When does the majority rule? Preschoolers' trust in majority informants varies by task domain

Jane C. Hu, Daphna Buchsbaum, Thomas L. Griffiths, Fei Xu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

In order to learn about the world, young children rely on information provided by social partners. Past research has shown children consider a variety of factors when learning from others, including consensus. Corriveau, Fusaro, and Harris (2009) found that in an object labeling task, children trust responses that receive majority support, and they concluded that children prefer members of a majority as social informants. However, it is possible that children prefer majority members only in domains that rely strongly on socially constructed norms, such as object labeling, where non-social information is unavailable. We formalized this prediction using a rational model of learning from testimony across tasks, and compared our model's predictions to children's responses in object labeling and causal learning tasks. We find that in a causal learning task, a domain that relies less on socially constructed norms, children rely more on their personal observations than informant testimony.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCooperative Minds
Subtitle of host publicationSocial Interaction and Group Dynamics - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2013
EditorsMarkus Knauff, Natalie Sebanz, Michael Pauen, Ipke Wachsmuth
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages2584-2589
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780976831891
StatePublished - 2013
Externally publishedYes
Event35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics, CogSci 2013 - Berlin, Germany
Duration: Jul 31 2013Aug 3 2013

Publication series

NameCooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2013

Conference

Conference35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics, CogSci 2013
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityBerlin
Period7/31/138/3/13

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Keywords

  • Bayesian modeling
  • consensus
  • epistemic trust
  • social cognition
  • social learning
  • testimony

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