A preliminary study of developmental trends in sociempathy; accuracy of perception of own and others' sociometric status.

Sociempathy is a form of social perception which refers to an individual's awareness of his own and others' sociometric status in a given group of which he is a member. Among other properties this content of awareness may be more or less accurate, i.e., may correspond more or less to the actual situation with respect to sociometric status depending on sociempathic ability. Hence from an operational standpoint, a person may be said to have good sociempathic ability if he can accurately predict the relative degree of acceptance or rejection accorded the component members of the group (including himself) by the other group members. In general, the few available studies we have in the area of sociempathy have dealt with the sociempathic ability of teachers (i.e., their ability to predict the sociometric status of their pupils), and have ignored the pupils' awareness of their own status and that of their classmates. As a result, at least two large gaps remain in our knowledge of the development of social perception in children: What does the growth curve for sociempathic ability look like? What are some of the determinants and consequences of individual differences in sociempathic ability? The present study represents an exploratory attempt at devising a method for measuring various developmental aspects of sociempathy, i.e., growth curves, changes with age in the distribution of ratings and predictions of status, and teachers' sociempathic ability.