Social Influence

Human culture is dependent on transmission of information between members of a community, both within and across generations


key psychological issue:

  • degree to which the recipient trusts informants to supply accurate information
    ~ young children are NOT credulous!! they appraise the reliability of their informants

Selective trust:
native- vs foreign-accented speakers

  • 4 - 5 y/o children
  • watched videos of native- and foreign-accented speakers of English
  • speakers spoke for 10s each, then silently demo different functions of a novel objects

Selective trust:
Weighing Familiarity and Recent Accuracy

Exp 1: both speakers told a story + demostrated different ways of using the same novel object

  • children selectively endorse the silent object function provided by the native-accented speaker

Exp 2: both speakers gibberish but in respective accents

  • children still endorse native-accented speaker

Conclusion:

  • Selective learning of non-linguistic info from native-accented speakers
  • Selective trust in native-accented speakers
  • 3, 4, 5 y/o children
  • watched movies of familiar and unfamiliar informant labelling and demonstrating the function of novel objects

8 pre-test trials: 4 novel objects + 4 novel object functions

  • all 3 age groups invested more trust in familiar teacher

4 accuracy trials: one informant consistently labeled 4 familiar objects accurately vs other informant consistently labeled familiar objects inaccurately

4 post-test trials: informants labeled novel objects
DV:
~ ask trials = "I bet one of those informants can help us find out how to use this. Which person will u ask?"
~ endorse trials = invited to say which claim they agree with


  • selective trust displayed by 3 y/o = minimally affected
  • selective trust of 4 and 5 y/o was affected. If familiar teacher was more accurate > selective trust intensified. If familiar teacher less accurate > selective trust decreases, esp for 5 y/o

Conclusion:
By 4 y/o, children trust informants who are familiar but the trust is dependent on informant's recent history of accuracy/ inaccuracy

Selective trust:
Nondissenters vs Dissenters

  • 3 and 4 y/o
  • tested for sensitivity to agreement and disagreement among informants

4 pretest trials: watch 3 of 4 informants (Exp 1) / 2 of 3 informants (Exp 2) indicate the same referent for an unfamiliar label, while 1 dissenter indicated a different referent

  • DV: "they pointed to this one. she pointed to another one. which one is correct?"


  • children sided with the majority rather than the dissenter

Test trials: one member of the majority and the dissenter remained present and continued to give conflicting info about the names of the unfamiliar objects

  • DV: "do u know what it is called? who would u like to ask?"
  • Endorse questions: "the girl in the blue shirt said XX, the girl in the green shirt said YY. what do you think it is - XX or YY?"
  • Explicit judgement questions: "was the girl in the blue shirt very good or not very good at naming those things?"


  • both 3 and 4 y/o showed significant preference for referent indicaed by the majority informant

However, because the children saw 3 adults pointing to one object and 1 lone dissenter pointing to a different object:

  • convergence of 3 pointing gesture may have heightened children's attention to it vs object that only received one pointing gesture
  • may have selected the convergent object because they remained attentive to it/ inclined to mimic the 3 pointing gestures
  • convergent pointing could have elicited inspection of majority members = increase familiarity and trustworthiness

~ hence total number of adult informants reduced from 4 to 3 in experiment 2!!

Conclusion:

  • children prefer to seek and endorse information from those who belong to the majority > indicative of young children's early sensitivity to group consensus

Conformity

  • 4 pre-test trials: line judgement in absence of majority
  • 4 test trials: watch movie where 3 adult informants pointed to one of the 2 smaller lines

DV:

  • 4 line judgment questions: "they pointed to this line. what line do you think is longest?"
  • informant judgement questions: "was the girl in the green shirt very good or not very good at saying which line is long?"
  • memory check questions: "Which line did the girls say was long? which line did you say was long?"

Results:

  • line judgement: children became more resistant to informant's judgement on later trials; rate of deferrence was greater amongst Asian-Americans than Caucasian American children


  • informant judgement: children who judged all 3 informants appropriately = more likely to always be correct in choosing the biggest line


  • memory check: children who were always correct in judging lines were more likely to correctly remember responses
  • 3 and 4 y/o children
  • asked to judge which line was the longest, independently and in the presence of inaccurate consensus of adult informants

Exp 2: Asked to solve a practical problem - select the longest strip to build an adequate bridge

  • all 3 and 4 y/o correctly chose the longest line to complete the bridge on all 4 trials
  • both groups relied on own perceptual judgement, regardless of whether they had initially deferred to inaccurae consensus
  • Conformity = tendency of minority observers to forgo their own behavioural tendency by adopting the behaviours of majority
  • Majority-based transmission = increased likelihood of naive observers to acquire the behaviour of majority