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ARIOUS theories of personality (i, 4, 8) and especially psychoanalysis (3) emphasize the role of infantile experience in determining adult behavior. At present only a beginning has been made toward securing controlled experimental evidence supporting such theories.Hunt ( 7) has shown that food deprivation during infancy will increase the amount of hoarding by adult rats. The purpose of the present experiment is to investigate the effects of infantile experience on a different type of behavior, namely, competition. The social importance of competitive behavior is obvious. An attempt will be made to test the hypothesis that a limited period of hunger-motivated competition for food during the infancy of mice will cause them in adulthood to show increased competition for food even when not motivated by hunger.A pilot study which preceded the experiment to be reported here, and other published results (2), indicated that the experience in deprivation per se was primarily responsible for the development of competitive fighting over food.