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9 - Liar liar! Pants on fire: Detecting the trustworthiness of children's statements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

By
Victoria Talwar  and
Sarah-Jane Renaud
Edited by
Ken J. Rotenberg
Victoria Talwar
Affiliation:
(McGill University) and
Sarah-Jane Renaud
Affiliation:
(McGill University)
Ken J. Rotenberg
Affiliation:
Keele University
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Summary

Interpersonal trust is essential to our social relations and is vital for maintaining positive interpersonal relations, both in terms of friendship formation and maintenance and in terms of conventions of day-to-day communications (Grice, 1980; Rotenberg, 1991; Rotter, 1980). Honesty is an integral part of trustworthiness. According to Rotenberg and colleagues' conceptualization of trustworthiness, honesty is one of three bases of trust (Rotenberg, Boulton, and Fox, 2005; Rotenberg, Fox, Green, Ruderman, Slater, Stevens, and Carlo, 2005; Rotenberg, MacDonald, and King, 2004). According to this framework, there are three fundamental bases of trustworthiness that include honesty (which is the focus of this chapter), reliability, and emotional trust (see Chapter 2 for further details). Others' perceptions of one's honesty are also an important aspect of trustworthiness, as they can affect the assessment of one's trustworthiness and have social consequences. Individuals hold cognitive representations of the extent to which they trust another (i.e., belief that another is telling the truth). Thus, an adult may believe that a child is honest. However, there is also the actual behavior of the child, which is their dispositional trustworthiness. A child's dispositional trustworthiness is reflected in their behavior to tell the truth and keep promises. Thus, there is a dyadic relationship between both trust beliefs and the trustworthiness revealed by the child's behavior. A dyadic partner holds trust beliefs that may match (or mismatch) the trustworthiness of another.

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Interpersonal Trust during Childhood and Adolescence , pp. 177 - 200
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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