Children's Descriptions of Peers: A Wernerian Developmental Analysis

The development of interpersonal perception was studied in boys of grades 1, 3, and 5. The number of constructs subjects used to describe their peers increased monotonically with age, accompanied by a shift from the use of egocentric and concrete constructs to the use of nonegocentric and abstract constructs. Among first graders, length of descriptions varied as a function of the other's sex but not of the other's valence for the subject; among fifth graders, length of description varied with both the sex and the valence of the other person. Subjects who used relatively many constructs to describe their peers also used relatively many constructs to describe fictional boys, with the difference carried predominantly by the mode of construct (concrete or abstract) that was typical for the age group concerned.