Objection! The Effect of Informant Disagreement on Children’s Selective Trust

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated that children consider many cues when deciding from whom to learn. In the present study, we evaluated whether children consider the cue of explicit interpersonal disagreement in their selective learning. Additionally, we aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the kinds of attributions children make about informants who express disagreement. One hundred and eleven 5- to 8-year-old Canadian children completed a novel selective learning paradigm along with two attribution tasks after viewing videos of informants where the second speaker disagreed with the first either in a polite manner, rudely, or implicitly. Results reveal that children attribute more confidence and less benevolence to rudely disagreeing informants; however, their learning preferences remain unaltered. Other forms of disagreement impact neither children’s selective learning nor their attributions. These findings shed light on how children understand disagreement and have important implications for future social learning and education research.