INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES Agreement and Accuracy in Children's Interpersonal Perceptions: A Social Relations Analysis Thomas E. Malloy Rhode Island College Aaron Yarlas University of California, Los Angeles Robin K. Montvilo and David B. Sugarman Rhode Island College Agreement and accuracy in children's interpersonal perceptions during middle childhood were stud- ied in the school environment. Sociocultural and ecological theories led to the prediction that, in middle childhood, peers' interpersonal perceptions would show high levels of agreement with those of teachers and would be accurate. A social relations analysis of data from a 3-year, cross-sequential study revealed that throughout middle childhood, peer perceptions of cognitive ability, observable behavior and characteristics, popularity, and affect correlated reliably with teacher perceptions. In addition, peer and teacher perceptions of targets' cognitive ability correlated with standardized test scores. Self-other agreement lagged behind teacher-peer agreement. The conceptual and statistical advantages of the social relations analysis of children's interpersonal perceptions were also considered. The development of children's social cognition has received considerable research attention during the past quarter century (Shantz, 1983). This research has generally rested on a theoret- ical foundation developed to understand children's conceptions of physical laws, and considerable data (e.g., Inhelder & Piaget, 1964; Piaget, 1970) show that with increasing development, ac- curate logic appears. Children's social cognition has also been approached from the Piagetian perspective and, in general, the data have been interpreted as consistent with this theory (see Chandler, 1976; Livesley & Bromley, 1973; Shantz, 1983). So- cial cognition is said to develop from undifFerentiated to differ- entiated and from concrete to abstract. In spite of these discoveries, researchers have paid little ex- plicit attention to the accuracy or agreement of children's inter- Thomas E. Malloy, Robin K. Montvilo, and David B. Sugarman, De- partment of Psychology, Rhode Island College; Aaron Yarlas, Depart- ment of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles. This research was supported by Rhode Island College faculty re- search grants and Department of Psychology funding. We thank sin- cerely the students and parents, faculty, and staff of the Henry Barnard School. We thank Linda Albright, Beverly Goldneld, and David Kenny for comments, and David Kenny for modifying SOREMO for these analyses. Linda Pelopida and Lynn Winquist assisted with analyses. Ha- ven Starr has contributed significantly to the Rhode Island College De- velopmental Interpersonal Perception Project. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Thomas E. Malloy, Department of Psychology, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island 02908. Electronic mail may be sent via the Internet to tmalloyigigrog.ric.edu. personal judgments. This is not surprising because interest in accuracy was largely in a state of abeyance within the field of psychology following Cronbach's (1955; Gage & Cronbacb, 1955) critique of interpersonal perception research. The solu- tions were complicated (Cronbach, 1958; Cronbach, Gleser, Nanda, & Rajaratnam, 1972) and researchers avoided them. However, the recent application of the social relations model to the problems of accuracy and agreement (Kenny, 1994; Kenny & Albright, 1987; Kenny, Albright, Malloy, & Kashy, 1994) has made the conceptual and statistical problems more manage- able. Although social psychologists have renewed their interest in the accuracy question, this trend is not as apparent within developmental psychology. As a result, there is a need for re- search on the level of agreement in children's interpersonal judgments, the level of accuracy attained, and the developmen- tal course of accuracy. Development of Interpersonal Perception in a Social Context In reaction to the intrapsychologjcal processes at the core of Piagetian theory, alternative models emphasizing the interper- sonal context of cognitive development have been offered (Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 1983; Mead, 1934; Vygotsky, 1978). A common assumption in these models is that social relationships are the contexts within which chil- dren learn from adults and peers the culturally appropriate in- terpersonal judgments needed to regulate human interaction (Graziano, Moore, & Collins, 1988). Although the Piagetian model assumes that internal cognitive structures develop and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1996, VoL 71. No, 4.692-702 Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/96/S3.00 692 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.