Susceptibility to Being Lured Away by a Stranger: A Real-World Field Test of Selective Trust in Early Childhood

Abstract

In this preregistered field study, we examined preschool children’s selective trust in a real-life situation. We investigated whether 3- to 6-year-old children (total N = 240) could be lured to a new location within their school grounds by an unfamiliar adult confederate. In a between-subjects manipulation, the confederate established either a high or a low level of personal credibility by providing information that the child knew to be either true or false. In Experiment 1, in which the confederate was female, children showed sensitivity to informational accuracy by being less willing to leave with an uninformed confederate, and this effect increased with age. In Experiment 2, in which the confederate was male, children were reluctant to leave regardless of informational accuracy. These findings point to real-world implications of epistemic-trust research and provide the first evidence regarding the early development of selective trust in a high-stakes naturalistic context.