Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus
Testimony agreement across a number of people can be a reassuring sign of a claim’s reliability. However, reliability may be undermined if informants do not respond independently. In this case, social consensus may be a result of indiscriminate copying or conformity and does not necessarily reflect...
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| Format: | Article |
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Wiley
2017
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45231/ |
| _version_ | 1848797092944805888 |
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| author | Einav, Shiri |
| author_facet | Einav, Shiri |
| author_sort | Einav, Shiri |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Testimony agreement across a number of people can be a reassuring sign of a claim’s reliability. However, reliability may be undermined if informants do not respond independently. In this case, social consensus may be a result of indiscriminate copying or conformity and does not necessarily reflect shared knowledge or opinion. We examined children’s emerging sensitivity to consensus independence by testing whether it affected their judgements in a social learning context. Children ages 5, 6 and 8-9 years (N = 92), and 20 adults for comparison, received conflicting testimony about an unfamiliar country from two consensual groups of informants: An independent group who responded privately and a non-independent group who had access to each other’s answers. We found increasing levels of trust in independent consensus with age. Adults and 8-9 year-olds preferred to accept the claims of the independent consensus, whereas 5-year-olds favored the claims of the non-independent consensus and 6-year-olds were mixed. Although previous work has shown that children trust a consensus over a lone dissenter as young as 2 years, the developmental shift in this study indicates that children’s reasoning about the nature of consensus and what makes it reliable continues to develop throughout middle childhood. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:58:23Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-45231 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:58:23Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-452312020-05-04T18:30:33Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45231/ Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus Einav, Shiri Testimony agreement across a number of people can be a reassuring sign of a claim’s reliability. However, reliability may be undermined if informants do not respond independently. In this case, social consensus may be a result of indiscriminate copying or conformity and does not necessarily reflect shared knowledge or opinion. We examined children’s emerging sensitivity to consensus independence by testing whether it affected their judgements in a social learning context. Children ages 5, 6 and 8-9 years (N = 92), and 20 adults for comparison, received conflicting testimony about an unfamiliar country from two consensual groups of informants: An independent group who responded privately and a non-independent group who had access to each other’s answers. We found increasing levels of trust in independent consensus with age. Adults and 8-9 year-olds preferred to accept the claims of the independent consensus, whereas 5-year-olds favored the claims of the non-independent consensus and 6-year-olds were mixed. Although previous work has shown that children trust a consensus over a lone dissenter as young as 2 years, the developmental shift in this study indicates that children’s reasoning about the nature of consensus and what makes it reliable continues to develop throughout middle childhood. Wiley 2017-01-16 Article PeerReviewed Einav, Shiri (2017) Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus. Social Development, 27 (1). pp. 73-86. ISSN 1467-9507 testimony; selective trust; consensus; conformity; knowledge http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sode.12264/abstract doi:10.1111/sode.12264 doi:10.1111/sode.12264 |
| spellingShingle | testimony; selective trust; consensus; conformity; knowledge Einav, Shiri Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus |
| title | Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus |
| title_full | Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus |
| title_fullStr | Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus |
| title_full_unstemmed | Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus |
| title_short | Thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus |
| title_sort | thinking for themselves?: the effect of informant independence on children’s endorsement of testimony from a consensus |
| topic | testimony; selective trust; consensus; conformity; knowledge |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45231/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45231/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45231/ |