Abstract
Conspicuous among those whom “you can fool all of the time” are innocent children. This follows for the reason that mistrust, whatever else it may be, is also something of an intellectual accomplishment, the achievement of which is neither quick nor automatic. Still, learning about deceit and the broader possibilities for false belief is a standard part of what we take growing up to mean. Our chapter is about this loss of innocence. What will be said on this subject is meant to persuade you of two things. One of these is that there are good reasons for believing that by 2 or 3 years of age, but not much before, young children first acquire those cognitive competencies required to appreciate that persons can be misled into taking as true what is otherwise known to be false. The other is that, in addition to all of its otherwise uplifting effects, this same cognitive accomplishment has the harsh consequence of also eroding an earlier and more earnest faith in the simple truth of what others have to say. Something like this new prospect for bad faith is almost certainly a part of what Erikson (1950) had in mind by his regular insistence that the issue of trust, while held out as the centerpiece of only the first of his psychosocial periods, is repeatedly taken up and reworked at each subsequent juncture along the life-span developmental course.
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Chandler, M., Hala, S. (1991). Trust and Children’s Developing Theories of Mind. In: Rotenberg, K.J. (eds) Children’s Interpersonal Trust. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3134-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3134-9_9
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