The roles of group membership and social exclusion in children’s testimonial learning

•Children were either included or excluded by in- or out-group members in a ball tossing game.•When learning new information, children who were excluded were more likely to selectively trust information from their in-group member.•When accepting counter-intuitive information, children only relied on group membership regardless of their exclusion status.•These findings suggest that children’s learning is guided by both epistemic motivations and social motivations of affiliation and maintaining relationships with others.