Children More Likely to Trust Attractive Adults

Children are more likely to trust an adult if he or she is attractive, a recent study found.

Published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, the study looked at 32 children between 4 and 5 years old who were shown photos of white women between 18 and 29. The photos were selected prior by 40 undergraduate students who rated nearly 60 in all on a scale of attractiveness.

The children were presented with images of six novel objects and asked to name them. Whether or not he or she guessed correctly, the researcher suggested the child ask someone and presented two photos -- one of a person who was deemed attractive and another who was not.

In the end, more children -- and especially girls -- selected the attractive face. Furthermore, both girls and boys were more likely to trust the answer given by the attractive individual.

"We see from the results that children and especially girls have more trust in attractive faces, even though there are no obvious reasons why people with more attractive faces would be more knowledgeable about object labels," researcher Igor Bascandziev from Clark and Harvard universities said.

Though, he notes, it's not clear why the trend was more apparent in girls.

"The gender difference could relate to boys not paying as much attention to the initial presentation of the faces or other research has pointed to the fact that females have superior face perception," he hypothesized.

Going forward, Bascandziev said he was curious to know if these biases held even when challenged.

"It would be interesting to see future research explore whether children would continue [favoring] the more attractive face even when they have evidence that the more attractive face is unreliable and the less attractive informant is a reliable informant," he said.