What does Mickey Mouse know about food? Children’s trust in favorite characters versus experts

Abstract

Children receive information from multiple sources, including people who are more or less knowledgeable and more or less familiar. In some cases, children also encounter messages from fictional characters who vary across these dimensions. Two studies investigated children’s trust in a familiar animal character versus a human expert when hearing conflicting information about items related to or unrelated to the expert’s knowledge. In Study 1, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N = 60) heard conflicting labels for unfamiliar fruits and tools from a familiar character and an unfamiliar fruit expert. They then identified which informant was correct and from whom they would seek out new information. Overall, children endorsed the fictional character’s statements over the fruit expert’s statements. Younger children preferred to seek out new information from the character, whereas 5-year-olds preferred the expert. In Study 2, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N = 60) heard similar conflicting objective statements about fruits and tools and heard conflicting subjective statements about unknown foods. The 4- and 5-year-olds trusted the fruit expert’s objective statements about fruit and did not consistently endorse either informant’s objective statements about tools, but they endorsed either informant when hearing subjective statements about unknown foods. Children also endorsed positive statements (e.g., that the food tastes good) regardless of the source. Taken together, these results suggest that when children decide who to trust, they consider both familiarity and relevant expertise and they weigh each factor differently depending on what kind of judgment is being made.