Young children's selective trust in informants.

Abstract

Young children readily act on information from adults, setting aside their own prior convictions and even continuing to trust informants who make claims that are manifestly false. Such credulity is consistent with a long-standing philosophical and scientific conception of young children as prone to indiscriminate trust. Against this conception, we argue that children trust some informants more than others. In particular, they use two major heuristics. First, they keep track of the history of potential informants. Faced with conflicting claims, they endorse claims made by someone who has provided reliable care or reliable information in the past. Second, they monitor the cultural standing of potential informants. Faced with conflicting claims, children endorse claims made by someone who belongs to a consensus and whose behaviour abides by, rather than deviating from, the norms of their group. The first heuristic is likely to promote receptivity to information offered by familiar caregivers, whereas the second heuristic is likely to promote a broader receptivity to informants from the same culture.