Selective Trust Research Articles

Prevalence and Socio-demographic Variations in Traditional Medicine Use: A Study from East Nile Locality, Sudan

Traditional medicine (TM) remains a cornerstone of healthcare in Sudan, across urban and rural settings. We explored TM use and its association with socio-demographic characteristics (age, sex, education, economic status, and residence) in East Nile locality (ShargAlneil), Khartoum State. A survey encompassing 609 households (44.7% rural, 55.3% urban) revealed a high prevalence of TM use: over 80% reported using at least one form. Notably, significant socio-demographic variations emerged. Individuals with higher education leaned towards herbalists (p<0.05), while those with lower education favored religious healers (p<0.05). Similarly, older adults preferred religious healers (p<0.05), while males tended to choose herbalists (p<0.05). The most common ailments preferred to be treated by TM practitioners were spiritual and psychological issues, bone injuries, stomachaches, and headaches. Conversely, conditions like malaria, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease were primarily preferred to be managed by modern medicine. This study highlights the widespread use of TM across diverse demographics, with preferences for specific types of practitioners. It also underscores a selective trust in modern medicine for certain diseases. Integrating socio-demographic and cultural perspectives into healthcare delivery can enhance understanding of community needs and guide the development of appropriate interventions. Further research is warranted to delve deeper into the reasons behind these variations in treatment preferences.

The influence of entertainment and brand characters on children's object preferences and monetary judgments

Companies often use images of popular characters from children's media on their products. The current study investigated how different types of popular characters (i.e., entertainment or brand) influence children's trust, preference for, and monetary judgments of objects. Additionally, we explored whether children's own parasocial relationships with such characters influence their preferences and judgments. Participants included 66 four- and five-year-olds (Mage = 5.06; SD = 0.48; 34 boys; 32 girls). First, children completed a selective trust task measuring their preference for information from a familiar or unfamiliar character. Then children asked which object (i.e., damaged with a familiar character image or undamaged without a familiar character image) they would want and which people would pay more money for. Results indicated regardless of character type (i.e., entertainment or brand), children did not trust (i.e., seek out new information or endorse specific testimony) the familiar marketing character more than an unfamiliar character. Children across all character conditions did not display a preference for either object, however they were more likely to rate the undamaged object as more valuable than the damaged object featuring the familiar character. Parasocial relationships for all types of characters were high and did not relate to children's preferences or judgments. These findings expand on previous research suggesting that although the presence of familiar media characters can influence children's preferences for individual objects, children can also weigh more relevant features of an object, such as potential flaws in the design, when making other decisions (e.g., value).

Do Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Show Selective Trust in Social Robots?

Previous researches suggest that social robots can facilitate the learning of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) by enhancing their interests, engagement, and attention. However, there is limited understanding regarding whether children with ASD can learn directly from the testimony of social robots and whether they can remain vigilant based on the perceived accuracy of these robots. Therefore, the present study was conducted to examine whether children with ASD demonstrated selective trust towards social robots. Twenty-nine children with ASD between ages of 4-7 years, and 38 typically-developing (TD) age and IQ-matched peers participated in classic selective trust tasks. During the tasks, they learned the names of novel objects from either a pair of social robots or a pair of human informants, where one informant had previously been established as accurate and the other inaccurate. Children with ASD trusted information from an accurate social robot over an inaccurate one, similar to their performance with human informants. However, compared to TD children, children with ASD exhibited lower levels of selective trust regardless of the type of informants they learned from. Our study suggests that children with ASD can selectively trust and acquire knowledge from social robots, shedding light on the potential use of social robots in supporting individuals with ASD.

