Descriptions focus on 1 external features up to ages

Descriptions focus on
1. External features (up to ages 6-8)
 Hair colour, size, gender, race, what they like to do, what they wore
 A trait if used is global and general (nice and mean)

 Forget about the traits easily and can change them easily
 Conservation concept of personality which depends on the last interaction they
had with the person
 If the last interaction was nice when Tommy is a nice person, and vice
versa if last interaction was unpleasant
 Does not use personality as a constant thing but as an always changing
concept
2. Internal features (beginning ages 7-8)
 Not very qualified and general
 No shades of grey in description
 Uses external qualities as examples of their personality, for example croaky
voice, picks teeth, several traits being described the personas having a nasty
personality
 Don’t have complex notation of personality
 But people have underlying way of being, they use this to describe their overall
personality
 There could be something more than what they see that makes the person this
way not just his personality
3. Qualifiers and inferences (beginning in teen years)
 Social comparison, for example, shy but can be talkative
 More complex characterisation
 Thinking more about other people; starting to understanding that you can be
shy but at the same time talkative
 Abstract and complex in observation
 Research support (Barenboim, 1981)
 Children ages 6 – 16 described three people that they knew; the transcripts were then rated by
other people
1. Behaviours (external)
2. Traits and Psychological (kind and mean, internal)
3. Qualifiers/Inferences
 Any mention in change of character
 Sometimes this, but sometimes that
 Mostly like this, however can sometimes be like this
Barenboim Results
 Behaviours peaked at age 8 but not significant
 Traits peak at 14 but start at age 6
o Most commonly used
 Qualifiers and inferences
o 30% used, started at age 10 and peaked at age 16
 We develop more abstract, complex ways to describe people as we grow from elementary
school to high-school

Summary So Far
 Children’s descriptions of others shift in the same way as do descriptions of themselves
o And parallel to cognitive development
 What about understanding of other’s emotional state
o Does our ability to read other’s feelings change with age
Understanding Others’ Emotions
 Crucial to positive social relationships
 How can we deduce others’ emotions
o Body and facial signals
o Signals are incredibly important
o How we manage the world without conflict, removes frustration, angry with interaction
with the on-signal using person
o Most are good as sending and receiving signals
 Starts at about age 1 and continues in adult years
o What first impressions are based on
o Understanding of social context
 We get hints of how someone must be feeling
 Other people respond to various situations in different ways
o Theory of Mind
 Getting information needed to understand someone and why they are the way
they are with interaction
