title: Preschoolers' credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers.
abstract: The current research examined preschoolers' credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers. Experiment 1 showed that when searching for a hidden toy, Caucasian English monolingual 4-year-olds were credulous toward the false testimony of a race-and-accent ingroup speaker, despite their firsthand observations of the hiding event, but were skeptical when the false testimony was provided by a race-and-accent outgroup speaker. In the same experiment, 3-year-olds were credulous toward the false testimony of both speakers. Experiment 2 showed that when the false testimony was provided by a same-race-only or same-accent-only speaker, 4-year-olds were not particularly credulous or skeptical. The findings are discussed in relation to how intergroup bias might contribute to the selective credulity in the 4-year-olds as well as the factors that might explain the indiscriminate credulity in the 3-year-olds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada.
authors.forename: Kyla P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: McDonald
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada. Electronic address: lilima@psych.ryerson.ca.
authors.forename: Lili
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ma
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D012933:Social Identification
keywords: Credulity; False testimony; Firsthand observation; Ingroup; Outgroup; Selectivity