A STUDY OF PERSONALITY IN PRE-SCHOOL GROUPS.

The article presents a study of personality in pre-school groups. During a two year period, the writer worked closely with two groups of young children in a pre-school laboratory, a situation which offered an excellent opportunity for the study of personality. Recently, sociologists have been pointing out the fallacy of isolating a personality from its social setting and studying it as a self-contained unit; and they have been directing attention to the importance of status, the social role of the individual, his position in the group or groups of which he is a member, in determining his personality. The two play groups were organized under the direction of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, as a means of providing a laboratory for the study of pre-school children. The children in the two groups were given a great variety of intelligence tests. It was interesting to note how inaccurate a picture of the child's social status or personality could be formed from his scores on these various scales. The most intelligent children, according to the tests, might in the social group he among the most prominent or the most inconspicuous, and this was true also of the dullest children.