Children learn about other people through gossip. Although gossip can be a valuable and efficient way to learn about others, evaluating gossip's credibility requires understanding when people may be biased, and using this information to update the truth-value placed on the gossip. For instance, people may be motivated to improve their and their friends' reputations (or to worsen their enemies' reputations). Therefore, testimony that cuts against these social motivations may be more credible. Here, in four studies with 3- to 13-year-old children (total N = 860), we examined (1) children's expectations about the type of gossip people were likely to spread about friends versus enemies, and (2) children's ability to discount testimony that is in line with a speaker's social biases (e.g., negative testimony about a friend). We found that children expect speakers to say nice things about their friends, and mean things about their enemies. And, children were less likely to endorse potentially biased testimony, though the strength of their ability to avoid endorsing biased testimony varied based on the domain of testimony. Overall, these studies suggest that children expect a speaker's testimony to be systematically biased based on her relationships. Our results underscore the importance of tracking and using relationships when evaluating testimony, because relationships have immense power for helping us effectively make sense of an ambiguous world.

孩子们通过八卦来了解其他人。尽管八卦可能是了解他人的宝贵而有效的方法，但是评估八卦的可信度需要理解人们何时可能会产生偏见，并使用此信息来更新八卦中的真值。例如，人们可能有动机去提高他们和他们朋友的声誉（或恶化他们敌人的声誉）。因此，抵制这些社会动机的证词可能更可信。在此进行的针对3至13岁儿童的四项研究（总N = 860），我们研究了（1）儿童对八卦人群可能会在朋友与敌人之间传播的期望，以及（2）儿童对与说话者的社会偏见相吻合的证词的能力（例如对儿童的负面证词）一个朋友）。我们发现，孩子们希望说话者对他们的朋友说好话，对他们的敌人说话。而且，尽管儿童避免背书有偏见的能力的强弱因证言的范围而异，但他们不太可能赞同有偏见的证言。总体而言，这些研究表明，儿童期望说话者的证言会根据其关系而被系统地偏颇。我们的结果强调了在评估证词时跟踪和使用关系的重要性，