How is Children’s Epistemic and Interpersonal Trust Linked to Their Perception of Social Power?

• In Event: Inferences drawn from moral actions in infants and children

Abstract

Previous research has shown that already in toddlerhood, children can tell respect-based power exerted by a leader from fear-based power exerted by a bully. With three studies, we further asked whether children trust leaders more than bullies and investigated possible developmental effects both in epistemic and interpersonal trust. In the first study, two groups of toddlers (16 younger toddlers, 18-24 months; 16 older toddlers, 24-30 months) were presented with agents characterized as either a leader or a bully (based on cues used in prior studies), and saw a scene where the leader and the bully labelled in the same way (“This is a zaffo!”) each a different novel object. When asked to give a zaffo to the experiment, most of the younger toddlers selected the object labelled by the bully, whereas most of the older toddlers selected the other object, suggesting that they trusted the leader. In a second study, employing a similar procedure, we found that the same proclivity to trust the leader more than the bully characterized school-age children’s choices (N=219, 6-10 years). Last, in a third study, we investigated interpersonal trust in preschool- (N=46, 4-5 years) and school-age children (N=32, 7-8 years). By using a child-friendly version of the Trust Game, we found that, in both groups, children invested their resources more in the leader than in the bully. Overall, these data show that the type of social power displayed by who is in charge can shape children’s learning and interpersonal processes from very early in life and suggest that an interesting developmental change occurs between the second and the third year of life.

Authors

• Luca Surian, University of Trento
  Presenting Author

• Francesco Margoni, Universitetet i Stavanger