Strengths ChIldren 2006

NANSOOK PARK and CHRISTOPHER PETERSON

CHARACTER STRENGTHS AND HAPPINESS

AMONG YOUNG CHILDREN: CONTENT ANALYSIS

OF PARENTAL DESCRIPTIONS

ABSTRACT. Parents’ written descriptions (average length = 211 words) ofchildren between the ages of 3 and 9 years were collected on a password-protected website (n=680). The presence of the 24 character strengths in theVIA Classification and the level of child’s happiness were coded with contentanalysis. Descriptions were rich in character language (average strengthsmentioned per description=3.09), and coding was reliable. Consistent withprevious research with youth and adults, the character strengths of love, zest,and hope were associated with happiness; gratitude was associated with hap-piness among older children. The early development of character strengths andpossible ways of fostering them are discussed.

KEY WORDS: character strengths, children, content analysis, happiness.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, issues of character, virtue and morality amongyouth – often under the rubric of character education – havereceived great attention from parents, educators, and policy mak-ers. Building and promoting good character among children andyouth are among the main goals of families, schools, and societies(e.g., Ispa, 2002). Research shows that certain character strengthsare negatively related to behavioral and emotional problemsamong youth such as depression, delinquency, and violence (e.g.,Benson et al., 1998; Cardemil et al., 2002) and positively relatedto desired outcomes like school success, prosocial behavior, andcompetence (e.g., Scales et al., 2000; Skinner and Wellborn, 1994;see Park, 2004a for a review). Character strengths are importantin their own right but also because they promote the individual’swell-being and happiness (see Park, 2004b, for a review).

The present study emerged from our interest in strengths ofcharacter. For several years, we have been involved in a project

Journal of Happiness Studies (2006) 7:323–341 � Springer 2006DOI 10.1007/s10902-005-3648-6

that describes and classifies strengths and virtues that enablehuman thriving. Here character strengths are defined as a familyof positive traits reflected in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.The Values in Action (VIA) Classification includes 24 positivetraits (Peterson and Seligman, 2004). We have developed reli-able and valid self-report surveys for measuring each of thesetraits among youth and adults (Park and Peterson, in press a;Peterson et al., 2005). However, our assessment work to datehas extended only to ten year-olds who are able to completeself-report questionnaires. Self-report questionnaires for veryyoung children are not useful because of limitations posed bylanguage development and cognitive maturation. Thus, there isa need for new ways to measure positive constructs such ascharacter strengths and happiness among young children.

Our recent studies found relations between certain characterstrengths and life satisfaction. Although part of the definition ofa character strength is that it contributes to fulfillment,strengths of the heart – zest, gratitude, hope, and love – aremore robustly associated with life satisfaction than more cere-bral strengths such as love of learning or creativity (Park et al.,2004). We find this pattern among youth and among adults, aswell as longitudinal evidence that these ‘‘heart’’ strengths fore-shadow subsequent life satisfaction (Park and Peterson, 2005,Unpublished Manuscript). These are interesting findings, espe-cially because they occur from early adolescence through oldage.

What about very young children? How early are links forgedbetween strengths of character and happiness? There are noinvestigations among very young children of character as a mul-tidimensional construct, although empirical studies shed somelight on the development of the components of character. Indi-vidual differences in some of the components of good characterexist even among very young children.

Even at age two, children may show kindness. Consider the15-month-old boy who brought his own teddy bear to a cryingfriend in order to comfort him (Hoffman, 1975). This child isnot unique: Consistent individual differences in caring havebeen observed at very young ages. Dunn et al. (1981) reportedthat 25% of 2–4 year-olds frequently comforted a distressed

NANSOOK PARK AND CHRISTOPHER PETERSON324

younger sibling, that 30% occasionally did so; and that the restrarely did so. With the development of language, toddlers beginto justify their actions and to voice concern with issues of fair-ness and justice (Dunn, 1988).

Also, cooperation and teamwork start to develop and in-crease throughout early childhood. Young children become bet-ter able to coordinate their activities with others, including thesharing of resources (Eckerman et al., 1989).

