CHILDRENS CONCEPTION OF PERSONALITY-TRAITS

Research on children's understanding of traits has been embedded in an incomplete view of children's social cognitive abilities and in only a relatively implicit understanding of what trait terms are. This article draws on the philosophical literature on dispositional concepts and on recent work in social cognition to pose new questions about the development of trait terms. Following a brief critique of previous studies, two conceptions of trait are presented - behavioural regularities and causal mechanisms - and ways of distinguishing them are suggested. It is argued that future research in the area requires (a) a clearer model of the structure of traits, (b) links to research in theory of mind, and (c) an exploration of the role of social context in determining the function of trait terms.