Young kids trust adults despite evidence to the contrary

	Tweet

Very young children are extraordinarily trusting of what adults tell them, even if there is repeated evidence to the contrary, finds a new study.

In what may be little surprise to many parents, University of Virginia researchers found that 3-year-olds placed more trust in information they are told than information conveyed to them without words.

In this study, an adult showed children a red and a yellow cup and then hid a sticker under the red cup. Some children were told (incorrectly) that the sticker was under the yellow cup, while other children saw the adult place an arrow on the yellow cup without saying anything. The children were told they could look under one cup and keep the sticker if they found it. The experiment was repeated eight times with pairs of different colored cups.

The children who saw the adult place the arrow on the incorrect cup quickly learned not to trust this sign. But those who heard the adult say the sticker was under a certain cup continued to believe that’s where they would find the sticker. Of those 16 children, nine never once found the sticker in eight tries. (At the end of the game, all the children were given stickers, whether they found them or not.)

The study appears in the journal Psychological Science.

“Children have developed a specific bias to believe what they’re told. It’s sort of a shortcut to keep them from having to evaluate what people say. It’s useful because most of the time parents and caregivers tell children things that they believe to be true,” study author Vikram K. Jaswal said in a journal news release.

###
By Robert Preidt, HealthDay

RELATED STORIES:
Ex-smokers on their own in fending off a relapse   Are Your Kids Driving You Crazy This Summer?   Britons die later than they expect, save too little   Long-Term Complications of Melamine Consumption in Children   Peanut-allergic kids can build tolerance   Stress increases alcoholism   Vaccine critics attack mercury report   Celexa safely curbs depression in the young   Kids’ physical activity declines with age   Newborn hearing screening linked with improved developmental outcomes for hearing impaired children   Bruise patterns may point to child abuse   Response to ADHD drugs may depend on gene

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]