‘How would you describe Grandpa?’ Mothers’ personal intelligence predicts personality talk with their children

Abstract

AbstractMother–child conversations reflect and support many important skills—including, perhaps, children's understanding of personality. Children acquire an understanding of people's personalities during the preschool and early elementary years. This study of 4‐ to 9‐year‐old children and their mothers (Npairs = 135) investigated the relation between mothers’ ability to reason about the personalities of self and others—termed personal intelligence—and characteristics of their conversations with their children. Mothers and children conversed about topics potentially involving personality (e.g., contrasting two relatives), and later completed a validated ability‐based measure of personal intelligence. Across the conversations recorded between mother and child dyads, mothers’ personality talk was correlated with children's, and mothers’ personal intelligence scores predicted both, independent of age. This is the first study to document individual differences among mothers that may shape their conversations with children about people, with implications for children's developing understanding of personality.