ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to examine whom young children (4-5-year olds) would depend on for social actions and ask for information, and whose information they would endorse: the one supplied by a person who makes them laugh or the other by a person who teaches them something new. The participants consist of 59 young children in Şanlıurfa province in Turkey. The participants interacted with two assistants, one of whom made them laugh (the joker) and the other taught them something new (the teacher). After the meetings, a third assistant asked the participants six social trust questions and two sets of epistemic trust questions demanding from the children to make a selection between the joker and the teacher and assessing their relative preference for the joker and the teacher. All Mann–Whitney U Tests revealed that the children trusted the joker assistant significantly more than the teacher assistant. This suggests that humour positively influences children’s social and epistemic trust.

摘要

这项研究的目的是研究哪些孩子（4-5岁的孩子）将依赖于哪些人进行社交活动并要求提供信息，以及他们会支持谁的信息：一个由一个让他们笑的人提供的信息，另一个则由他们提供。由一个教给他们一些新东西的人。参加者包括土耳其Şanurıurfa省的59个幼儿。参与者与两名助手互动，其中一位使他们发笑（笑话），另一位教给他们一些新事物（老师）。会议结束后，第三位助手向参与者提出了六个社会信任问题和两套对孩子的认知信任问题，要求他们在小丑和老师之间进行选择，并评估他们对小丑和老师的相对偏爱。所有Mann-Whitney U测验显示，孩子对小丑助手的信任程度明显高于对老师的信任。这表明幽默对孩子的社交和认知信任有积极影响。