Gender differences in personality through early childhood: A multi-informant perspective

The present study explored gender differences and cross-contextual continuity in personality traits and robust personality dimensions of 192 pre-school children. Child personality was assessed separately by mothers, fathers and pre-school teachers employing The Inventory of Child Individual Differences (Halverson et al., 2003). The inquiry was conducted in three waves of measurement, when the same children were three-, four-, and five years old. Overall, the gender differences in child personality were small in their size, but consistent over the early childhood. At the domain level, small gender differences in child personality were reflected through parental, but not pre-school teachers' reports. Over the three waves, the girls were ascribed more Extraversion and less Neuroticism than were the boys. At the trait level and across the time span, the girls were rated higher in achievement orientation, compliance, intelligence and organization as compared to the boys, who were, relative to the girls, attributed more antagonism, distractibility, fear/insecurity and shyness. Children of both genders were consistently rated alike with respect to their activity level and strong will. In comparison to the gender effects, more informant effects on the perceived child personality were obtained and they were larger in magnitude, but consistent across times of measurement. Parents attributed their children more achievement orientation, activity, compliance, consideration, intelligence, openness to experience, organization, positive emotion, sociability and strong will than did teachers, who perceived the same children to be more antagonistic, distractible, fearful/insecure,and shy in comparison to the parental reports