You may have noticed that when your little ones play with their friends, they often act differently.
Some friends seem to bring out their gentler side, while others seem to get them more hyper than a packet of blue Smarties ever would!
But what makes our toddlers act differently? Is it really all down to parenting? Or could there be another cause for their changing behaviour?
The answer could be as simple as this …
A new study has revealed that when three and four-year-olds spend time together, they start to copy each other’s personalities.
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that it isn’t just genetics or parenting that help to shape your toddler. In fact, their environment and the traits of other toddlers they spend time with can have a lasting impact.
The study involved carefully watching two nursery classes for the equivalent of one academic year.
Jennifer Watling Neal, the Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University in the US, noticed that as the children spent more time together they began to emulate their peers.
Those that often played with extroverted classmates, as well as those that chose to befriend more hard-working individuals, eventually adopted those personality traits.
Professor Watling Neal says: “Our finding, that personality traits are ‘contagious’ among children, flies in the face of common assumptions that personality is ingrained and can’t be changed.
“This is important because some personality traits can help children succeed in life, while others can hold them back.”
The study also found that the only time when these traits weren’t ‘contagious’ were if the child’s playmates were particularly anxious or easily frustrated.
Another professor involved in the study said: “Parents spend a lot of their time trying to teach their child to be patient, to be a good listener, not to be impulsive.
“But this wasn’t their parents or their teachers affecting them – it was their friends.
“It turns out that three and four-year-olds are being change agents.”
Do you think this study is fair? Did your child change after their time at nursery – or are they at nursery and developing new personality traits that could be attributed to the findings in this study? Let us know what you think @CloserOnline via Facebook or Twitter.
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