Children are sensitive to the number of sources when relying on gossip.

Abstract

Gossip allows children to effectively identify cooperative or trustworthy partners. However, the risk of being deceived must be faced because gossip may be false. One clue for determining gossip's veracity is the number of its sources since multiple informants spreading identical reputational information about others might imply that another's moral traits are viewed unanimously among members of a social group. We investigated whether 7-year-olds (N = 108) would trust gossip from multiple independent sources. In our study, they received multiple pieces of positive/negative reputational information about one agent and neutral information about another agent by gossip from either single or multiple informants. Then they allocated rewards to and chose rewards from the gossip targets. The 7-year-olds acted upon positive gossip from multiple informants and did not rely on positive gossip from a single informant. By contrast, they relied on negative gossip regardless of the number of informants. In either valence, however, they were more likely to allocate rewards based on gossip from multiple informants than a single informant. This result indicates they are sensitive to an objective index, specifically the number of sources, for judging the veracity of gossip.