Abstract
The present study attempts to explore what kind of "personality theory" preschoolers have. For this purpose, preschoolers' understanding of characteristics in their friends' behavior was investigated. "Friends" in this study were defined as children of the same gender who chose each other as close companions, and "acquaintances" were those who knew each other but were not as close as friends. Twenty-four 5-year-old and twenty-eight 6-year-old children were asked how their friends would behave toward themselves and their acquaintances in various situations, such as play, help, and trust. It was found that they predicted their friends to behave more favorably to themselves than to their acquaintance in play situations, but not necessarily in other situations. The finding suggested that preschoolers understood their friends' patterns of behavior not merely based on their friends' general characteristics but on the specific personal relationship between them.
