Citation

Einav S, Robinson EJ. Psychol. Sci. 2011; 22(10): 1250-1253.

Affiliation

Oxford Brookes University, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Oxford OX3 0BP, United Kingdom. seinav@brookes.ac.uk

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797611416998

PMID

21881060

Abstract

Recent evidence demonstrates that children are selective in their social learning, preferring to learn from a previously accurate speaker than from a previously inaccurate one. We examined whether children assessing speakers' reliability take into account how speakers achieved their prior accuracy. In Study 1, when faced with two accurate informants, 4- and 5-year-olds (but not 3-year-olds) were more likely to seek novel information from an informant who had previously given the answers unaided than from an informant who had always relied on help from a third party. Similarly, in Study 2, 4-year-olds were more likely to trust the testimony of an unaided informant over the testimony provided by an assisted informant. Our results indicate that when children reach around 4 years of age, their selective trust extends beyond simple generalizations based on informants' past accuracy to a more sophisticated selectivity that distinguishes between truly knowledgeable informants and merely accurate informants who may not be reliable in the long term.

Language: en