Reasoning and Trust: A Developmental Perspective

Children rely on others to learn about the world and improve their epistemic states. Reasoning and argumentation serve an important role in these processes of children’s social learning, particularly in identifying trustworthy informants who provide good reasons for their claims. In the literature, the emphasis so far has been on the competence of the informant (e.g., providing good reasons), without paying attention to the motivation or benevolence of the informant (e.g., informants may not be trustworthy, despite providing good reasons for their claims). This chapter discusses how competence and benevolence interact in children’s reactions to reasons presented to them. In particular, what happens when quality of argument and benevolence are not aligned? Do children prefer bad arguments from benevolent sources or good arguments from non-benevolent sources? This question has important broader implications for the role of trust in reasoning and argumentation.