Social media for diffusion of conflict & violence in Ethiopia: Beyond gratifications

This study explored the use of social media among the Ethiopian youth at the time of the political reform. The study employed an explanatory sequential design. Using an online questionnaire, the quantitative data were gathered from 412 university students who were pursuing their education in eight major cities of the country. For the qualitative data, in-depth interviews were conducted with 35 students in four places of the research area. The survey data was discussed using descriptive statistics while data from the in-depth interviews were discussed thematically. This research discerns that the youth had unshakeable loyalty to Telegram (96 %) while they are also dominantly using YouTube (nearly 79 %), Facebook (65 %) and Instagram (53.7 %). It is also discovered that the youths showed a high level of trust on social media (70 %) virtually on par with their faith in their friends (77.4 %) and teachers (72 %) where their entire trust in social media is governed by selective trust mechanism. The entire dependence the youths had on this mechanism, which is exacerbated by the social media algorithm, led to high level of like and share of posts including unproved stories and misinformation which in turn lead to the diffusion of conflict and violence in a vicious cycle. By shedding new light on how members of a collective culture could use the media to achieve group-oriented goals, the study also refutes the widespread view, which predominantly ties UGT (Use and Gratification Theory) with self-oriented aspirations. This study recommends the enhancement of media literacy by incorporating it in the schools curricula and providing media literacy education to the public using various channels of communication (including both mainstream and new media).

Implications for the Testimonial Reductionism/Anti-Reductionism Debate from Psychological Studies of Selective Trust: Scope and Limitations

Abstract The child objection is a major challenge for reductionism, which requires hearers to have positive reasons for testimonial justification. However, it has been pointed out that anti-reductionism, which requires only the absence of negative reasons, or defeaters, suffers from the same kind of problem. The child objection presupposes the empirical thesis that “children do not have the capacity to consider reasons,” but the plausibility of this assumption may be revealed by developmental psychology research on selective trust. This paper uses recent epistemological studies as a guide to narrow down the types of defeaters that children are required to consider, and then clarifies what kind of reasons various experiments can be said to test the ability to consider, and in what sense children who pass the test can be said to be “considering” reasons. In doing so, we clarify the scope and limits of the implications that selective trust studies can have for reductionism and anti-reductionism. We then suggest what future psychological research is desired from an epistemological interest to go beyond the current limitations.

When is it right for a robot to be wrong? Children trust a robot over a human in a selective trust task

Little is known about how children perceive, trust and learn from social robots compared to humans. The goal of this study was to compare a robot and a human agent in a selective trust task across different combinations of reliability (both reliable, only human reliable, or only robot reliable). 111 children, aged 3 to 6 years, participated in an online study where they viewed videos of a human and a robot labelling both familiar and novel objects. We found that, although children preferred to endorse a novel object label from the agent who previously labelled familiar objects correctly, when both the human and the robot were reliable they were biased more towards the robot. Their social evaluations also tended much more strongly towards a general robot preference. Children’s conceptualisations of the agents making a mistake also differed, such that an unreliable human was selected as doing things on purpose, but not an unreliable robot. These findings suggest that children’s perceptions of a robot’s reliability are separate from their evaluation of its desirability as a social interaction partner and its perceived agency. Further, they indicate that a robot making a mistake does not necessarily reduce children’s desire to interact with it as a social agent.

Exploring responses to mainstream news among heavy and non-news users: From high-effort pragmatic scepticism to low effort cynical disengagement

Research shows the growth of online information has led to a decline in audience trust in mainstream news. However, how this lowered trust in the news affects different audiences’ attitudes and news consumption behaviour is less understood. Our thematic analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews with Australian heavy and non-news users of mainstream news shows that responses vary with respect to the effort taken to verify dubious news. Among heavy news users, responses include ‘pragmatic scepticism’, ‘selective trust’ and ‘generalised cynicism’ which tend to drive verification and fact-checking behaviours. These findings suggest that mistrust in mainstream news is not necessarily a bad thing, as it can lead to greater critical involvement with news and information. However, many non-news users depicted ‘critically conscious’ or ‘cynically disengaged’ attitudes towards news. A lack of trust can drive a low-effort response, particularly among non-news consumers, creating a downward spiral of disengagement.

