Cooperation and trustworthiness perception in children

Abstract

Background: Humans possess a tendency to make spontaneous and consistent evaluations of unfamiliar faces which impact their social decision-making process. A wealth of research shows that this tendency emerges early on in childhood. It has been indicated that several developmental changes occur in a child’s ability to make trustworthiness judgements that are environmental in nature. Moreover, it has also been determined that trustworthiness judgements are influenced by contextual information, such as brief social interactions and previous knowledge through meeting. Consistently, the current study predicted that cooperation will influence children’s trustworthiness judgements, as it increases pro-social behaviour amongst children. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate three main hypotheses: 1) Increase in cooperative behaviour will enhance the accuracy of trustworthiness judgements in children, 2) Younger children will make poorer trust judgements compared to Older children, and 3) Children will invest more with trustworthy-looking faces than untrustworthy-looking faces.

Methods: The participants were recruited at the Glasgow Science Centre. They were divided into two conditions; cooperation condition, where they were encouraged to play with LEGO Duplo blocks in groups and the individualistic condition, where they played with LEGO Duplo blocks individually. The participants were engaged in two tasks. In the trust perception task participants indicated which face they find more trustworthy. Whilst in the trust investment task they indicated their willingness to trust each of the faces. According to the second hypothesis, participants were divided into categories of younger (below the age of 7) and older (age 7 and above) children. The data was analysed on R studio and for hypothesis testing, two-way and mixed ANOVA was applied.

Results: Findings show that there is no significant difference between the trust accuracy of children with or without cooperation priming. Moreover, there was no significant difference between children’s trust investment in cooperation condition and individualistic condition. Secondly, results indicated no significant difference between the trust judgements (trust and accuracy and trust investment) of younger and older children. Additionally, it was revealed that younger children invest more than older children. Lastly, all the participants invested more with untrustworthy-looking faces rather than trustworthy-looking faces.

Conclusions: Further research is required to validate that there is no difference in trust judgements after engaging in cooperative activities. Results contradict previous research suggesting that there is no difference in the trust perception of younger and older children. However, the results of the trust investment task are in line with previous findings, suggesting that there is no significant difference in the trust investment of younger and older children. Finally, results contradict previous findings indicating that children invest more with untrustworthy faces than trustworthy faces.