When Being Right Is Not Enough: Four-Year-Olds Distinguish Knowledgeable Informants From Merely Accurate Informants

被引:67
作者
Einav, Shiri [1 ]
Robinson, Elizabeth J. [2 ]
机构
[1] Oxford Brookes Univ, Dept Psychol, Oxford OX3 0BP, England
[2] Univ Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, W Midlands, England
关键词
trust in testimony; knowledge attribution; social learning; social cognition; cognitive development; SPEAKERS; INACCURACY; TESTIMONY; IGNORANT; WORDS; TRUST;
D O I
10.1177/0956797611416998
中图分类号
B84 [心理学];
学科分类号
04 ; 0402 ;
摘要
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.
引用
收藏
页码:1250 / 1253
页数:4
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