Peer Projections

According to a new study, your childhood peers may be able to best predict your success as an adult

If you want to know what your child will grow up to be like, you might want to ask his (or her) school friends. According to a new study, one which studied two generations of children growing up, kids are better at predicting their friends’ adult personalities than self-evaluation at that age.

The study, by researchers from Concordia University in Montreal, was conducted over a period of 35 years. For two years (1976 and 1977), a large number of Montreal students in grades one, four and seven were made participants of the study. They were asked to rate their peers in terms of aggression, likeability and social withdrawal. The students also evaluated themselves.

For the next 20 years, all the participants were closely followed. A follow-up survey, with nearly 700 of the participants from the initial study, was conducted between 1999 and 2003. The survey included measurement of adult personality traits, such as levels of neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. The researchers then compared peer and self-perceptions of these childhood behaviours with their adult personality factors. Evaluations from the group of peers were more closely associated with eventual adult outcomes in comparison with their own personality perceptions from childhood.

The study found that children who perceived themselves as socially withdrawn exhibited less conscientiousness as adults. On the other hand, kids whose peers perceived them as socially withdrawn grew up to exhibit lower levels of extroversion. Peer-perceived likeability also predicted a more accurate outcome, associating the personality trait with higher levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness, and lower levels of neuroticism than those who thought of themselves as likeable.

“The information from our study could be used to promote better outcomes for children by helping kids and parents develop effective mechanisms for addressing aggressive or socially withdrawn behaviours and promoting more pro-social behaviour,” says Dr Serbin, one of the two researchers who conducted the study.

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