Some children at very young ages learn to control their im-pulses and to regulate their emotions. For example, children at2 and 3 years of age are sometimes able to refrain fromapproaching attractive items in the homes of other families(Kuczynski and Kochanska, 1990). Even children as young as18 months can delay gratification if asked – postponing theeating of tasty foods (Vaughan et al., 1984).

The more sophisticated character strengths (e.g., open-mind-edness, forgiveness, spirituality) probably do not fully developuntil adolescence, but the capacity for many other characterstrengths seem to emerge as early as age one and start to con-solidate themselves in the third year of life as stable traits (Hayet al., 1999). Thus, it seems possible and important to investi-gate individual differences in character strengths among childrenas early as age three.

While most current research on character strengths and hap-piness focuses on youth and adults (Park and Peterson, 2005,Unpublished manuscript; Park et al., 2005), studies of characterand happiness in young children on these topics have been lar-gely neglected. One of reasons is the long shadow of Piaget(1928), which means that research on children is still dominatedby studies of cognitive development as opposed to those of so-cial or emotional development. Our literature search for investi-gations of children and happiness unearthed no shortage ofstudies documenting what children believed about happiness,but very few studies of the actual happiness experienced bychildren.

Perhaps most problematic is the lack of an agreed-upon validand reliable way to measure individual differences in characterstrengths and happiness among young children too young tocomplete self-report questionnaires that have been productively

CHARACTER STRENGTHS AND HAPPINESS 325

employed with youth and adults (e.g., Huebner, 1991). Whenresearchers have measured happiness among the very young,they have usually relied on observations by trained observers(e.g., Robinson et al., 2001) or the reports of parents, teachers,and occasionally peers who use rating scales or sociometricmethods to identify more versus less happy (cheerful, satisfied)children (e.g., Blechman et al., 1986; Lawhon and Lawhon,2000; Martin et al., 2002).

If we are concerned with positive development across the life-span, we need to study early manifestations of characterstrengths and their relationships with happiness. Accordingly, weneed to develop reliable strategies for measuring the componentsof character and happiness at very early ages; this strategy willallow subsequent researchers to investigate the origin and devel-opmental trajectory of good character and well-being, andperhaps to devise early interventions that nurture both.

Adapting a method – free parental descriptions of the child –which has been used with success to verify Big Five personalitytraits among children between two and thirteen years of age(e.g., Kohnstamm et al., 1998), we obtained child descriptionsfrom a large number of parents and devised a content-analysisscheme for identifying each of the 24 VIA strengths. Thesedescriptions were also coded for the degree of happiness of thechild.

The significance of the current study is that it is the firststudy of early manifestations of strengths of character and theirassociation with happiness. In relying on ‘‘spontaneous’’ paren-tal descriptions of children, we avoided putting words in themouths of our parent informants.

Our working hypothesis was that the same ‘‘heart’’ strengthsassociated with life satisfaction and happiness among youth andadults would be associated with happiness among young chil-dren: zest, gratitude, hope, and love. However, because gratitudeis one of the strengths of character that requires a degree of psy-chosocial development to be manifest (Peterson and Seligman,2004), we were not convinced that we would find much evidenceof gratitude among young children much less any empiricalassociation with happiness (cf. Gleason and Weintraub, 1976;Weiner and Graham, 1988).


METHOD

Sample and Procedure

Respondents were a convenience sample of US adults who pro-vided basic demographic information and open-ended descrip-tions of their children on a password protected website.Respondents were recruited from notices placed in toy stores,daycare centers, and pediatrician offices in Northern Californiaand on a positive psychology and parenting list-serve. Individu-als with a child between the ages of three and nine years of agewere invited to contact us, and we directed them to our website.There they were provided with the following instructions:

We would like to understand the personal characteristics of young chil-dren. Do you have any children who are between 3 and 9? This projectwill require you to answer questions about your child. The total time ittakes to complete these questions is approximately 15–20 min.

