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

摘要

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