The use of social comparison information for self-evaluation may be viewed as a major developmental step in children's growing understanding of their competencies and limitations. The two studies presented suggest that children's achievement-related self-evaluations are little affected by relative comparisons until surprisingly late-that is, not earlier than 7-8 years of age. In Study 1, 104 first and second graders performed a task with 3 coacting peers; only the second graders made any use at all of the social comparison information in their evaluative judgments. In Study 2 an attempt was made to maximize the potential for using comparative information by providing a strong incentive to engage in social comparison of abilities in a situation in which objective information about a success/failure outcome was unavailable. The 90 kindergarten, second, and fourth graders played a game with peers and made competence-related self-evaluations and decisions about future performance. Only the judgments of the fourth graders were consistently affected by the social comparison information. The results are discussed in terms of their relation to previous research on the development of social comparison and of possible explanations for the developmental trends observed.Recent theoretical approaches to social development have emphasized a kind of self-socialization process (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Hartup, Note 1) in which children are viewed as active processors of social information, seeking norms or guidelines to define appropriate behavior and to evaluate themselves. One particularly important source of information during this self-socialization process is the peer groupthat is, how one's own behavior compares to relevant others. This social comparison process is thought to be central to selfevaluation in adults (Festinger, 1954;Suls & Miller, 1977), but there has been little

In two studies, we examined the hypothesis that the order of presenting consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency information concerning an event may affect attributions of causality for the event. In particular, it seemed possible that the relative weakness of consensus information in previous studies may have been due, in part, to a recency effect because consensus was always presented first. Undergraduate subjects, assigned to one of several order conditions, were given questionnaires containing descriptions of eight events, according to procedures described by McArthur. Each event was followed by consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency information arranged in a predetermined order. The results snowed the predicted recency effect in the use of consensus for both person and stimulus attributions. The discussion focuses on methodology and interpretational issues.

The present study examined the development of young children's motivations to socially compare in a situation in which they were free to seek or not seek information about how another child was doing. Pairs of kindergarten, first, and second graders worked on a speed task in high-and low-competition conditions. The frequency and duration with which they pushed a button to observe on a monitor their partner's progress was the index of the strength of motivation. The results showed the expected developmental increase in comparison behaviors. In addition, the effects of level of competition on performance varied with the age level of the subjects. The results are discussed in terms of alternative predictions derived from theories by Festinger and by Veroff.According to Festinger's (1954) theory of compare abilities under conditions of amsocial comparison, there exists in the human organism a drive to evaluate one's abilities. Thus, people engage in a number of information-seeking behaviors designed to determine how "good" they are at a given activity. Initially, objective, physical bases for evaluation are sought. If such criteria are ambiguous or unavailable, people look to others for subjective standards of ability levels.One implication of this theory is that these processes may be found in very young children. Although it is well established empirically that adults actively seek to compare their own abilities with others (Latane, 1966), there is little known about children's desires for comparative information. This lack of research is surprising, since competition and comparative evaluation are central to life in school from the moment children begin kindergarten. Yet, there is no evidence that young children are at all concerned with how others are doing. In fact, Veroff (1969) suggests that children younger than 5 or 6 years do not automatically seek to

It was hypothesized that age differences in use of intent information in children's moral judgments might be due to a recency effect in the judgments of younger children. A study was conducted to examine the effect of order of stimulus presentation on children's moral judgments. The information was presented to children, ages 4-5 and 8-9 years old, through stories with either normal information order, intent-consequence, or reversed order, consequence-intent. It was found that order has a significant impact on children's moral judgments. In addition, memory data were gathered which indicated that the pattern of forgetting was parallel to the pattern of information preference for the younger subjects. The findings suggested that younger subjects' relative neglect of intent in the normal order of information was based, in part, on their failure to remember the material correctly rather than on differential weighting of the 2 cues.

Two studies examined the accuracy and differentiation of 4-5-yearolds', 8-9-year-olds', and undergraduates' predictions of the preferences of peers and nonpeers. In Study 1 each subject was presented with separate arrays of snacks, meals, and activities depicted on cards and were asked to select their own preferences and the preferences of peers and nonpeers ("grown-ups" for the children, and "4-to 5-year-olds" for the undergraduates). In Study 2 each subject selected his or her own preference, the preference of peers, and the preferences of both older nonpeers ("grown-ups") and younger nonpeers ("2-year-olds"). For all age groups, including 4-5-year-olds: (1) the preference predictions differentiated peers from nonpeers, as well as older nonpeers from younger nonpeers; (2) it was very rare for a subject to select his or her own preferences for the preference predictions of both peers and nonpeers. There were no consistent developmental differences either in the tendency to select one's own preferences when predicting the preferences of others or in the tendency to differentiate predictions for peers and nonpeers. In contrast, there was a clear developmental increase in predictive accuracy, with 4-5-yearolds being relatively inaccurate in predicting the preferences of nonpeers. The inadequacy of constructs such as "assumed similarity" and "egocentrism" as explanations for the general accuracy in predicting peers' preferences and the 4-5-year-olds' inaccuracy in predicting nonpeers' preferences is discussed. Possible alternative variables underlying developmental increases in judgmental accuracy, such as "social reference," "self reference," and "social category knowledge," are then proposed.

This study investigated the influence of two factors on the extent to which an observer would use consensus information in making causal attributions for an actor's choice behaviors. Undergraduate subjects were shown videotaped vignettes of a person choosing a favored item from an array of items and of four other persons either agreeing (high consensus) or disagreeing (low consensus) with the choice. The two factors of interest were (a) availability of direct information (subjects either saw the array of items from which the actor chose or they did not) and (b) temporal presentation (consensus information was either presented simultaneously or successively). The results showed that the impact of consensus information was greater when the information was presented successively than when it was presented simultaneously and for subjects who did not have direct information than for those who did. The results are discussed in terms of role-taking and information-processing variables and in terms of generality of the Kelley attribution model.

Two studies were conducted to examine whether attributions made about events may be influenced by individual assumptions regarding causation that are age related. In Study 1, 96 subjects at three age levels (four and five years, eight and nine years, and college students) observed a target actor on videotape select an item from an unseen array, and four other actors either agree (high consensus) or disagree (low consensus) with the choice. Subjects were asked to decide why the actor liked the chosen object best-^because of something about the actor (person attribution) or because of something about the item (entity attribution). The results showed that perceived locus of causality shifted from entity to person attributions with age. In addition, subjects at all ages were able to utilize the consensus information when they had no opportunity to form their own impressions about the items in the array. In Study 2, 126 subjects at four age levels (five and six years, seven and eight years, nine and ten years, and high school students) chose an item from among an array for themselves and responded to a person (self)/entity attribution question regarding the locus of their own choice. The entity to person shift with age was again found and was supported by additional measures. The results are discussed in terms of children's causal reasoning capacities and social environmental factors affecting developmental change in social judgments.

The effect of personal relevance was examined as a motivational alternative to capacity-based explanations of young children's failure to describe others in terms of psychological characteristics. In Study 1, children at 2 age levels (5-6 and 9-10 years) were asked to describe actors exhibiting different behaviors and to select partners for different games. As predicted, children who expected to interact with the actors were much more likely to describe them in psychological terms. Older children selected partners based on instrumental goals, maximizing their own outcomes, whereas younger children selected partners based on liking. The findings were replicated in Study 2, and expecting interaction was also found to affect behavior (toy allocation). The results suggest that the verbal inferencing skills of young children have been underestimated in the past, and that younger children may be more oriented than older children toward affective relative to instrumental goals in anticipating interaction with a peer.