Trusting information from friends: Adults expect it but preschoolers do not.

As adults, we might understand that beliefs often spread because people are strongly influenced by their friends, family, and other social connections. However, do we think those influences are strong enough to overrule direct evidence of a friend's unreliability? And do preschoolers expect people to show such biases toward friends and to privilege friendship over reliability? Across three experiments, we explored whether friendship influences the evaluations of trust when others learn labels for novel objects as well as personal opinions. After watching scenes involving a main character, her best friend, and a stranger, preschoolers and adults judged who would be trusted for information from the main character's perspective (third person) as well as their own (first person). Adults (n = 128, 55 female, recruited online from across the United States) expected the main character to trust information from her friend even if she had been previously inaccurate, while basing their own first-person judgments on accuracy. In contrast, 4- and 5-year-olds (n = 128, 62 female, from the United States) thought that the main character would be like themselves and prioritize accuracy over friendship. Further, preschoolers expected the main character to trust her (inaccurate) friend and (accurate) stranger equally when forming personal opinions. Thus, young children, unlike adults, do not expect others' epistemic trust to privilege friendship with the speaker over accuracy information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's Inferences About Friendship and Shared Preferences Based on Reported Information.

Two experiments (total N = 195) examined third-party inferences about friendship and shared preferences from reported dyadic information. Four-year-olds (N = 48) inferred friendship between individuals based on reports of prosocial behavior, and similarity, but not based on arbitrary links. Children privileged prosocial behavior over similarity when asked to adjudicate between the two. Adults (N = 120) were tested online and showed the same overall pattern of inferences. Furthermore, 4-year-olds (N = 27) expected individuals who had engaged in prosocial behavior to be playmates as well as friends, and to share preferences for novel games, but not novel foods. These findings shed crucial light on preschoolers' third-party friendship inferences, and add to our knowledge of their concept of friendship.