Abstract
Who do children trust? We investigated the extent to which children use face-based versus behaviorbased cues when deciding whom to trust in a multiturn economic trust game. Children’s (N = 42; aged 8 to 10 years; 31 females; predominantly White) trust decisions were informed by an interaction between face-based and behavior-based cues to trustworthiness, similarly to those of adults (N = 41; aged 17 to 48 years; 23 females; predominantly White). Facial trustworthiness guided children’s investment decisions initially, such that they invested highly with trustworthy-looking partners and less with untrustworthy-looking partners. However, by the end of the trust game, after children had experienced game partners’ fair or unfair return behavior, they overcame this bias and instead used partners’ previous behavior to guide their trust decisions. Using partners’ return behavior to guide decisions was the most rational strategy, because partners’ facial trustworthiness was not an accurate cue to their actual trustworthiness. This dynamic use of different cues to trustworthiness suggests sophisticated levels of social cognition in children, which may reflect the social importance of trust impressions.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2275-2286 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Developmental Psychology |
Volume | 58 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 22 Sept 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award to Clare A. M. Sutherland (DE190101043) and an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship to Saba Siddique. The methodology and analysis plan for this study were preregistered on the Open Science Forum. The preregistration can be found at https://osf.io/r3ctj.
Data Availability Statement
The full data set for this study can be found at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/k9m86px3k6Keywords
- Development
- Economic trust game
- Facial first impressions
- Trait perception
- Trustworthiness