The effect of consensus testimony on Chinese and U.S. children’s beliefs about possibility

• In Event: The Power of Testimony and Culture in Children’s Developing Beliefs about the Invisible and Impossible

Abstract

Consensus is a powerful force in Western culture, affecting beliefs and behavior (e.g., Asch, 1951); however, consensus testimony may be even more influential in collectivist cultures (e.g., Corriveau & Harris, 2010). Children’s beliefs about possibility develop between 4 and 8, as they become increasingly willing to affirm that improbable events could actually occur (Shtulman & Carey, 2017). The current study asks how hearing positive or negative consensus affects U.S. and Chinese 7- to 8-year-olds’ beliefs in the reality of impossible and improbable events.

Forty-five U.S. and 31 Chinese 7- to 8-year-olds provided baseline possibility and certainty judgments as to whether different improbable (e.g., eating pickle-flavored ice cream) and impossible (e.g., traveling back in time) events could occur. Next, they re-encountered these events, accompanied by video-recorded testimony from three confederates providing consistently positive or negative consensus judgments of the possibility of these events. Children again provided possibility and certainty judgments.

As shown in Figure 1, before hearing testimony, both U.S. and Chinese children both judged improbable events to be significantly more possible than impossible events. However, U.S. children exhibited more baseline credulity than did Chinese children, displaying significantly higher levels of belief in both types of events.

U.S. and Chinese children both seemed to adjust their belief in response to consensus, albeit to different degrees. When considering improbable events, both U.S. and Chinese children expressed heightened reality judgments (from baseline) after positive consensus. However, only U.S. children expressed significantly reduced reality judgments after negative consensus. With impossible events, while U.S. children did not shift beliefs with consensus in either direction, Chinese children expressed heightened belief after hearing positive consensus. Moreover, individual participant item change scores revealed that positive consensus heightened Chinese children’s beliefs to a significantly higher degree than it did U.S. children’s for both event types. Additionally, whereas Chinese children changed their answers at equal rates whether events were improbable or impossible, U.S. children weighed consensus differently based on event type, showing significantly more movement with negative consensus on improbable than on impossible events.

Finally, we analyzed whether consensus led participants to correct initially incorrect beliefs or regress from initially correct beliefs to incorrect ones. When consensus contradicted participants’ initial responses, we found that while U.S. and Chinese participants exhibited equivalent tendencies to correct, Chinese participants were significantly more likely than U.S. participants to regress. Moreover, while U.S. participants made significantly more corrections than regressions, Chinese participants corrected and regressed at an equivalent rate (Figure 2).

Consensus testimony, then, exerted differential influence on Chinese and U.S. children’s possibility beliefs. Chinese participants exhibited greater receptivity to consensus overall, while U.S. participants approached consensus more warily, applying greater weight to event type and testimony validity when determining whether to trust the testimony. This contrast may reflect heightened levels of cultural openness among the former and intellectual openness among the latter (Woo et al., 2014). When revising their beliefs, children across cultures did not utilize consensus indiscriminately; rather, they evaluated it as new evidence alongside preexisting knowledge within a cultural context.

Authors

• Jenny Nissel, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Hui Li, Central China Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Cramer, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jacqueline D Woolley, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author