Preschoolers' ability to make dispositional predictions within and across domains

Although children over eight years of age appear to view others in dispositional terms, findings for children of kindergarten age are mixed. Few studies have examined dispositional thinking in children younger than kindergarteners. The present studies addressed two questions about trait conceptions in 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers: (1) Do children of this age use past behaviors to predict future behaviors? (2) Do they show evidence of global evaluative thinking, such that they generalize information about behavior in one domain to make predictions in other domains? Three studies of 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers addressed these issues by presenting information about individuals' behavior in the target domain of sociomoral goodness, and asking subjects to predict the protagonists' future behaviors with regard to goodness, intelligence, and athletic skill, Study I focused on children's predictions for highly familiar fairy-tale characters, whereas Studies 2 and 3 required children to make predictions for unfamiliar characters. Studies I and 2 utilized a dichotomous choice task for assessing predictions, and Study 3 employed a quantitative rating procedure, The results of the three studies converged and suggested that preschoolers can use past behaviors to predict future behaviors. Children showed some evidence of global thinking and also some evidence of differentiation across distinctive domains.