New research suggests that young children are more likely to find a conventionally attractive adult trustworthy than a more unattractive one, ScienceDaily and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports.
"When learning about the world, children rely heavily on information provided to them by other people," Igor Bascandziev from Clark University and Harvard University told the AAP. "Previous studies have shown children can be influenced by a range of factors such as whether the adult was correct in the past or if they are familiar to them. Our study wanted to examine whether children would trust an attractive stranger over an unattractive stranger."
The researchers first had a panel of university students rate the attractiveness of 56 images of white women between the ages of 18 and 29. Of the 56 photos, twelve deemed the most and least attractive were then chosen for the study, which involved 32 four- and five-year-olds.
The children were first shown a picture of six unfamiliar objects and asked to name them. Regardless of whether or not their guesses were accurate, they were then asked if they'd like some help from an adult, and were shown two photos, one of an attractive woman and one of an unattractive woman, along with a set of answers from each, and were asked to choose which woman they thought had given the correct answers.
Regardless of gender, most children were more likely to pick the more conventionally attractive woman, though girls were more likely to do so.
"We see from the results that children and especially girls have more trust in attractive faces, even though there are no obvious reasons why people with more attractive faces would be more knowledgeable about object labels," Bascandziev explained. "The gender difference could relate to boys not paying as much attention to the initial presentation of the faces or other research has pointed to the fact that females have superior face perception.
"It would be interesting to see future research explore whether children would continue favoring the more attractive face even when they have evidence that the more attractive face is unreliable and the less attractive informant is a reliable informant."
The study was recently published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