In total, we obtained descriptions of 680 children. In some cases(23%), the same parent described more than one child, but theresults were the same when analyses were limited to the firstchild described, so here we present all of the data.

Respondents first completed a brief demographic question-naire. Results are shown in Table I. The children described ran-ged more-or-less equally across the ages from three to nine.Boys and girls were represented about equally (51% versus49%). Most children were described by their mothers (82%);most were identified as White (85%); and most were from mid-dle or upper-middle class families (86%). Approximately 20%were only children. Most of the children described had noreported history of serious illness or disability (94%).

Following the demographic questions, the respondent wasgiven the following instructions:

We are interested in your child’s personal characteristics and individualqualities. What can you tell us so that we might know your child well?Even small details are of interest. Please type your answer in the boxbelow. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. An answer of at leastseveral hundred of words would be most useful to us, but you can writeas much as you wish. If you want, you can share a story about your child


TABLE ISample characteristics of subjects (n=680)

Respondent

Father/stepfather/male guardian 112 17%Mother/stepmother/female guardian 560 82%Grandmother 5 <1%Other 3 <1%

Age of child described3 years 107 16%4 years 98 14%5 years 79 12%6 years 108 15%7 years 112 16%8 years 79 13%9 years 97 14%

Gender of childMale 345 51%Female 335 49%

Ethnicity of childAfrican American 10 2%Asian American/Pacific Islander 19 3%Latino/a 21 3%Native American 6 <1%White 577 85%Other 47 7%

Socioeconomic status of child’s familyUpper class 22 3%Upper-middle class 311 46%Middle class 274 40%Lower-middle class 64 9%Lower class 9 1%

Child history of serious illness or disability.Yes 39 6%No 641 94%

Birth order of childOnly child 136 20%Oldest child 223 33%Middle child 69 10%Youngest child 252 37%


that captures what he or she is all about. When you are done, please clickthe SUBMIT button. Thank you!

Written descriptions varied greatly in length, from 3 words to1351 words, averaging 211 words (SD=172). Even the veryshort descriptions were useful for our purposes because theyinvariably listed traits. The length of the description was notrelated to any of the results to be reported.

Content Analysis

Two expert judges independently coded the descriptions formention (=1) or not (=0) of each of the 24 VIA characterstrengths. The starting point of the coding scheme was thestrength names and their obvious synonyms as presented in theclassification (Peterson and Seligman, 2004). For example, thecharacter strength of kindness was not only coded from mentionof kindness but also from mention of generosity, nurturance,care, compassion, or niceness. The coding scheme was elabo-rated to capture the ways that parents describe variousstrengths among their children. For example, no one describeda child as zestful, vital, or ebullient, but parents did describetheir children as full of life or enthusiastic, and these words andphrases were considered indicators of the character strength ofzest. In some cases, the coding scheme was broadened to in-clude behavioral trends that reflected the strength of interest(see Table II). For example, parents rarely described their chil-dren as religious or spiritual, but they would say ‘‘she loves herGod’’ or ‘‘he says his prayers regularly.’’

Traits were not coded if they were presented in a negativeway. That is, recklessness was not coded as bravery; timiditywas not coded as prudence; mean practical jokes were notcoded as indicative of humor (Peterson and Seligman, 2004).

The descriptions were rich in the language of characterstrengths, and our coders did not need to resort to deep or dis-tant inference. The average description contained mention of3.09 strengths of character (SD=1.75). As would be expected,there was a moderate correlation between description lengthand the number of strengths coded (r=0.33, p<0.001).


We also coded two additional positive characteristics outsidethe character realm. Was the child described as smart (intelli-gent, bright, gifted, brilliant) in one or more ways, and was thechild described as physically attractive (beautiful, pretty, hand-some, striking, gorgeous)? We had two reasons for coding theseattributes. The first reason was to examine whether they wererelated to happiness; intelligence and beauty are not associatedwith happiness among adults (Argyle, 2001), but it is not clearif the same is true among young children. The second reasonwas to allow us to test for a general halo effect in how parentsdescribe their children.

