Although some may describe it as the gullibility of youth, children 5 to 7 years old can believe that, over time and with maturation, people are capable of undergoing dramatic transformations, trading negative traits for positive ones, explains Kristi L. Lockhart of Yale University.
Kindergarteners and first-graders believed that the least intelligent person could become the smartest, the meanest person the nicest, and even extended this line of belief to physical traits such as re-growing a missing finger or improving poor vision. Adults, on the other hand, were consistently pessimistic about the possibility of such dramatic changes, the researchers say.
Young children's belief that negative traits are changeable may help them maintain the level of motivation required in acquiring new skills, they say.
Perceptions regarding personality and physical traits "are often more important in explaining our behaviors than are any truths about actual stability or malleability," says Lockhart. "For example, if you believe traits are stable, you are more likely to give up when faced with failure on a relevant task and to make negative self-attributions."
This level of optimism fades with age, however, as evidenced from interviews with third- and fourth-grade students, who were already growing skeptical about the potential for people to swing from one extreme to another. Although older children believed that at least average change was possible, they were no more likely than college students to think extreme changes would occur.
Older children were also more likely than younger children to attribute positive changes to effort and hard work, and were less likely to think that extreme positive traits, such as being the most attractive or the most coordinated, would remain stable over time.
The study was conducted in four parts, analyzing perceptions of how possible it is to change positive traits and negative traits. All of the parts included storytelling and detailed interviews with groups of children in grades K-2, groups of children in grades 3-4 and groups of college students.
"This changing belief pattern might make older children and adolescents more vulnerable to feelings of hopelessness and depression: Not only might some of your best qualities disappear with time, but also any improvement you might make may be limited and require a great deal of work," says Lockhart, possibly helping to explain why depression grows much more common in adolescence and beyond.
In contrast to children, adults tend to view characteristics of themselves and others as stable and unchanging. Adults are also less likely than children are to believe they can control the expression of a trait. The researchers suggest that this may be a survival tactic designed to prevent older people from investing too much time and energy in projects with little payoff.
"Unrealistic, positive illusions about the self may not be adaptive in the long term for adults," Lockhart says.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Health Behavior News Service: (202) 387-2829 or www.hbns.org.
Interviews: Contact Karen Peart (203) 432-1326 or karen.peart@yale.edu.
Child Development: Contact Angela Dahm Mackay at (734) 998-7310 or admackay@umich.edu.
Journal
Child Development