Young Children's Use of Trait Similarity Information to Make Inference of Others

The purpose of this study was to understand the influence of personality trait information on young children's perception of initial attraction in peer relationships. The sample consisted of 90 children of three to five years of age in South Korea. Children were presented with an inductive inference task where they had to make inference of a target character's preference on novel-play and prosocial act based on trait labels (smart-not smart, outgoing-shy, nice-mean) and perceptual (toy) similarity information of two test characters. Children showed difference in their use of trait information depending on the perceptual similarity information, trait valence, and inference question with age. This result provides initial support that not only do young children understand the significance of trait in peer attraction but also know when trait label is more informative to use to infer others depending on the situation.