Abstract
This study examined the ability of young children to infer the personality traits of other people and to use information about these traits to predict their future behavior. Preschool children (three to six year-olds) and college students watched a series of stories on TV. Each of the character's traits could be inferred from these stories. The subjects were asked to infer each of the character's traits and to predict each of the character's behavioral reaction to a new event. The main results were as follows:(1) young children did infer each of the character's traits from a series of stories;(2) the ability to predict the future behavior of the characters from the character's traits inferred increased with the age of the children.