TABLE IIExamples of coding

Character strength Example(s)

Appreciation of beauty loves to look at paintings, listen to classical musicAuthenticity always tells the truthBravery not afraid to do thingsCreativity is really talented at music, art, dance, writingCuriosity is interested in everything; always asks questionsFairness insists on equal treatmentForgiveness never holds a grudgeGratitude always says thank youHope always looks on the bright sideHumor tells jokes; makes me laugh; is a comedianKindness helps out around the houseLeadership is an alpha toddler; other children followLove has close friends; is devoted to younger brother;

is a Daddy’s girlLove of learning loves to read all of the time; loves schoolModesty lets others shineOpen-mindedness always considers all the anglesPerseverance works hard at thingsPerspective settles disputes among friendsPrudence is cautiousReligiousness relates Bible stories; reminds the family to praySelf-regulation follows rules wellSocial intelligence always knows how I am feelingTeamwork cooperates well with playmatesZest full of energy


Finally, we coded each description for the child’s happinessusing the following 7-point scale:

7 =happiness (joy, cheerfulness) explicitly described with asuperlative (e.g., extremely happy; always happy; unbelievablyjoyful)6=happiness described with an additive qualification (e.g.,very happy, quite happy)5=happiness described with no qualification4=happiness described with a limiting qualification (e.g.,somewhat happy, occasionally happy)3=happiness not named but implied by description of severalfrequent and enjoyed activities, shown by Levine et al. (1999)to be reliable precursors of judged happiness among youngchildren (e.g., loves to play with his trucks and does so all ofthe time; is always reading and talking about books)2=happiness not named but implied by description of onefrequent and enjoyed activity1=no mention or implication of happiness

A small number of parents described their children as unhappy,chronically anxious or depressed, and the like (7%), and thesedescriptions were coded as 0. In principle, a child could have beendescribed as happy but – for example – also anxious, but we didnot encounter such descriptions. Including these 0 codes or not inthe analyses reported makes no difference, so we describe all thedata.

Coding reliability was ascertained by kappa for the binarycodes and alpha in the case of the happiness scale. In all cases,these exceeded .70.

RESULTS

The average happiness rating was 2.89 (SD=2.21), and 54% ofthe descriptions were coded as 2 or greater. The result showedthat most children were at least somewhat happy. These resultsare comparable to those of adults (Diener and Diener, 1996).Also paralleling the adult data, demographic characteristicswere largely unrelated to rated happiness: age, gender, ethnicity,


and history of illness (Fs<1) (Argyle, 2001). Whether mother orfather provided the description was also unrelated to rated hap-piness.

Social class was associated with rated happiness: Childrenfrom the lower class received lower scores than did other chil-dren (F=2.87, p<0.05). Although not a robust effect, it againconfirms what is known about happiness among adults, specifi-cally that income has a curvilinear relationship with happiness,with a diminishing effect above what is needed to provide basicneeds (see Figure 1) (cf. Diener et al., 1985)

There were also modest effects on rated happiness of achild’s birth order (F=2.82, p<0.05). Youngest children(X=3.14) and only children (X=3.03) were described as some-what happier than oldest children (X=2.59) or middle children(X=2.67). The effects were not attenuated by controlling forsocial class or age of child (cf. Falbo and Polit, 1986).

Figure 1. Child happiness and family socioeconomic status.


Table III presents the prevalence of the character strengths.If it is possible to speak of a modal child, as seen by his or herparents, it is one who is loving, kind, creative, humorous, andcurious. These results also confirm theoretical speculation thatsome strengths of character – e.g., authenticity, gratitude, mod-esty, forgiveness, and open-mindedness – are not commonamong young children (Peterson and Seligman, 2004).

We also examined which strengths of character were associ-ated with happiness. Because of the large sample size and thelarge number of comparisons, we used a conservative p-level(i.e., .05/24=0.002). Three strengths of character were signifi-cantly related to happiness: love, hope, and zest (see Table III).