Episodic mistrust and selective system trust: Insights from Chinese alternative food networks

This article contributes to comparative anthropological theory by analyzing the conceptual dynamics of episodic mistrust and selective system trust that emerge from ethnographic cases. Following the cue from recent studies that cast mistrust as a productive category in its own right, we explore this idea in the context of a complex modern society suffering from recurrent food safety scandals. We study how people in China allay anxieties about the food they and their dependents eat. In our cases, mistrust has no anchoring in an ideology of opacity and yet is shown to be highly socially productive as people deploy, anticipate and attempt to alleviate mistrusting attitudes. While constant mistrust may give rise to ambitions of total surveillance and control, the ethnography illustrates the benefits of episodic mistrust for actors when attempting to establish confidence in both personal relations and systems. The cases reveal the existence of selective trust in particular systems, which differs both from trust in direct personal relations and from social trust as measured in surveys. The article concludes that system trust must be qualified and conceptually disentangled from a general social trust, as selective trust in exclusive systems may allay anxieties exactly because it insulates the actor from involvement in more comprehensive systems that are seen as overly risky.

The cognitive underpinnings and early development of children's selective trust.

Young children learn selectively from reliable over unreliable sources. However, the cognitive underpinnings of their selectivity (attentional biases or trait ascriptions) and its early ontogeny are unclear. Thus, across three studies (N = 139, monolingual German speakers, 67 female), selective-trust tasks were adapted to test both preschoolers (5-year-olds) and toddlers (24-month-olds), using eye-tracking and interactive measures. These data show that preschoolers' selectivity is not based on attentional biases, but on person-specific trait ascriptions. In contrast, toddlers showed no selective trust, even in the eye-tracking tasks. They succeeded, however, in eye-tracking tasks with the same word-learning demands, if no ascriptions of reliability were required. Thus, these findings suggest that preschoolers, but not toddlers, use trait-like ascriptions of reliability to guide their selective learning.

Preschoolers' selective trust in moral promises

Preschoolers' selective trust in moral promises

Epistemic trust: a comprehensive review of empirical insights and implications for developmental psychopathology.

Originally rooted in philosophy and sociology, the concept of epistemic trust has recently transitioned to developmental psychopathology, illuminating social-cognitive processes in psychopathology. This narrative review synthesizes empirical evidence on epistemic trust to inform future research. A literature search highlighted 3 areas: i) the development of selective trust in children; ii) epistemic trust in non-clinical adults; iii) its link to mental health. Young children demonstrate selective learning from reliable sources using epistemic cues. Empirical studies beyond childhood were greatly facilitated in the last 2 years with the introduction of the Epistemic Trust, Mistrust and Credulity Questionnaire, a self-report scale measuring epistemic stance. Cross-sectional studies pinpointed dysfunctional epistemic strategies as factors in mental health vulnerability, and some qualitative work offered initial evidence linking restored epistemic trust to effective psychotherapy. For future research, we propose focusing on 3 primary areas. First, empirical investigations in adolescent samples are needed, as adolescence seems to be a pivotal phase in the development of epistemic trust. Second, more experimental research is required to assess dysfunctional and functional epistemic stances and how they relate to vulnerability to mental health disorders. Finally, intervention studies should explore the dynamics of epistemic stances within and between therapy sessions and their impact on therapeutic outcomes.

