1
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Selmeczy D, Kazemi A, Ghetti S. Seeking versus receiving help: How children integrate suggestions in memory decisions. Child Dev 2024; 95:515-529. [PMID: 37681644 PMCID: PMC10919454 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.14009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2022] [Revised: 07/24/2023] [Accepted: 08/03/2023] [Indexed: 09/09/2023]
Abstract
The current research examined how seeking versus receiving help affected children's memory and confidence decisions. Baseline performance, when no help was available, was compared to performance when help could be sought (Experiment 1: N = 83, 41 females) or was provided (Experiment 2: N = 84, 44 females) in a sample of predominately White 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds from Northern California. Data collection occurred from 2018 to 2019. In Experiment 1, 5-year-olds agreed most often with sought-help, whereas 9-year-olds were the only age group reporting lower confidence for sought-help relative to baseline trials. In Experiment 2, agreement and confidence after provided help were similar across age groups. Different developmental patterns when help was sought versus provided underscore the importance of active help-seeking for memory decision-making.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Alireza Kazemi
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616
- Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, CA 95616
| | - Simona Ghetti
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616
- Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, CA 95616
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2
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Cottrell S, Torres E, Harris PL, Ronfard S. Older children verify adult claims because they are skeptical of those claims. Child Dev 2023; 94:172-186. [PMID: 36093603 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13847] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
Abstract
We investigated children's information seeking in response to a surprising claim (Study 1, N = 109, 54 Female, Range = 4.02-6.94 years, 49% White, 21% Mixed Ethnicity, 19% Southeast Asian, September 2019-March 2020; Study 2, N = 154, 74 Female, Range = 4.09-7.99, 50% White, 20% Mixed Ethnicity, 17% Southeast Asian, September 2020-December 2020). Relative to younger children, older children more often expressed skepticism about the adult's surprising claims (1-year increase, OR = 2.70) and more often suggested exploration strategies appropriate for testing the specific claim they heard (1-year increase, OR = 1.42). Controlling for age, recommending more targeted exploration strategies was associated with a greater likelihood of expressing skepticism about the adult's claim.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Eric Torres
- Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Paul L Harris
- Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Samuel Ronfard
- University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
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3
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Lascaux A. Of Kids and Unicorns: How Rational Is Children's Trust in Testimonial Knowledge? Cogn Sci 2021; 44:e12819. [PMID: 32090379 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12819] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2018] [Revised: 01/24/2020] [Accepted: 01/24/2020] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
When young children confront a vast array of adults' testimonial claims, they should decide which testimony to endorse. If they are unable to immediately verify the content of testimonial assertions, children adopt or reject their informants' statements on the basis of forming trust in the sources of testimony. This kind of trust needs to be based on some underlying reasons. The rational choice theory, which currently dominates the social, cognitive, and psychological sciences, posits that trust should be formed on a rational basis, as a result of probabilistic assessments and utility-maximizing calculations. In this paper, the predictions stemming from the rational choice approach to trust are systematically compared with the empirical evidence from the field of developmental psychology on how children establish their trust in testimonial statements. The results of this comparison demonstrate an obvious inadequacy of the rational choice explanation of the emergence and development of children's testimonial trust, regardless of which form of trust rationality-weighting, threshold, or ordering-is examined. As none of the three forms of rationality of children's trust in testimony squares with the empirical data, this paper introduces a new version of trust rationality, adaptively rational trust. It explores the compatibility of the concept of adaptively rational trust with the recent empirical findings in the area of developmental psychology and addresses some avenues for future research on the rationality of testimonial trust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Lascaux
- IBS, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Affairs
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4
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Messer EJ, Lumsden A, Burgess V, McGuigan N. Young children selectively adopt sharing norms according to norm content and donor age. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101088] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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5
