Effects of group membership and visual access on children’s selective trust in competitive and non-competitive contexts

Abstract

Two experiments examined how informants' group membership (social cue) and visual access (epistemic cue) influence children's selective trust in information provided by different informants in both competitive and non-competitive contexts. Children (3- and 4-year-olds, N = 35; 6- and 7-year-olds, N = 33) were assigned to “membership” groups (blue or red), while an ingroup informant and an outgroup informant provided conflicting testimony about a hidden picture in a box. In the non-competitive context (Experiment 1), children in both age groups trusted the ingroup informant more when both informants had visual access (baseline) and when only the ingroup informant had visual access (consistent). In an inconsistent scenario where only the outgroup informant had visual access, both the younger and the older children’s trust in the ingroup informant decreased, with only the 6- to 7-year-olds being less likely than chance to choose the ingroup informant. In Experiment 2 where children were told that the two groups were competitive, the older children endorsed the ingroup informant more compared to their performance in Experiment 1. The proportion of older children who claimed the ingroup informant was more trustworthy increased in the inconsistent scenario. Results suggest that older children attached more weight to visual access in the non-competitive context but they showed some sensitivity to informants’ self-interests in the competitive context, whereas younger children did not show a clear preference for either of the two cues when making selective trust decisions.