Are dominant figures more trustworthy? Examining the relation between parental authoritarianism and children's trust preferences in the United States and China

AbstractDeciding whose words to trust profoundly impacts children's knowledge acquisition. In evaluating informants' trustworthiness, children are attentive to their social dominance. Previous studies have shown that children's trust preferences may differ across cultures based on the dominance of the informant: children in Western cultures prefer to trust in testimony from dominant informants, whereas children in Eastern cultures prefer to trust subordinate informants (Bernard et al., 2016; Charafeddine et al., 2019). We aim to investigate the potential cultural difference in the trust preferences of European American children (in the United States) and Chinese children (in China) from informants of varying levels of dominance, using a more refined method to assess children's trust preferences. We propose that different levels of authoritarianism – advocacies to obey authorities – in Western and Eastern cultures may explain the potential difference in children's selective trust. Specifically, as impacted by societal cultures, Chinese parents may possess a higher level of authoritarianism than European American parents and may place a higher emphasis on obedience in their parenting. Consequently, Chinese children may show stronger trust preferences from subordinate informants over dominant informants than European American children. Our research will offer insights into the potential mechanism underlying children's different learning preferences across cultures.

Do Action Speaks Louder Than Words? Young Children’s Selective Trust Decisions

Do Action Speaks Louder Than Words? Young Children’s Selective Trust Decisions

What’s the Evidence Say? The Relation Between Evidential-Trust and Theory of Mind

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that linguistic cues such as mental and modal verbs can influence young children’s judgments about the reliability of informants. Further, certain languages include grammatical morphemes (i.e. evidential markers), which clarify the source of information coming from testimony (e.g., Bulgarian, Japanese, Turkish). Accordingly, the first aim of the current study is to examine whether Turkish-speaking children’s reliability judgments change based on evidential markers (i.e. the past-tense direct evidential marker, –DI, and the past-tense indirect evidential marker, –mIş). The literature has also investigated whether selective trust abilities are related to understanding the epistemic states of others (i.e., Theory of Mind). Therefore, the second aim is to examine the relation between selective trust based on evidential markers and ToM abilities by including a comprehensive ToM battery. Eighty-six Turkish-speaking preschool and elementary school children between the ages of 4 and 7, residing in a metropolitan city in Turkey, participated in a selective trust task based on evidential markers, a general language task, and a ToM battery. The results of the current study showed that after the age of 6, Turkish-speaking children start to selectively trust the informant using the past-tense direct evidential marker, –DI, over the past-tense indirect evidential marker, –mIş. Selective trust performance was related to receptive vocabulary but not to ToM abilities after controlling for participant gender and age. Overall, the results contribute to current discussions about children’s selective trust ability based on linguistic cues and its relation with ToM.

Activities and Counterstrategies; Populism during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has created an impetus for action for governments and citizens, but these actions can be challenging to understand. As a riposte, we use The Populist Divide as a framework for understanding the patchwork of populist responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our approach brings nuance to how crises are framed dependent on the trust levels between actors, thus presenting populist relationships as determined by selective trust allocation and not necessarily one of fixed ideological paradigms. Additionally, we introduce activities as the response to a measure, whether accepting or even protesting, but ultimately consenting to the legitimate powers of the leaders imposing these measures. On the other hand, counterstrategies emerging as challenges to the legitimacy of the leaders themselves.

I copy you as I believe you know about our culture: Combining imitation and selective trust literatures

AbstractEmpirical findings and theorizations of both imitation and selective trust offer different views on and interpretations of children's social learning mechanisms. The imitation literature provides ample documentation of children's behavioural patterns in the acquisition of socially appropriate norms and practices. The selective trust literature provides insights into children's cognitive processes of choosing credible informants and what information to learn in future interactions. In this paper, we place together findings from both fields and note that they share analogically similar theoretical underpinnings and offer explanations that are complementary to each other. We contend that children's imitative tendency may be due to their selection of in‐group members as cultural experts, who serve as reliable sources of conventional information. Moving forward, we note the importance of evaluating individual differences and cultural factors to provide a more holistic understanding of universality and variation in children's social learning mechanisms.

