Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/UEFVD_rDKsg

 

Children embrace guidance from adults who exude confidence, but they reject a hard sell from the over-confident.  These conclusions come from a Canadian study of  662 children 3 to 12 years of age.

 

The child subjects viewed videos that featured adult actors portraying justifiable and phony confidence as well as justifiable and sham hesitancy.  The results showed that children base their confidence in an adult on the proven truth of their past statements.

 

Children are concrete about adult hesitancy.  To them, indecision reflects intellectual dishonesty, not a desire to be certain about the truth.

 

Be square with your kids.  Teach them if its too good to be true, it usually isn’t.

 

Susan A. J. Birch, Rachel L. Severson, Adam Baimel. Children's understanding of when a person's confidence and hesitancy is a cue to their credibility. PLOS ONE, 2020; 15 (1): e0227026 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227026

 

#confidence #hesitancy #children #parenting #conartist