바로가기메뉴

본문 바로가기 주메뉴 바로가기

logo

메뉴

Children's understanding of personality traits:with focus on trait inference and situational and temporal stability

Abstract

This study examined 3- to 7-year-old children's understanding of personality traits in three domains: trait identification, prediction of other's behavioral response, and beliefs about the stability of trait. A total of 79 children's responses(Male, Ns = 36, Female, Ns = 43) were used for the analysis. Each child heard 12 stories describing six contrasting pairs of traits and had to answer three questions about each trait. The results of this study are as follows; first, children from 3 years could identify the trait term from target person's past behavioral information. Second, children from 4 years made different behavioral prediction in the same situation for target persons with different trait. Third, children from age 3 to 7 believed that negative trait would be change in a positive direction. These results indicate that preschoolers have ability to understand personality trait as a causal mediator of one's behavior. Also children from age 3 to 7 are instrumental-incremental theorists believing that personality traits are relatively malleable.

keywords
Submission Date
2006-10-15
Revised Date
2006-11-22
Accepted Date
2006-11-27

Reference

1.

(1998) 한국인의 성공의식과 귀인양식: 토착심리학적 접근,

2.

(1997) 한국 학생의 귀인양식: 초 중 고 대학생의 비교,

3.

(1991) Children's conceptions of ability in major domains,

4.

(1985) Responses to open-ended questions versus trait ratings and predictions of future behavior The growth of reflection in children, Academic Press

5.

(1992) The adaptive nature of cognitive immaturity,

6.

(1997) Preschoolers' ability to make dispositional predictions within and across domains,

7.

(2000) Perspectives on personality(4th ed), Allyn & Bacon

8.

(1989) Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture,

9.

(1985) Directions in Cognitive Anthropology University of Chicago Press,

10.

(1983) Children's theories of intelligence Learning and Motivation in the Classroom,

11.

(1988) A social- cognitive approach to motivation and personality,

12.

(1988) Children's use of personality attribution to predict other people's emotional and behavioral reactions,

13.

(1981) Developmental changes in the formation and organization of personality attributions,

14.

(1998) Children's thinking about traits:Implications for judgments of the self and others,

15.

(1999) The use of trait label in making psychological inferences,

16.

(2000) Beliefs about the origins of human psychological traits,

17.

(2004) Children's reasoning about norms and traits as motives for behavior,

18.

(1973) Person Perception in Child and Adolescence,

19.

(2002) Young children's beliefs about the stability of traits: Protective optimism,

20.

(1985) Accuracy and consistency in the development of social perception,

21.

(1984) Culture and the development of everyday social explanation,

22.

(1986) Early cross-cultural commonalities in social explanation,

23.

(1989) Young children's understanding of the psychological causes of behavior,

24.

(1984) Conceptions of ability and achievement motivation Research in motivation in education, Academic Press

25.

(2002) Cultural similarities and differences in social inference Evidence from behavioral predictions and lay theories of behavior,

26.

(1973) Developmental changes in attribution of descriptive conceptions to persons,

27.

(1978) Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences,

28.

(1984) Children's understanding of dispositional characteristics of others,

29.

(1985) Acquisition of emotion-descriptive language Receptive and productive vocabulary norms for age 18 months to 6 years,

30.

(2001) From theory of mind to theory of personality Mental state understanding in 5- to 10-year-olds , University of California

31.

(1969) The handbook of social psychology,

32.

(1990) The child's theory of mind,

33.

(1992a) Children's conception of personality trait,

34.

(1992b) Children's production and comprehension of trait terms,

35.

(1998) The development of bases for trait attribution:Children's understanding of traits as causal mechanisms based on desire,

logo