Children show reduced trust in confident advisors who are partially informed

Abstract

Young children trust confident informants over cautious ones, and this tendency can lead them to heed the claims of informants whose confidence is unjustified. The ability to recognize overconfidence, and not be swayed by it, is therefore important for children to obtain accurate information and to make better decisions. In two experiments (total N = 232), we show that 4- to 6-year-olds use information about whether speakers are fully or only partially informed to judge whether confident claims should be heeded. In each experiment, children were shown scenarios in which a confident speaker and a cautious one gave conflicting claims. When both speakers were completely informed, children expressed more trust in the confident speaker’s claim. However, when both speakers only had partial information, children did not believe the confident speaker over the more cautious one. These effects did not vary with age. The present findings are the first to suggest that children as young as 4 understand when confidence is unwarranted, and they may indicate that reminders that a speaker is only partially informed could help children recognize when confidence is unjustified.