The Others-Concept and Research of Children's Group Behavior.

This paper defines a personality construct, the "others-concept," as "a person's general expectancies or perceptions about other people along a positive-negative continuum." This construct helps conceptualize how predictions and assumptions about possible social interactions are made when the amount of information concerning the other individuals is minimal and ambiguous. The paper also makes use of the Paired Hands Test (PHT), a personality assessment technique combining projective and objective features, which is felt to be a measure of the "others-concept." The results of a series of studies investigating the relationship between children's scores on the PHT, and their actual social behaviors in small-group situations, are summarized and discussed. (Author/BP)