The Eastern Association of electroencephalographers

Abstract

Children can use testimony and their own observations to make trait attributions about other people (e.g., she is nice). The current study investigates whether children will change their beliefs about a person if their behaviors contradict children's beliefs about them. Five- and 6-year-olds and adults were presented with characters labeled as "mean" (Experiment 1) or "nice" (Experiment 2). The characters were then described as behaving in a trait-inconsistent manner. Approximately half of the children and the majority of adults immediately abandoned the trait label, while the remainder maintained the trait label, regardless of the volume of contradictory behavior presented to them. Children, but not adults, who maintained the label also recast the character's behaviors to be trait-consistent. These results suggest that some children use behaviors to update their beliefs about people while others change their beliefs about behavior to match their beliefs about people.