Children's use of moral behavior in selective trust: Discrimination versus learning.

Abstract

Does valence play a role in children’s sensitivity to and use of moral information in the service of selective learning? In the present experiment, we explored this question by presenting three- to five-year-old children with informants who behaved in ways consistent or inconsistent with socio-moral norms, such as helping a peer retrieve a toy, or deliberately tearing a peer’s artwork. ‘Good’ versus ‘bad’ informants were contrasted with putatively neutral-behaving informants. In an effort to specify the role that moral information plays in guiding children’s selective trust, we measured children’s ability to discriminate the informants as well as their willingness to learn from them. We found that children were significantly more likely to discriminate negatively-behaving agents from neutral ones than they were to discriminate positively-behaving agents from neutral ones. In contrast, children did not differ in the degree to which they used negative versus positive moral information in their selective learning; both types of information were used to guide trust across domains of knowledge. Results are discussed in terms of the positive-negative asymmetry observed and the different forms that a negativity bias might take.

Early Testimonial Learning

“…When provided with evidence of speaker morality in the absence of other relevant speaker characteristics, findings suggest that, by 4 years of age, children generally prefer to learn from an individual judged to be nicer (Doebel & Koenig, 2013;Mascaro & Sperber, 2009). Yet, when children receive additional information about speakers, evidence of their good intentions and moral warmth enters into a wider network of considerations.…”

“…However, it is unclear whether young children's selective trust in a moral speaker is attributable to a specific preference for a moral speaker or vigilance against an immoral speaker. Doebel and Koenig (2013) investigated this issue by familiarizing preschoolers to either a moral speaker or an immoral speaker, each of whom was paired with a neutral speaker. Children exhibited a clear negativity bias when asked to discriminate the nicer of the two speakers: they showed enhanced performance when discriminating between immoral and neutral behavior relative to when discriminating between moral and neutral behavior.…”

Children's understanding of physical possibility constrains their belief in Santa Claus

“…One of the prerequisites of learning from testimony is that we must trust what others tell us, but such trust need not be blind. There are many strategies one could use for discriminating trustworthy informants from untrustworthy ones, and children seem to adopt these strategies prior to formal schooling, preferring informants who are knowledgeable (Birch, Vauthier, & Bloom, 2008), familiar (Corriveau & Harris, 2009), consistent (Pasquini, Corriveau, Koenig, & Harris, 2007), and moral (Doebel & Koenig, 2013).…”

Do children go for the nice guys? The influence of speaker benevolence and certainty on selective word learning

“…Whereas the finding regarding speaker certainty was expected, the finding for speaker benevolence was somewhat surprising. After all, Doebel and Koenig (2013) had demonstrated that a speaker who displayed well-intentioned, helpful behaviour towards a peer was considered to be reliable in his object labelling. Moreover, Landrum et al (2013) showed that benevolence was even a more important factor than expertise.…”

“…Benevolent speakers thus seem to be trusted more by children than malevolent speakers in a general sense, but there is also evidence to suggest that speaker morality may guide children's novel word learning. Doebel and Koenig (2013) found that children were more inclined to acquire novel labels from well-intentioned speakers (who had previously been seen to engage in prosocial behaviour towards peers) over those of a neutral speaker, and the labels of a neutral speaker over those of an ill-intentioned speaker (who had previously displayed antisocial behaviour towards peers). Similarly, Landrum, Mills, and Johnston (2013) showed that the labels of informants who were described as being prosocial ("This person is very nice.…”