Never trust a stranger: Effects of explicit belief statements from strangers on children's reality status beliefs and beliefs about consensus

Abstract

Children learn about much of the world through testimony and may hear explicit belief statements (e.g., “I believe in God” or “climate change is real”) about entities whose existence is controversial. Prior research has shown that these statements, when spoken by a parent, influence children's beliefs about the reality status of the entity and their beliefs about societal consensus surrounding that reality status, in contrast to statements that only imply belief (e.g., “God lives in heaven”; Dore et al., 2019, Journal of Cognition and Development, 20, 35), suggesting that children are attuned to the nature of parental statements about reality. In the current study, we tested whether explicit versus implicit belief statements from strangers differentially affect children's beliefs. We followed procedures by Dore et al. (2019, Journal of Cognition and Development, 20, 35) but used strangers to provide testimony rather than parents. Results showed that explicit belief statements from strangers did not influence children's beliefs. This lack of an effect of explicit belief statements relative to implicit ones suggests that, despite being attuned to these statements when spoken by parents, children may not be attuned to explicit statements about reality that they hear from strangers. Although even very young children often learn words and other facts from unfamiliar speakers, these findings suggest that nuances perceived in parent speech about reality may not be picked up in the speech of strangers.