The Effects of Disagreement on Young Children’s Overconfidence and Information Search

• In Event: The Development of Social Curiosity in Children

Abstract

Young children are often overconfident: they overestimate their knowledge (e.g., Hagá & Olson, 2017). This can have problematic consequences, because somebody who is not aware of gaps in their knowledge may be less motivated to seek new information, and thus less likely to learn (e.g., Dunlosky & Rawson, 2012). Across two experiments, we investigated whether socially-mediated curiosity - here defined as disagreeing (versus agreeing) with a social partner - can help children develop a more realistic view of their epistemic limitations and lead them to search for information.

In Study 1, 4- to 6-year-olds (N = 68) determined, together with a confederate, which toys in a set were “blickets” after being exposed to ambiguous evidence. We measured children’s confidence regarding which toys were blickets before (t1) and after (t2) the confederate either disagreed or agreed with their belief. We also assessed how much time children spent searching for additional information about which toys were blickets after the confederate left. We found that children in the disagreement condition reduced their confidence in their initial belief more (p = .03; Figure 1), and searched marginally longer for additional information (n.s., p = .13; Figure 2), compared to children in the agreement condition.

In Study 2, we investigated whether disagreeing with an expert would lead to stronger reductions in overconfidence. A new sample of 4- to 6-year-olds (N = 68) participated in the same task as in Study 1. The only difference was that the experimenter introduced the confederate as a “blicket expert” at the beginning of the study. Analyses revealed a significant effect of the interaction between condition and age on children’s confidence judgments: children in the disagreement condition reduced their initial belief more than children in the agreement condition, and this effect was stronger with increasing age (p = .04; Figure 1). Children who experienced disagreement also searched significantly longer for additional information than children who experienced agreement (p = .03; Figure 2).

Together, our findings suggest that under the right circumstances, disagreement can serve as an important social mechanism that enables children to make more sound and intellectually humble judgments and motivates them to search for information.

Authors

• Antonia Frederike Langenhoff, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Mahesh Srinivasan, University of California - Berkeley

• Jan Engelmann, University of California - Berkeley