4 and 6.②The children’s self-perception judgment indeed affects children’s biased trust level.When the children have greater certainty on new information,if the attractive informant provided conflict information,then children will not trust the attractive informant but himself.There is no difference between the elder and young children.③4-6 years old children will trust the attractive informant in faced with the same two female informants who had different face attractiveness.The biased selective trust to attractive informant is unstable in children aged 4 and 5.But 6 year-old children show some epistemic trust in endorsement tasks.④The wrong naming that the attractive informant conducted will change the biased selective trust.Children will change their trust to random level.Only 4 times error the attractive informant made that 4 and 5 year-old children will modify their biased selective trust.But it is enough that one time error that the attractive informant made will change 6-year olds’ biased selective trust.According to these results,we come to the following conclusions:4-6 years old children’ selective trust is not absolutely epistemic prudent.The epistemic factors such as self-perception clues and the reliability of information that informants provided regulate children’s biased selective trust.6-year olds show epistemic prudence when faced prejudice factors. |