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Hermansen TK, Ronfard S, Harris PL, Zambrana IM. Preschool Children Rarely Seek Empirical Data That Could Help Them Complete a Task When Observation and Testimony Conflict. Child Dev 2021; 92:2546-2562. [PMID: 34152606 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13612] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
Children (N = 278, 34-71 months, 54% girls) were told which of two figurines turned on a music box and also observed empirical evidence either confirming or conflicting with that testimony. Children were then asked to sort novel figurines according to whether they could make the music box work or not. To see whether children would explore which figurine turned on the music box, especially when the observed and testimonial evidence conflicted, children were given access to the music box during their sorting. However, children rarely explored. Indeed, they struggled to disregard the misleading testimony both when sorting the figurines and when asked about a future attempt. In contrast, children who explored the effectiveness of the figurines dismissed the misleading testimony.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tone K Hermansen
- University of Oslo.,Norwegian Center of Child Behavioral Development
| | | | | | - Imac M Zambrana
- University of Oslo.,Norwegian Center of Child Behavioral Development
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6
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Hermansen TK, Ronfard S, Harris PL, Pons F, Zambrana IM. Young children update their trust in an informant's claim when experience tells them otherwise. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 205:105063. [PMID: 33493996 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105063] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/03/2020] [Revised: 11/12/2020] [Accepted: 11/29/2020] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Across two experiments, an adult informant presented 220 preschoolers (34-71 months of age) with either a correct claim or an incorrect claim about how to activate a music box by using one of two toy figures. Children were then prompted to explore the figures and to discover whether the informant's claim was correct or incorrect. Children who discovered the claim to be incorrect no longer endorsed it. Moreover, their predictions regarding a new figure's ability to activate the music box were clearly affected by the reliability of the informant's prior claim. Thus, children reassess an informant's incorrect claim about an object in light of later empirical evidence and transfer their conclusions regarding the validity of that claim to subsequent objects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tone K Hermansen
- Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, N-0373 Oslo, Norway; Norwegian Center of Child Behavioral Development, N-0306 Oslo, Norway.
| | - Samuel Ronfard
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada
| | - Paul L Harris
- Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
| | - Francisco Pons
- Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, N-0373 Oslo, Norway
| | - Imac M Zambrana
- Norwegian Center of Child Behavioral Development, N-0306 Oslo, Norway; Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo, N-0371 Oslo, Norway
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7
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Sebastián‐Enesco C, Guerrero S, Enesco I. What makes children defy their peers? Chinese and Spanish preschoolers' decisions to trust (or not) peer consensus. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2020. [DOI: 10.1111/sode.12416] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Carla Sebastián‐Enesco
- Departamento de Ciencias de la Educación Facultad de Letras y de la Educación Universidad de La Rioja Logroño Spain
| | - Silvia Guerrero
- Departamento de Psicología Facultad de Educación de Toledo Universidad de Castilla‐La Mancha Toledo Spain
| | - Ileana Enesco
- Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación Facultad de Psicología Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid Spain
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8
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Kim S, Spelke ES. Learning from multiple informants: Children's response to epistemic bases for consensus judgments. J Exp Child Psychol 2020; 192:104759. [PMID: 31901723 PMCID: PMC7024033 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104759] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2019] [Revised: 11/14/2019] [Accepted: 11/15/2019] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Consensus has both social and epistemic value. Children conform to consensus judgments in ways that suggest they are sensitive to the social value of consensus. Here we report two experiments providing evidence that 4-year-old children also are sensitive to the epistemic value of consensus. When multiple informants gave the same judgment concerning the hidden contents of a container, based on the observation of one of their members, children's own judgments tended to align with the consensus judgment over the judgment of a lone character, whose observation received no endorsements. This tendency was reduced, however, when children were shown that the group consensus lacked epistemic warrant. Together, the findings provide evidence that young children are sensitive to the epistemic basis of consensus reports.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sunae Kim
- Department of Developmental and Clinical Child Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, 1053 Budapest, Hungary.
