The modal personality of urban black middle-class elementary school children

This study attemped to identify traits that might be described as "typical" of black elementary school children. With use of the Early School Personality Questionnaire, the mean and modal scores for 13 traits were determined for 59 girls and 61 boys selected from two urban areas in two sections of the country. All were children of black middle-class families and were six and eight years old. When compared to the expected scores for children of this age range, the group as a whole differed from the average expected scores on only four factors. Analysis of the traits by sex found that black middle-class boys differed from the standardization sample boys on four of the 13 factors, and girls on eight of the 13. It was concluded that black middle-class girls, although not very different from the boys, were quite different in personality from girls of other groups, while the boys differed very little. The black sample was significantly more aloof and shrewd than the standardization group. It might be that these are traits developed by parents in black middle-class children to help them cope with a color-discriminating environment.