Role of bilingual experience in children's context-sensitive selective trust strategies

AbstractEarly bilingual language experience can enhance children's social-cognitive skills for effective communication. This study examined whether individual variability in bilingual language diversity, measured by language entropy, influenced 3- to 5-year-old children's engagement of contextual information in their selective trust strategies. One-hundred-and-forty Singaporean children (58 girls, Mage = 53.64 months, 97.1% Asian) were presented with an informant who provided either accurate or inaccurate information in a context with either adequate or limited information access. Bilingual children with greater language diversity, compared to those with less language diversity, were more likely to adapt their accuracy-based selective trust strategy to the informant's circumstances (i.e, information access). Results provide new insights into the role of diverse linguistic experiences in shaping children's social cognitive development.

People Do Not Always Know Best: Preschoolers’ Trust in Social Robots

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigated whether Canadian preschoolers prefer to learn from a competent robot over an incompetent human using the classic trust paradigm. An adapted Naive Biology task was also administered to assess children’s perception of robots. In Study 1, 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds were presented with two informants; A social, humanoid robot (Nao) who labeled familiar objects correctly, while a human informant labeled them incorrectly. Both informants then labeled unfamiliar objects with novel labels. It was found that 3-year-old children equally endorsed the labels provided by the robot and the human, but 5-year-old children learned significantly more from the competent robot. Interestingly, 5-year-olds endorsed Nao’s labels even though they accurately categorized the robot as having mechanical insides. In contrast, 3-year-old children associated Nao with biological or mechanical insides equally. In Study 2, new samples of 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds were tested to determine whether the human-like appearance of the robot informant impacted children’s trust judgments. The procedure was identical to that of Study 1, except that a non-humanoid robot, Cozmo, replaced Nao. It was found that 3-year-old children still trusted the robot and the human equally and that 5-year-olds preferred to learn new labels from the robot, suggesting that the robot’s morphology does not play a key role in their selective trust strategies. It is concluded that by 5 years of age, preschoolers show a robust sensitivity to epistemic characteristics (e.g., competency), but that younger children’s decisions are equally driven by the animacy of the informant.

In the presence and absence of conflicting testimony, children’s selective trust in the in-group informant in moral judgment and knowledge access

In this study, we assessed whether the trust model formed by children in a moral judgment context with an inaccurate in-group informant affected their corresponding trust model in the knowledge access context and whether conditions (the presence of conflicting testimony: an inaccurate in-group informant paired with an accurate out-group informant; the absence of conflicting testimony: only an inaccurate in-group informant) influenced the trust model. Children aged 3 to 6 years (N = 215; 108 girls) in blue T-shirts as in-group members completed selective trust tasks in the moral judgment and knowledge access contexts. Results for moral judgment showed that children under both conditions were more likely to trust informants based on accurate judgments and gave less consideration to group identity. Results for knowledge access showed that in the presence of conflicting testimony, 3- and 4-year-olds trusted the in-group informant at chance, but 5- and 6-year-olds trusted the accurate informant. In the absence of conflicting testimony, 3- and 4-year-olds agreed more with the inaccurate in-group informant, but 5- and 6-year-olds trusted the in-group informant at chance. The results indicated that older children considered the accuracy of the informant’s previous moral judgment for selective trust in the context of knowledge access while ignoring group identity, but that younger children were affected by in-group identity. The study found that 3- to 6-year-olds’ trust in inaccurate in-group informants was conditional and that their trust choices appeared to be experimentally conditioned, domain specific, and age differentiated.

To copy or not to copy: A comparison of selective trust and overimitation in young children

Two social learning strategies that develop rapidly during the preschool period are selective trust and overimitation. To our knowledge, no study has directly compared performance on these two abilities. In line with previous research, we hypothesized that these abilities would be associated, but that this association would decrease with age; that selective trust would be related to theory of mind; and that overimitation would be related to social affiliation. We first administered a selective trust task and an overimitation task with puppets via video-chat to a sample of 3.5- and 5-year-old children (n = 80). Results did not support our hypotheses. As the overimitation rate was low, we conducted a second experiment using the same procedures, but with human agents (n = 72). Results showed an association between selective trust and theory of mind, and a significant increase of overimitation with the human demonstrator, suggesting that overimitation might be related to social affiliation.