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ERIC Number: EJ1475225
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-May
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1522-7227
EISSN: EISSN-1522-7219
Available Date: 2025-05-14
Are Dominant Figures More Trustworthy? Examining the Relation between Parental Authoritarianism and Children's Trust Preferences in the U.S. and China
Infant and Child Development, v34 n3 e70023 2025
Selecting whose words to trust profoundly impacts children's learning behaviours. This study investigated Western and East Asian children's trust preferences for informants based on social dominance and its potential association with cultural factors. Sixty-six European American children in the United States (M = 5.44 years, SD = 0.80 years) and 69 Han Chinese children in China (M = 5.42 years, SD = 0.73 years) were introduced to a dominant puppet with decision-making power over a subordinate puppet. The puppets provided conflicting explanations about novel tools, and children indicated whose explanations they trusted. Both American and Chinese children preferred to trust the dominant puppet over the subordinate puppet. Although Chinese parents exhibited higher levels of authoritarianism compared to European American parents, this cultural difference was not significantly associated with children's trust preferences for the dominant informant. This research enriches our understanding of how informants' social power influences children's learning process across diverse cultures.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States; China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China; 2Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; 3College of Education, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu City, Taiwan