Young Children's Trust in Overtly Misleading Advice

Abstract

The ability of 3-and 4-year-old children to disregard advice from an overtly misleading informant was investigated across five studies (total n = 212). Previous studies have documented limitations in young children's ability to reject misleading advice. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that these limitations are primarily due to an inability to reject specific directions that are provided by others, rather than an inability to respond in a way that is opposite to what has been indicated by a cue. In Studies 1 through 4, a puppet identified as The Big Bad Wolf offered advice to participants about which of two boxes contained a hidden sticker. Regardless of the form the advice took, 3-year olds performed poorly by failing to systematically reject it. However, when participants in Study 5 believed they were responding to a mechanical cue rather than the advice of the Wolf, they were better able to reject misleading advice, and individual differences in performance on the primary task were systematically correlated with measures of executive function. Results are interpreted as providing support for the communicative intent hypothesis, which posits that children find it especially difficult to reject deceptive information that they perceive as being intentionally communicated by others.

Trust and doubt: An examination of children’s decision to believe what they are told about food

“…The developmental findings here dovetail with those of recent studies that have documented difficulties with 3-year-olds' learning to discount information from untrustworthy sources (e.g., Heyman, Sritanyaratana, & Vanderbilt, 2013; Jaswal et al, 2010; Jaswal et al, 2014; Vanderbilt, Liu, & Heyman, 2011). Of course this is not to suggest that 3-year-olds are insensitive to cues for distrust.…”

“…Research has also revealed that when an informant does not provide a testimony that conflicts with another informant, 3-year-olds are quite trusting, regardless of the informant's repeated deceptive behavior (Heyman, Sritanyaratana, & Vanderbilt, 2013; Jaswal, Carrington, Setia, & Cole, 2010; Mascaro & Sperber, 2009, Experiment 2a) and even 4-year-olds, regardless of the informant's prior history of inaccuracy (Vanderbilt et al, 2014). …”

Preschoolers’ credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers

“…However, most 3-year-olds were credulous and followed the false testimony to search for the toy despite their firsthand observations of the hiding event (Ma & Ganea, 2010, Study 1). Related evidence was found in an experiment where 3-and 4-year-olds were provided with misleading advice about the location of a sticker from an infamous storybook character (i.e., the ''Big Bad Wolf"); the 4-year-olds were successful at rejecting the misleading advice, but the 3-year-olds were credulous approximately 50% of the time despite the Big Bad Wolf being an obviously unreliable source (Heyman et al, 2013).…”

“…Empirical research demonstrates that in some circumstances http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2016.03.011 0022-0965/Ó 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. toddlers and preschoolers are indeed credulous toward an adult's claims that are obviously false (e.g., Heyman, Sritanyaratana, & Vanderbilt, 2013;Jaswal, 2010;Ma & Ganea, 2010). The current study sought to extend these findings and explore whether preschoolers display different levels of credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers.…”

Do dogs follow behavioral cues from an unreliable human?

“…In contrast, most studies on children's selective trust have been conducted within less familiar contexts, including word learning (Harris and Corriveau 2011;Koenig et al 2004) and comprehension of deceptive pointing (Heyman et al 2013;Vanderbilt et al 2011). In Harris and Corriveau (2011), the unreliable informant named the familiar object incorrectly, for example, by saying ''That's a cup'' when presented with a ball.…”