I'm not a little kid anymore! Reciprocal social influence in child–adult interaction

Abstract

Human decisions are often influenced by others' opinions. This process is regulated by social norms: for instance, we tend to reciprocate the consideration received from others, independently of their reliability as information sources. Nonetheless, no study to date has investigated whether and how reciprocity modulates social influence in child–adult interaction. We tested 6-, 8- and 10-year-old children in a novel joint perceptual task. A child and an adult experimenter made perceptual estimates and then took turns in making a final decision, choosing between their own and partner's response. We manipulated the final choices of the adult partner, who in one condition chose often the child's estimates, whereas in another condition tended to confirm her own response. Results reveal that 10-year-old children reciprocated the consideration received from the partner, increasing their level of conformity to the adult's judgements when the partner had shown high consideration towards them. At the same time, 10-year-old children employed more elaborate decision criteria in choosing when trusting the adult partner compared to younger children and did not show egocentric biases in their final decisions. Our results shed light on the development of the cognitive and normative mechanisms modulating reciprocal social influence in child–adult interaction.