Trust and doubt: An examination of children’s decision to believe what they are told about food

• This investigation examined how children use cues for distrust (inaccuracy and malevolence).
• By age 4 years, children are least trusting of inaccurate sources.
• By age 4 years, children trust benevolent sources more than malevolent ones.
• These findings have implications for protecting children from predatory food advertising.

The domain of food is one that is highly relevant and vital to the everyday lives of children. However, children’s reasoning about this domain is poorly understood within the field of developmental psychology. Because children’s learning about food, including its evaluative components (e.g., health, taste) is so heavily dependent on information conveyed by other people, a major developmental challenge that children face is determining who to distrust regarding food. In three studies, this investigation examined how 3- and 4-year-olds and adults (N = 312) use different cues to determine when to ignore informant information (i.e., distrust what an informant tells them by choosing an alternative) in food- and non-food-specific scenarios. The results of Study 1 indicated that by age 4 years, children are less trusting of inaccurate sources of information compared with sources that have not demonstrated previous inaccuracy. Study 2 revealed that these results are applicable across the domain of objects. The results of Study 3 indicated that by age 4, children trust benevolent sources more often than malevolent ones. Thus, when reasoning about the evaluative components of food, by age 4, children appraise other people’s untrustworthiness by paying attention to their inaccuracy and malevolence.