Confidence in context: Children's context-dependent interpretations of informants' confidence and hesitancy

Are children's evaluations of informants' confidence cues context dependent? Three experiments (N = 180; Experiments 1 and 3: 6-8 years, Experiment 2: 3-8 years; 62.1% White; 50.5% female; data collected 2016-2020 in Canada and the United States) examined children's ratings of confident and hesitant informants in three contexts: factual questions, moral dilemmas, or subjective questions. Children's interpretation of confidence was context dependent: Confidence was viewed more positively for factual questions than moral dilemmas and hesitancy was viewed more positively for moral dilemmas than factual questions (Experiments 1-2; Bs = .62 to .88). Children did not differ in their judgments of confidence and hesitancy for subjective questions (Experiment 3). The results demonstrated children's remarkable cognitive flexibility in integrating contextual information in their interpretations of confidence cues.