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9
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Tong Y, Wang F, Danovitch J. The role of epistemic and social characteristics in children's selective trust: Three meta-analyses. Dev Sci 2019; 23:e12895. [PMID: 31433880 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12895] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/29/2019] [Revised: 06/29/2019] [Accepted: 07/29/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
Over the last 15 years, researchers have been increasingly interested in understanding the nature and development of children's selective trust. Three meta-analyses were conducted on a total of 51 unique studies (88 experiments) to provide a quantitative overview of 3- to 6-year-old children's selective trust in an informant based on the informant's epistemic or social characteristics, and to examine the relation between age and children's selective trust decisions. The first and second meta-analyses found that children displayed medium-to-large pooled effects in favor of trusting the informant who was knowledgeable or the informant with positive social characteristics. Moderator analyses revealed that 4-year-olds were more likely to endorse knowledgeable informants than 3-year-olds. The third meta-analysis examined cases where two informants simultaneously differed in their epistemic and social characteristics. The results revealed that 3-year-old children did not selectively endorse informants who were more knowledgeable but had negative social characteristics over informants who were less knowledgeable but had positive social characteristics. However, 4- to 6-year-olds consistently prioritized epistemic cues over social characteristics when deciding who to trust. Together, these meta-analyses suggest that epistemic and social characteristics are both valuable to children when they evaluate the reliability of informants. Moreover, with age, children place greater value on epistemic characteristics when deciding whether to endorse an informant's testimony. Implications for the development of epistemic trust and the design of studies of children's selective trust are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yu Tong
- School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China
| | - Fuxing Wang
- School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China
| | - Judith Danovitch
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA
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10
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Mercier H, Morin O. Majority rules: how good are we at aggregating convergent opinions? EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES 2019; 1:e6. [PMID: 37588400 PMCID: PMC10427311 DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2019.6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022] Open
Abstract
Mathematical models and simulations demonstrate the power of majority rules, i.e. following an opinion shared by a majority of group members. Majority opinion should be followed more when (a) the relative and absolute size of the majority grow, the members of the majority are (b) competent, and (c) benevolent, (d) the majority opinion conflicts less with our prior beliefs and (e) the members of the majority formed their opinions independently. We review the experimental literature bearing on these points. The few experiments bearing on (b) and (c) suggest that both factors are adequately taken into account. Many experiments show that (d) is also followed, with participants usually putting too much weight on their own opinion relative to that of the majority. Regarding factors (a) and (e), in contrast, the evidence is mixed: participants sometimes take into account optimally the absolute and relative size of the majority, as well as the presence of informational dependencies. In other circumstances, these factors are ignored. We suggest that an evolutionary framework can help make sense of these conflicting results by distinguishing between evolutionarily valid cues - that are readily taken into account - and non-evolutionarily valid cues - that are ignored by default.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hugo Mercier
- Institut Jean Nicod, PSL University, CNRS, ParisFrance
| | - Olivier Morin
- Max Planck institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
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11
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Effects of facial attractiveness and information accuracy on preschoolers’ selective trust. ACTA PSYCHOLOGICA SINICA 2019. [DOI: 10.3724/sp.j.1041.2019.00071] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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12
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Lane JD. Children's Belief in Counterintuitive and Counterperceptual Messages. CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES 2018. [DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12294] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
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13
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Flynn E, Turner C, Giraldeau LA. Follow (or don't follow) the crowd: Young children's conformity is influenced by norm domain and age. J Exp Child Psychol 2017; 167:222-233. [PMID: 29190511 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.10.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2017] [Revised: 10/09/2017] [Accepted: 10/25/2017] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
This study investigated whether young children's conformity to a consensus varies across the normative domain and age. A total of 168 3- and 5-year-olds participated. Each child was presented with a puzzle box that had two transparent compartments. In a reward preference condition, one of the compartments contained 1 sticker, whereas the other compartment contained 12 stickers. In perceptual judgment and arbitrary preference conditions, one compartment contained a short plank, whereas one contained a perceptually longer plank. Each child was shown a video of four female adults, each of whom was asked the same question within condition: "Which one's the biggest?" (perceptual task; each model retrieved the smaller block), "Which one do you want?" (reward preference; each model retrieved the smaller reward), and "Which one do you want?" (arbitrary preference; each model retrieved the smaller plank). Children were then asked the same question by condition and were allowed to retrieve the item. Notably, more children conformed in the arbitrary preference condition than in the reward preference and perceptual judgment conditions, with 3-year-olds conforming significantly more than 5-year-olds. The 5-year-olds were more successful and imitated with greater fidelity, including demonstrating overimitation. However, less overimitation was observed in the arbitrary preference condition. Together, these findings show that children are sensitive to the contextual cues of the domain in which they are witnessing norms and vary their own conformity based on such cues. Furthermore, children can navigate which information to copy to fulfil their own ends.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emma Flynn
- Centre for the Coevolution of Biology and Culture, School of Education, Durham University, Durham DH1 1TA, UK.
| | - Cameron Turner
- Department of Biology, Australian National University, Acton, ACT 2601, Australia
| | - Luc-Alain Giraldeau
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), Montreal, Quebec H2L 2CR, Canada
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14
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Einav S. Thinking for themselves? The effect of informant independence on children's endorsement of testimony from a consensus. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2017. [DOI: 10.1111/sode.12264] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
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15
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Abstract
Humans acquire much of their knowledge from the testimony of other people. An understanding of the way that information can be conveyed via gesture and vocalization is present in infancy. Thus, infants seek information from well-informed interlocutors, supply information to the ignorant, and make sense of communicative acts that they observe from a third-party perspective. This basic understanding is refined in the course of development. As they age, children's reasoning about testimony increasingly reflects an ability not just to detect imperfect or inaccurate claims but also to assess what inferences may or may not be drawn about informants given their particular situation. Children also attend to the broader characteristics of particular informants-their group membership, personality characteristics, and agreement or disagreement with other potential informants. When presented with unexpected or counterintuitive testimony, children are prone to set aside their own prior convictions, but they may sometimes defer to informants for inherently social reasons.
