Cognitive foundations of childrens developing selective trust and trait reasoning

• Applicants: Dr. Tanya Behne; Professor Dr. Johannes Rakoczy
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2011 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 206593698

Recent research has amply documented that children in the preschool years begin to engage in selective social learning and selective trust when deciding whom to learn or acquire information from. Yet so far this research has left open fundamental questions concerning the ontogenetic origins, the scope and the cognitive foundations of these capacities. In the first part of the project, in a series of studies with children aged 2 to 5, we have addressed these questions and gained important new insights into the cognitive underpinnings and the development of selective trust. Most importantly, we have shown that, at least under suitable circumstances, young childrens selective trust decisions are based on rational, trait-based inferences rather than more simple processes such as global impression formation. At the same time, however, these new insights raise fundamental novel follow-up questions: What exactly are the cognitive processes underlying different forms of selective trust reasoning and decisions? Can they be described and explained by a dual-process model of selective trust reasoning? What role does the ascription of various forms of traits to potential models play in selective trust? And what is the role of domain-general cognitive capacities such as statistical and inductive reasoning in selective trust? In a second funding period, we plan to systematically address these questions and develop a comprehensive theoretical account of selective trust, its development and cognitive foundations that we will systematically test in a series of experiments with children and adults.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants