The consequences of reversing trust or not reversing trust

Young children often rely on the testimony of others. However, children tend to be selective about which sources they trust. For example, some children will reverse trust when a trusted speaker proves unreliable, suggesting that 4-year-olds use a speaker's current testimony to help make decisions about the trustworthiness of that speaker's past testimony (Scofield & Behrend, 2008). The current study was designed to determine why some children are able to reverse trust and why some are not. The results indicated that trust reversers tended to believe that the unreliable speaker was no longer trustworthy. The results also indicated that trust non-reversers varied by age, with 3-year-olds tending to believe that the unreliable speaker was trustworthy and 4- and 5-year-olds tending to believe that the unreliable speaker was no longer trustworthy, though they did have difficulty correcting past misinformation. Overall, results suggested that most children believe that an unreliable speaker is no longer trustworthy for new information.