(In)Sensitivity to Accuracy? Children’s and Adults’ Decisions About Who to Trust: The Teacher or the Internet

Abstract

Recent research has challenged the extended idea that when presented with conflicting information provided by different sources, children, as do adults, make epistemic judgments based on the past accuracy of each source. Instead, individuals may use relatively simple, but adaptive non-epistemic strategies. Here we examined how primary-school children ( N = 114) and undergraduate students ( N = 57) deal with conflicting information provided by two key sources of information in their day-to-day lives: their teacher and the Internet. In order to study whether the inaccuracy of a source generated a decline in trust, we manipulated this variable between participants: teacher-wrong and Internet-wrong conditions. For this, we first presented two baseline trials, followed by the accuracy manipulation, and finally, two post-test trials. Analyses were performed on group performance as well as on individual performance, to explore the individual patterns of responses. Results revealed that most participants showed no preference for any source during baseline, with no age differences in their overall choices. Crucially, when a given source provided inaccurate information about a familiar issue, most children and adults did not lose trust on this source. We propose tentative explanations for these findings considering potential differences in the participants’ strategies to approach the task, whether or not epistemic.

Epistemic trust: a comprehensive review of empirical insights and implications for developmental psychopathology

“…The resulting synthesis is displayed in Table 1 . See Supplementary Table 1 (Barth et al ., 2014 ; Bascandziev & Harris, 2014, 2016 ; Baumann et al ., 2023 ; Bernard et al ., 2012 ; Bernard et al ., 2014 ; Bernard et al ., 2016 ; Bincoletto et al ., 2023 ; Birch et al ., 2008 ; Bo et al ., 2017 ; Boseovski & Thurman, 2014 ; Bridgers et al ., 2016 ; Brink & Wellman, 2020 ; Brosseau-Liard & Birch, 2010 , 2011 ; Brosseau-Liard et al ., 2015 ; Brosseau-Liard, et al ., 2018 ; Butler et al ., 2018 ; Campbell et al ., 2021 ; Castelain et al ., 2016 ; Chan & Tardif, 2013 ; Clegg et al ., 2019 ; Clément et al ., 2013 ; Corriveau et al ., 2009 ; Corriveau et al ., 2011 ; Corriveau et al ., 2013 ; Corriveau & Harris, 2009a , 2009b ; Corriveau & Kurkul, 2014 ; Danovitch & Alzahabi, 2013 ; Danovitch & Mills, 2014 ; Ding et al ., 2022 ; Doebel et al ., 2016 ; Durkin & Shafto, 2016 ; Echterhoff et al ., 2017 ; Einav, 2014 ; Einav et al ., 2020 ; Einav & Robinson, 2010 ; Elashi & Mills, 2014 ; Fedra & Schmidt, 2019 ; Fitneva & Dunfield, 2010 ; Frenken & Imhoff, 2022; Fusaro & Harris, 2008; Gierth & Bromme, 2020 ; Gilbert et al ., 1990 ; Gilbert et al ., 1993 ; Ghossainy et al ., 2021 ; Guerrero et al ., 2017 ; Guerrero et al ., 2019 ; Guerrero et al ., …”

“…A total of 9 studies reported similar results in non-clinical adults as those in studies of children’s selective trust. Adults were found to also selectively trust claims supported by good evidence and from sources who show confidence and a history of accuracy (Fitneva & Dunfield, 2010 ; Gierth & Bromme, 2020 ; Guerrero et al ., 2020 ; Pozzi & Mazzarella, 2023 ; Ronfard & Lane, 2019 ; Tenney et al ., 2011 ). Clément et al ( 2013 ) found in their experiments that adults, similarly to 3-year-olds, preferred to acquire new knowledge from an avatar displaying a happy face than from an avatar displaying an angry face.…”

A digital generation in scrutiny. Children’s ideas about the internet and the online information (Explorando una generación digital. Las ideas de los niños sobre internet y la información online)

“…Casi la mitad de ellos afirmó que podría identificar si la información es o no falsa con solo leer el contenido. Esta idea, que hemos incluido en la categoría denominada 'conocimiento previo', puede considerarse equivalente a 'aplicar el sentido común', criterio que muchos adultos empleamos para decidir si confiar o no en una pieza de información (e.g., Guerrero et al, 2020). Sin embargo, la diferencia con lo observado en adultos es el nivel de sofisticación de esta estrategia.…”

“…Almost half the participants claimed they could identify the false information just by reading the content. Tentatively, this idea, which we included in the category of ‘prior knowledge’, may be considered equivalent to ‘applying common sense’, a criterion used by many adults to decide whether to trust a piece of information or not (e.g., Guerrero et al, 2020). Indeed, children and adults differ greatly in the level of sophistication of this strategy.…”

When the internet is wrong: Children’s trust in an inaccurate internet or human source

“…To the best of our knowledge, only one recent study has explored how providing inaccurate information affects children's trust in the internet and/or a teacher – informants belonging to different ontological categories. Guerrero et al (2020) found that after viewing an image of the Google homepage and a photo of their real science teacher, and then observing either the Google search engine or their teacher providing an inaccurate answer to a simple question, 7‐years‐olds showed no preference for a previously accurate/inaccurate teacher and the inaccurate/accurate internet when judging answers to subsequent questions but 10‐years‐olds, unexpectedly, were actually more willing to endorse the previously inaccurate source. However, in this study, the internet or teacher provided only one piece of incorrect information, and the teacher was represented by a photo of the children's own teacher.…”