The Development of Selective Trust: Prospects for a Dual‐Process Account

Young children learn selectively from reliable rather than unreliable models. Yet the question of what cognitive processes this early selectivity builds on remains unanswered. One line of research suggests that rational trait reasoning might be the basis of young children’s selective trust, while others suggest less sophisticated processes. In this article, we provide an overview of the development of selective trust and introduce a new theoretical framework to explain the seemingly divergent findings. Young children’s selective trust can best be explained by assuming two kinds of underlying cognitive processes: one fast, implicit, and heuristic process that provides default judgments, and one systematic, slow, and effortful process that intervenes under specific circumstances. We discuss findings in light of this framework and propose testable predictions for research. KEYWORDS—social cognition; selective trust; dual-process account In their first years of life, children learn many, if not most, skills and facts from others. However, not all sources of information are equally reliable, so a major challenge for young learners is to decide from whom to learn. Recent developmental research has documented that children do not pick up information indiscriminately from just anyone but learn selectively from others. For example, 3and 4-year-olds prefer to learn words and facts from previously accurate rather than inaccurate speakers and from confident rather than uncertain models (1, 2). In this article, we review the literature on early selective learning, highlighting a puzzle regarding its cognitive underpinnings. Then we propose a dual-process account to solve this puzzle and formulate testable predictions for research. WHAT ARE THE COGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS AND UNDERPINNINGS OF EARLY SELECTIVE LEARNING? Although much research has been done on selective social learning in 2to 5-year-olds (for reviews, see 3–5), the cognitive foundations and underpinnings of such selective learning remain unclear. The findings present a puzzling and seemingly incoherent picture: While some research suggests that early selective trust may reduce to basic and nonsophisticated heuristics and biases, other evidence points to adult-like rational capacities. Why Early Selective Trust Appears Unsophisticated The way young children learn from others often appears to reflect na€ıve trust rather than sophisticated reasoning: Young children tend to generally trust others, even those who have proven consistently unreliable in the past. For example, when confronted with an adult who constantly provided misinformation about the location of a hidden object, 3-year-olds continued to endorse her cues, even after eight trials of misinformation (6). In similar scenarios, 2to 4-year-olds kept following the hints of an unreliable informant even when they conflicted with their own experience (7), when they had an incentive to ignore the testimony (8), and when the informant was introduced as a “big liar” (9). These findings have been interpreted as the manifestation of young children’s bias to believe everything anyone claims or as the result of their pursuit of social rather than epistemic goals (such as affiliating with informants; 10, 11). Similarly, when children face a choice between two informants, their decisions often seem to reflect superficial global Jonas Hermes, Tanya Behne, Hannes Rakoczy, University of G€ ottingen and Leibniz Science Campus Primate Cognition. *Tanya Behne and Hannes Rakoczy share last authorship. The work reported in this article was supported by the German Science Foundation (DFG) Grant Ra-2155/1-2. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jonas Hermes, Department of Developmental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of G€ ottingen, Waldweg 26, D-37073 G€ ottingen, Germany; e-mail: jonas.hermes@psych.uni-goettingen.de.