Children as young as 5 learn how to pick out a liar
If you get your fun by tricking five yearolds with tall tales, know this: They are keeping track and soon become savvy consumers of information.
By kindergarten, children become wary of information presented to them with great confidence, especially if they have been tricked in the past, according to a study by Concordia and the University of British Columbia.
Four- year- olds are as likely to believe a confident liar as they are someone who is truthful, but hesitant.
But five- year- olds quickly become reluctant to learn from someone who had confidently made false statements in the past, according to UBC psychologist Susan Birch, who co- authored the study with Patricia Brosseau- Liard and Tracy Cassels.
“They were spontaneously keeping track of people’s mistakes and registered how confident the person was when they made those false claims,” she said.
The children were shown videos of adults making true and false claims about animals, one a visibly confident liar and the other a hesitant but reliable source of information.
“The adults gave all sorts of verbal and non- verbal cues. One would stand up straight and toss in some ‘ I know’ statements and the other would talk with lots of ‘ I guesses’ and shrugging,” said Birch. “The children simply watched and formed their own impressions.”
Given the chance to learn from the adults again, most five- year- olds tuned out the overconfident adult.
Children between four and five are making huge strides developmentally that may allow the older children to combine two sets of cues — past accuracy and confidence — but other factors probably have a big influence on gullibility.
“With experience, such as older siblings giving them false information, over time they begin to see that correlation between overconfident people and how accurate they are,” Birch explained.
“The five- year- olds start to pay attention to those cues and remember how they were misled.”
As early as two, children respond positively to information presented in a confident way, but three years later they become much more discerning about how they consume information, favouring past accuracy over confidence.
“Politicians and parents should know that it’s better to admit that you don’t know something than to make claims that are false, because even a five- yearold can tell the difference,” she said.
That’s not to say that misleading your children with the occasional outlandish tale is necessarily a bad thing.
“I think that is a great learning opportunity for children when they get tricked, as long as they figure it out and can use the experience,” she said. “It’s important for kids to develop a healthy level of skepticism.”