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Affiliation(s)
- Paul L Harris
- Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138;
| | - Melissa A Koenig
- Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55436;
| | | | - Vikram K Jaswal
- Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904;
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16
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Castelain T, Bernard S, Mercier H. Evidence that Two-Year-Old Children are Sensitive to Information Presented in Arguments. INFANCY 2017. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12202] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Castelain
- Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas; Universidad de Costa Rica
| | | | - Hugo Mercier
- Institut des Sciences Cognitives - Marc Jeannerod; CNRS
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17
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The impact of counter-perceptual testimony on children's categorization after a delay. J Exp Child Psychol 2017; 163:151-158. [PMID: 28712468 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.06.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2016] [Revised: 06/16/2017] [Accepted: 06/18/2017] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
When preschoolers are presented with a label for an entity that conflicts with its appearance, they sometimes rely on the new label rather than on the entity's appearance to categorize the entity and to infer its properties. We examined whether children's learning from such claims is short-lived or long-lasting and whether the persistence of their learning depends on the degree of fit between those claims and the available perceptual evidence. Children aged 3-5years (N=71) were asked to categorize hybrids. These hybrids combined 75% of the features from one animal or object with 25% of the features from a different animal or object. After categorizing each hybrid, children heard an informant provide a contrary label. Immediately after they were provided with this new label, children often recategorized the entities accordingly, especially when the label matched the hybrid's predominant features. Children's endorsement of the informant's label proved to be long-lasting when it matched the hybrid's predominant features, typically persisting even after 5weeks. In contrast, children's endorsement often faded over time when the informant's label did not match the hybrid's predominant features. Overall, children were more skeptical of testimony that was more discrepant with the perceptual evidence available to them, and they were less likely to continue endorsing it after a delay. The findings have implications for our understanding of how children eventually come to represent and believe in counter-perceptual and counterintuitive concepts.
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18
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Mercier H. How Gullible are We? A Review of the Evidence from Psychology and Social Science. REVIEW OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 2017. [DOI: 10.1037/gpr0000111] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
A long tradition of scholarship, from ancient Greece to Marxism or some contemporary social psychology, portrays humans as strongly gullible—wont to accept harmful messages by being unduly deferent. However, if humans are reasonably well adapted, they should not be strongly gullible: they should be vigilant toward communicated information. Evidence from experimental psychology reveals that humans are equipped with well-functioning mechanisms of epistemic vigilance. They check the plausibility of messages against their background beliefs, calibrate their trust as a function of the source's competence and benevolence, and critically evaluate arguments offered to them. Even if humans are equipped with well-functioning mechanisms of epistemic vigilance, an adaptive lag might render them gullible in the face of new challenges, from clever marketing to omnipresent propaganda. I review evidence from different cultural domains often taken as proof of strong gullibility: religion, demagoguery, propaganda, political campaigns, advertising, erroneous medical beliefs, and rumors. Converging evidence reveals that communication is much less influential than often believed—that religious proselytizing, propaganda, advertising, and so forth are generally not very effective at changing people's minds. Beliefs that lead to costly behavior are even less likely to be accepted. Finally, it is also argued that most cases of acceptance of misguided communicated information do not stem from undue deference, but from a fit between the communicated information and the audience's preexisting beliefs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hugo Mercier
- CNRS, Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod
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19
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Bernard S, Castelain T, Mercier H, Kaufmann L, Van der Henst JB, Clément F. The boss is always right: Preschoolers endorse the testimony of a dominant over that of a subordinate. J Exp Child Psychol 2016; 152:307-317. [PMID: 27658803 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.08.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2016] [Revised: 08/24/2016] [Accepted: 08/25/2016] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Recent research has shown that young children rely on social cues to evaluate testimony. For instance, they prefer to endorse testimony provided by a consensual group than by a single dissenter. Given that dominance is pervasive in children's social environment, it can be hypothesized that children also use dominance relations in their selection of testimony. To test this hypothesis, a dominance asymmetry was induced between two characters either by having one repeatedly win in physical contests (physical power; Experiment 1) or by having one repeatedly impose her goals on the other (decisional power; Experiment 2). In two subsequent testimony tasks, 3- to 5-year-old children significantly tended to endorse the testimony of the dominant over that of the subordinate. These results suggest that preschoolers take dominance into account when evaluating testimony. In conclusion, we discuss two potential explanations for these findings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stéphane Bernard
- Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
| | - Thomas Castelain
- Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Langage, Cerveau Cognition (L2C2), 69675 Lyon, France; Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas, Universidad de Costa Rica, 11501 San José, Costa Rica
| | - Hugo Mercier
- Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
| | - Laurence Kaufmann
- Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Langage, Cerveau Cognition (L2C2), 69675 Lyon, France
| | - Fabrice Clément
- Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
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20
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Boseovski JJ, Marble KE, Hughes C. Role of Expertise, Consensus, and Informational Valence in Children's Performance Judgments. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2016. [DOI: 10.1111/sode.12205] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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21
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Kim EB, Chen C, Smetana JG, Greenberger E. Does children's moral compass waver under social pressure? Using the conformity paradigm to test preschoolers' moral and social-conventional judgments. J Exp Child Psychol 2016; 150:241-251. [PMID: 27367300 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.06.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2016] [Revised: 06/06/2016] [Accepted: 06/06/2016] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
The current study tested whether preschoolers' moral and social-conventional judgments change under social pressure using Asch's conformity paradigm. A sample of 132 preschoolers (Mage=3.83years, SD=0.85) rated the acceptability of moral and social-conventional events and also completed a visual judgment task (i.e., comparing line length) both independently and after having viewed two peers who consistently made immoral, unconventional, or visually inaccurate judgments. Results showed evidence of conformity on all three tasks, but conformity was stronger on the social-conventional task than on the moral and visual tasks. Older children were less susceptible to pressure for social conformity for the moral and visual tasks but not for the conventional task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elizabeth B Kim
- Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
| | - Chuansheng Chen
- Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
| | - Judith G Smetana
- Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA
| | - Ellen Greenberger
- Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
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22
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Jacquot A, Eskenazi T, Sales-Wuillemin E, Montalan B, Proust J, Grèzes J, Conty L. Source unreliability decreases but does not cancel the impact of social information on metacognitive evaluations. Front Psychol 2015; 6:1385. [PMID: 26441760 PMCID: PMC4568399 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01385] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2015] [Accepted: 08/31/2015] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Through metacognitive evaluations, individuals assess their own cognitive operations with respect to their current goals. We have previously shown that non-verbal social cues spontaneously influence these evaluations, even when the cues are unreliable. Here, we explore whether a belief about the reliability of the source can modulate this form of social impact. Participants performed a two-alternative forced choice task that varied in difficulty. The task was followed by a video of a person who was presented as being either competent or incompetent at performing the task. That person provided random feedback to the participant through facial expressions indicating agreement, disagreement or uncertainty. Participants then provided a metacognitive evaluation by rating their confidence in their answer. Results revealed that participants’ confidence was higher following agreements. Interestingly, this effect was merely reduced but not canceled for the incompetent individual, even though participants were able to perceive the individual’s incompetence. Moreover, perceived agreement induced zygomaticus activity, but only when the feedback was provided for difficult trials by the competent individual. This last result strongly suggests that people implicitly appraise the relevance of social feedback with respect to their current goal. Together, our findings suggest that people always integrate social agreement into their metacognitive evaluations, even when epistemic vigilance mechanisms alert them to the risk of being misinformed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amélie Jacquot
- Laboratoire de Psychopathologie et Neuropsychologie EA 2027, Université Paris 8, Saint-Denis France
| | - Terry Eskenazi
- Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives INSERM U960, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris France
| | - Edith Sales-Wuillemin
- Laboratoire de Socio-Psychologie et Management du Sport EA 4180, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon France
| | - Benoît Montalan
- Laboratoire ICONES EA 4699, Université de Normandie, Mont-Saint-Aignan France
| | - Joëlle Proust
- Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris France
| | - Julie Grèzes
- Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives INSERM U960, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris France
| | - Laurence Conty
- Laboratoire de Psychopathologie et Neuropsychologie EA 2027, Université Paris 8, Saint-Denis France
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