Developmental Changes in the Formation and Organization of Personality Attributions

Heller, Kirby A.; Berndt, Thomas J.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1981.tb03096.x

Cited by 39 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…This result is consonant with other findings in the literature suggesting that different responses for providing no trait information versus providing negative trait information are more likely than different responses for no trait information versus positive trait information (Heller & Berndt, 1981;Heyman & Gelman, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

The Use of Trait Labels in Making Psychological Inferences

1999

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Three studies investigated children's capacity to use trait labels as tools for making inferences about mental states. For example, knowledge that a story character is "nice" as opposed to "mean" could lead to predictions that the character would respond with greater negative affect upon discovering that his or her action had made someone upset. Study 1 (N = 48) examined whether participants (kindergartners, second graders, fifth graders, and adults) would make different psychological inferences based on whether a character was labeled as "nice" versus "mean." Study 2 (N = 30) examined the same issue with 4-year-olds using a simpler methodology. Study 3 (N = 30) extended the results of Study 2, by examining whether describing characters as "shy" versus "not shy" would lead 4-year-olds to make different mental state inferences. Taken together, these findings suggest that even for young children, trait labels can serve as a basis for making nonobvious inferences. Developmental differences are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

The Use of Trait Labels in Making Psychological Inferences

1999

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“…Some findings suggest that children develop such an understanding only after they are about 7 years of age (Rholes & Ruble, 1984;Rotenberg, 1982), whereas other findings suggest that children have at least a limited understanding of traits by 5 years of age (Cain, Heyman, & Walker, 1997;Dozier, 1991;Gnepp & Chilamkurti, 1988;Heller & Berndt, 1981). The meaning of these apparently conflicting findings remains the subject of considerable debate (see Ruble & Dweck, 1995).…”

Section: Reasoning About Ability In Relation To Perceived Difficultymentioning

confidence: 90%

Preschool Children's Reasoning About Ability

Heyman¹,

Gee²,

Giles³

2003

Child Development

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Young children's reasoning about ability was investigated among 155 preschoolers (M = 4 years, 10 months) across 3 studies. Results suggest that preschoolers are sensitive to mental state information when making judgments about another child's ability: They judged a child who finds a task easy to be smarter than one who finds the same task hard. Systematic patterns of errors on recall tasks suggest that preschoolers perceive positive correlations between (a) exerting effort and experiencing academic success, and (b) being nice and having high academic ability. Results from a comparison group of forty 9- to 10-year-olds (M = 9 years, 10 months) suggest that the preschool findings generally reflect emerging patterns of reasoning about ability that persist into later childhood, but that the perceived correlations between high effort and academic outcomes and between social and academic traits diminish with age.

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“…Yet, it is unclear whether infants’ evaluations reflect judgments of the enduring relationships between the puppets or of the puppets’ underlying personality traits (or both). Indeed, much work suggests that children do not reliably link others’ behaviors to their enduring dispositions until at least kindergarten age (Heller & Berndt, 1981; Rholes & Ruble, 1984; see Yuill, 1993, for a review); however, some have theorized that the domain of sociomoral goodness may be conceptualized in this way particularly early (Cain, Heyman, & Walker, 2006; Dweck, 1991; Heyman, Dweck, & Cain, 1992). Thus, whether infants attribute enduring sociomoral traits to others is a question for future study.…”

Section: Experiments 2: Retrieving a Dropped Ballmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young infants prefer prosocial to antisocial others

Hamlin¹,

Wynn²

2011

Cognitive Development

462

393

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The current study replicates and extends the finding (Hamlin, Wynn & Bloom, 2007) that infants prefer individuals who act prosocially toward unrelated third parties over those who act antisocially. Using different stimuli from those used by Hamlin, Wynn & Bloom (2007), somewhat younger subjects, and 2 additional social scenarios, we replicated the findings that (a) infants prefer those who behave prosocially versus antisocially, and (b) these preferences are based on the social nature of the actions. The generality of infants' responses across multiple examples of prosocial and antisocial actions supports the claim that social evaluation is fundamental to perceiving the world.

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Developmental Changes in the Formation and Organization of Personality Attributions

Cited by 39 publications

References 7 publications

The Use of Trait Labels in Making Psychological Inferences

The Use of Trait Labels in Making Psychological Inferences

Preschool Children's Reasoning About Ability

Young infants prefer prosocial to antisocial others

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