Children's use of majority information is influenced by pragmatic inferences and task domain

Do children always conform to a majority's testimony, or do the pragmatics of that testimony matter? We investigated the influence of pragmatics on conforming to a majority across 2 domains: when learning about object labels and when learning about causal relationships. Four- and 5-year-olds (N = 250) were given a choice between an object endorsed by a 3-person majority, or one endorsed by a single minority informant. Within each domain, there were 4 pragmatic conditions, each with modified testimony so that the majority either explicitly provided an opinion about or pragmatically implied their opinion about the alternative object chosen by the minority. In the unendorsed condition, informants explicitly unendorsed the unchosen object. In the implied condition, informants said nothing about the unchosen object. In the ignorance condition, informants explicitly expressed ignorance about the unchosen object, and in the hidden condition, the chosen object was the only one present at the time of the endorsement. We found that children were most likely to endorse the majority object in the unendorsed condition, in which the majority's opinion was explicitly stated, and least likely in the hidden condition, in which only one object at a time was present, with the other 2 conditions intermediate. Children's preference for majority testimony also depended on the task domain, with a stronger preference for the majority in the language task than causal task. Children might not simply have a majority bias; rather, they use majority information differently depending on the pragmatics and task demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).