“The Sum Is Greater Than the Parts?”—The Role of Student Covitality in Flourishing

Abstract

Existing studies have revealed associations of positive psychological traits with human thriving and flourishing. However, how these traits co-occur—known as covitality—and how it relates to flourishing remain relatively unexplored. This study aimed to investigate how student covitality as a second-order construct of four school experience-grounded positive psychological traits, namely gratitude, optimism, zest and persistence, predicts flourishing among primary school students. Participants were fourth to sixth graders (N = 1,107, 36.2% Grade 4, 32.8% Grade 5, and 31.0% Grade 6; 50.4% female) from 34 primary schools in Hong Kong (7.1% Hong Kong Island, 36.4% Kowloon, and 56.5% New Territories). In this study, structural equation modelling showed that student covitality as a second-order construct predicted flourishing directly (β = .594), and also indirectly through resilience (β = .111) and prosocial behaviour (β = .062). The findings suggest that student covitality as a latent construct better captures the mechanisms that drive student flourishing than the four individual first-order constructs of positive psychological traits. This study sheds light on future efforts in the field of children’s flourishing to consider school-related covitality as a critical variable in research and to develop school-based strategies that promote covitality in practice.