Children’s and adolescents’ conceptions of personhood

Abstract

Children’s and adolescents’ narratives of interpersonal experiences can inform our understanding of developmental shifts in the use of personhood concepts. We present results from two studies ( ns = 90, 112) with children aged five to 16 years. In the first study, children were asked to describe one positive and another negative experience with a friend, and in the second study, to describe a time when they were a victim and another time when they were a perpetrator of harm. Across both studies, results supported previous findings suggesting that psychological, relational, trait, and identity personhood conceptions become more prominent with age, whereas activity, physical, and material conceptions become less prominent with age. However, our results also revealed that, within the context of real-life experiences, psychological conceptions become evident at earlier ages than suggested by children’s responses to the structured tasks employed in previous research. In addition, we found age-related increases in the simultaneous use of psychological and relational conceptions of persons, especially in narratives of negative experiences. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for social development.