Little is known about how group bias may impact children's acceptance of unsubstantiated claims. Most children view cheating as unfair. However, in competitive situations, when ambiguity surrounds the potential intention to cheat, group affiliation may lead children to support claims of cheating based solely on the team affiliation of the claimant, even when those claims are not clearly substantiated. Therefore, it may be particularly important to consider the role ingroup bias may play in children's accusations of cheating in a competitive intergroup context. The current study investigated 4–10 year old children's (N = 137, M_Age = 6.71 years, SD_Age = 1.49; 47 % female) evaluations of ambiguous acts and unverified claims about those acts in a competitive, intergroup context. Results showed that children initially viewed an ambiguous act similarly, regardless of team affiliation, but demonstrated increasing ingroup biases after claims of wrongdoing were introduced. Implications for how unsubstantiated claims may impact intergroup interactions more broadly will be discussed.

关于群体偏见如何影响儿童对未经证实的主张的接受程度知之甚少。大多数孩子认为作弊是不公平的。然而，在竞争情况下，当潜在的作弊意图模棱两可时，团体隶属关系可能会导致儿童仅根据索赔人的团队隶属关系支持作弊的主张，即使这些主张没有得到明确证实。因此，考虑在竞争激烈的群体间环境中儿童作弊指控中，群体内偏见可能发挥的作用可能尤为重要。目前的研究调查了 4-10 岁儿童（N  = 137，M_年龄 = 6.71 岁，SD_年龄 = 1.49; 47% 的女性）在竞争激烈的群体间环境中评估模棱两可的行为和关于这些行为的未经证实的主张。结果表明，无论团队隶属关系如何，儿童最初对模棱两可的行为都有相似的看法，但在引入了不法行为的主张后，他们表现出越来越多的内群体偏见。将讨论未经证实的主张如何更广泛地影响群体间互动的影响。