The Relationship Between Gratitude and Happiness in Young Children

Abstract

Over the past decades, much progress has been made in understanding the relationship between gratitude and well-being in adults, school-aged children, and adolescents (see Emmons and Mishra, in: Sheldon, Kashdan, Steger (eds) Designing positive psychology: taking stock and moving forward, Oxford University Press, New York, pp 248–262, 2011; Watkins in Gratitude and the good life: toward a psychology of appreciation, Springer, New York, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7253-3 ). However, relatively little is known about this relationship in young children (see Park and Peterson in J Happiness Stud 7(3):323–341, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-005-3648-6 ). The aim of the present study was to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between gratitude and happiness in young children. The general propensity for gratitude, domain-specific gratitude, and trait happiness were measured in a group of children (N = 80, Mage = 5.04 years). The results revealed that children’s domain-specific gratitude predicted children’s happiness above and beyond a general propensity for gratitude. These findings establish the presence of a relationship between gratitude and happiness in children by age 5 years, and reveal the type of gratitude, namely domain-specific, that is associated with happiness among young children.