How do young children select among informants when the trustworthiness of a particular informant is difficult to gauge – for example, when they have no history of interaction with the person and he or she makes claims that are difficult to check against relevant evidence? We find that under these circumstances, 3- and 4-year-olds look to other people’s reactions for guidance. They are more likely to accept an informant’s claim if it is endorsed by other people. Indeed, even when those other people leave, children continue to favor information provided by the person with whom the other people agreed as compared to someone with whom they disagreed.

We are currently following up on this basic finding in several ways. First we are interested in what children do when the majority opinion conflicts with the child’s prior knowledge or their own perception. Second we are interested in individual and cross-cultural differences in children’s reliance on the majority.

This is a short five to ten minute study where kids watch videos about someone doing an action (specifically crushing a cookie). We then see whether or not the child follows the model’s choice in the video or decides to use a different tool to crush the cookie. Another similar task is done, and later we ask the child to teach a puppet how to crush the cookie. The child will get a sticker for completing this five minute study.

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