Children Trust Good-Looking People: Study

Children trust attractive adults more, a latest study by Clark and Harvard Universities' researchers suggests.

The researchers conducted the study on 32 children aged between 4 and 5 years. These children were shown 12 photos of women from 18 to 29 years. The photos were selected from 56 pictures by  a university students' panel who rated them on their attractiveness.

"When learning about the world, children rely heavily on information provided to them by other people. Previous studies have shown children can be influenced by a range of factors such as whether the adult was correct in the past or if they are familiar to them. Our study wanted to examine whether children would trust an attractive stranger over an unattractive stranger," Lead researcher Dr Igor Bascandziev, from Harvard University, said.

The children were tested with a series of six questions. The researchers told them to take help from a person or two. Then they were shown two photos, one of attractive person and other unattractive. Most of the children, especially girls, chose pretty women for help.

"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," Dr Bascandziev said in a press release.

"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.

"It would be interesting to see future research explore whether children would continue favouring 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," Dr Bascandziev said.