Trust and Skepticism: Children’s Use and Evaluations of Moral Testimony Across Two Cultures

Abstract

While information from other people is an important source of factual knowledge, little is understood about the role of testimony in children’s acquisition of moral knowledge (Harris et al., 2018). In fact, many psychologists argue that morality is relatively impervious to direct testimonial influence, and have privileged independent moral abilities and intuitions (Hamlin, 2013; Smetana, 1981). These accounts are consistent with recent philosophical work holding that while testimony is an acceptable source for non-moral beliefs, it is problematic to acquire moral understanding via testimony (Hopkins, 2007). Is testimony really insufficient to transmit moral understanding? In two cross-cultural studies, I assessed how children and adults balance independent thinking and reliance on testimony, and how cultural mechanisms contribute to people’s moral agency and moral learning. In Study 1, I explored children’s moral judgments in the context of countervailing explanations from an adult, which are either (1) supported by reasoning about the consequences, or which (2) emphasize authority-related considerations. 379 3- to 5-year-old children and 180 adults from the U.S. and China listened to stories in which the protagonists engaged in actions that make others cry, referred to only by means of unfamiliar words such as “mibbing”. Then, depending on the condition, participants were exposed to an adult speaker who provides Utilitarian explanations (e.g., “Mibbing is good because Devon can play with the new toy after mibbing.”), Authoritarian explanations (e.g., “Mibbing is good because I get to decide whether mibbing is good.”), or Control statements (repeating basic information in the story with no moral judgment). Afterwards, I asked for participants' own moral judgments and explanations. While adults were not persuaded by the speaker’s counter-intuitive claims, children in both countries were significantly influenced by the two types of counterintuitive explanations, and judged the novel, distress-inducing actions to be more morally permissible. With age, children from both countries became less receptive towards Authoritarian explanations in which the adult speaker exerts power and authority over children. In Study 2, I examined individuals’ own evaluations of different sources of moral and empirical knowledge across cultures. 261 4- to 6-year-old children and 163 adults in the United States and China were randomly assigned to one of two between-subjects conditions, a Moral Knowledge condition (i.e., in which agents make judgments about moral actions such as pushing or helping others) or an Empirical Knowledge condition (i.e., in which agents make judgments about the hidden contents of containers). In each condition, participants were introduced to two speakers, one who showed independence in her thinking, and the other who relied on testimony to make moral or empirical judgments. Children were then asked to indicate the agent with the best way of thinking (e.g., “Who has the best reason to know that…?”) and provide justifications for their choices. I found that Chinese children were more likely to judge independent thinking as a better reason, and showed a stronger preference for the independent agent regardless of condition. By contrast, U.S. children were less selective, and considered independent deliberation and reliance on testimony as equally legitimate ways to justify one’s knowledge. Unlike children, adults from both countries distinguished between the two types of judgments, and chose reliance on testimony at significantly lower than chance levels in the Moral Knowledge condition, but not in the Empirical condition. Together, my results indicate that although moral testimony might be considered a less legitimate source of moral knowledge by adults, children depend greatly on others’ testimony when optimizing their learning in moral contexts. These results also extend our understanding of the cultural specificity and generality of the role played by testimony and authority in children’s moral development.