IngentaConnect It's all good: Children's personality attributions after repeated...

Authors: Boseovski, Janet J.¹; Shallwani, Sadaf²; Lee, Kang³

Source: British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Volume 27, Number 4, November 2009 , pp. 783-797(15)

Publisher: British Psychological Society

Abstract:

The present study examined children's use of behavioural outcome information to make personality attributions in social and non-social contexts. One hundred and twenty-eight 3- to 6-year-olds were told about a story actor who engaged in primarily successful or primarily unsuccessful interactions with several different people (social context) or several different computers (non-social context). Subsequently, children made behavioural predictions and trait attributions about the actor. Findings indicated that participants were more likely to use past information to make behavioural predictions and trait attributions when hearing about primarily successful than primarily unsuccessful interactions, although there were age-related differences in trait attribution as a function of success and trait type. There was no support for differential use of information across contexts, as participants' predictions and attributions were similar regardless of hearing about interactions with computers or humans. Factors involved in the development of impression formation are discussed.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1348/026151008X377839

Affiliations: 1: Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, USA 2: Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology, OISE/University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 3: Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

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It's all good: Children's personality attributions after repeated success and failure in peer and computer interactions