AGE-RELATED-CHANGES IN PERSON PERCEPTION DURING CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

This paper focuses on the analysis of age-related changes in person pe rception during childhood and adolescence. Changes with regard to cont ent and structure of person perception are differentiated. During deve lopment, content oriented changes are expected from a predominant use of direct-perceptual characteristics to the use of more abstract, indi rectly inferred characteristics. With regard to structure, an increasi ng stabilisation and differentiation of person perception is assumed o ver age. An empirical study with 183 children and adolescents aged bet ween 11 and 18 years was conducted to test these assumptions. The subj ects had to judge 10 persons with 10 self-chosen constructs at two dat es in an interval of two weeks. The results largely corroborate the th eoretical assumptions. However, in contrast to the assumptions, the di fferentiation of person perception shows a significant decrease over a ge. The discussion of the results develops a conception which tries to interpret this unexpected result in the context of the entire pattern of results.