Varieties of trust in preschoolers’ learning and practical decisions

Keeping commitments to others can be difficult, and we know that people sometimes fail to keep them. How does a speaker’s ability to keep commitments affect children’s practical decisions to trust and their epistemic decisions to learn? An amassing body of research documents children’s trust in testimonial learning decisions, which can be moved in the face of epistemic and moral evidence about an agent. However, other bases for trust go largely unexplored in this literature, such as interpersonal reasons to trust. Here, we investigated how direct bids for interpersonal trust in the form of making commitments, or obligations to the listener, influence a range of decisions toward that agent. We found that 3- and 4-year-olds’ (N = 75) practical decisions to wait and to share were moved as a function of a person’s commitment-keeping ability, but epistemic decisions to learn were not. Keeping one’s commitments may provide children with interpersonal reasons to trust, reasons that may function in ways distinct from the considerations that bear on accepting a claim.

恪守对他人的承诺并非易事，众所周知，人们有时会未能践行承诺。那么，言说者恪守承诺的能力，会如何影响儿童基于信任的实际决策，以及基于认知的学习决策？

现有大量研究表明，儿童会依赖证言学习（testimonial learning）做出决策，而这类决策会因涉及智能体（agent）的认知与道德证据而发生变化。然而，该领域文献尚未充分探讨信任的其他基础，例如基于人际互动的信任理由。

本研究旨在探讨：以做出承诺（即对听者承担义务）的形式主动寻求人际信任，会如何影响儿童对该智能体的各类决策。研究结果显示，3至4岁儿童（N=75）选择等待与分享的实际决策，会随言说者恪守承诺的能力发生相应变化，但他们的认知学习决策并未出现此类变化。

恪守承诺或许能为儿童提供基于人际的信任理由，这类理由的运作逻辑或与影响人们采信主张的考量因素截然不同。