TABLE IIICharacter strengths and happiness (n=680)

Characteristic Prevalence (%) r with happiness

Authenticity 9 (1) 0.00Gratitude 10 (2) 0.07Modesty 10 (2) 0.01Forgiveness 11 (2) 0.02Open-mindedness 13 (2) 0.08Hope 14 (2) 0.12*Appreciation of beauty 15 (2) 0.05Perspective 20 (3) 0.09Religiousness 35 (5) 0.05Fairness 39 (6) 0.03Leadership 43 (6) 0.02Bravery 47 (7) 0.08Prudence 52 (8) 0.02Zest 67 (10) 0.31*Teamwork 81 (12) 0.05Social intelligence 82 (12) 0.03Self-regulation 83 (12) 0.04Perseverance 135 (20) –0.01Love of learning 136 (20) –0.02Curiosity 150 (22) –0.02Humor 179 (26) 0.07Creativity 231 (34) 0.08Kindness 261 (38) 0.00Love 378 (56) 0.31*

*p<0.002.


Gratitude is a strong correlate of life satisfaction for youth andadults, but not in the present sample of young children. AsTable III shows, gratitude was a very low prevalence strength.However, if we look just at the descriptions of children agedseven or older (n=288), the expected correlation between grati-tude and happiness emerged1, although modestly (r=0.16,p<0.008).

We tested the possibility of a halo effect by looking at whe-ther mention of intelligence2 and attractiveness in parentaldescription was conflated with parental attribution of other po-sitive characteristics (Dion et al., 1972). The prevalence of intel-ligence and attractiveness was 336 (49%) and 51 (8%),respectively. Neither intelligence (r=0.01) nor attractiveness(r=)0.05) was correlated with rated happiness, although theprevalence of intelligence was relatively high. Indeed, intelli-gence and attractiveness were not significantly associated withany of the character strengths with the exception of a modestyet interpretable relationship between attributed love of learningand intelligence; children described as loving to learn were morelikely to be described as intelligent than children not describedas loving to learn (57% versus 48%; k2=3.32, p<0.07) (cf.O’Neill, 2001).

DISCUSSION

In this study, we examined character strengths and their rela-tionship to happiness among young children using free parentaldescription. Although all 24 character strengths were found inparental description of children, some strengths of characterwere more frequently mentioned: love, curiosity, kindness, crea-tivity, and humor. In contrast, character strengths which requirea degree of cognitive maturation – such as open-mindedness,gratitude, forgiveness, modesty, and authenticity – were notcommonly mentioned (cf. Kohlberg 1981, 1984; Piaget, 1932).

As predicted, associations between happiness and thestrengths of love, hope, and zest were apparent even amongyoung children. These results converge with what we havefound in youth and adults, with one exception (Park et al.,


2004). While gratitude was related to happiness among youthand adults, it was not found among young children. In thepresent sample, an association between happiness and gratitudewas apparently only for children seven years of age and older.

If we take these results at face value, they confirm patternsfound between life satisfaction and strengths of character insamples of adolescents and adults (Park and Peterson, in press a;Park et al., 2004). Strengths of the ‘‘heart’’ are consistentlylinked to happiness, whereas strengths of the ‘‘mind’’ are not.These patterns converge with other lines of research that docu-ment much stronger associations between happiness and goodsocial relationships than between happiness and intelligence,school grades, and occupational prestige (Argyle, 2001; Dienerand Seligman, 2002).

The associations between these strengths of character and lifesatisfaction are apparent early in life, and indeed, they mayrecur across the lifespan because they are established so early.The character strength of love is presumably predisposed by asecure relationship between an infant and its caregiver (Bowlby,1969), and we know that securely attached children are betteradjusted, psychologically and socially, throughout life (e.g.,Kochanska, 2001). The character strength of hope is thought tobe established by a sense of safety early in life (Erikson, 1963),and we similarly know that hope is a robust correlate of well-being across the lifespan (Snyder, 2000).

The association between zest and happiness is hardly unex-pected – it is difficult to imagine a zestful but unhappy child –and it may reflect their common roots in positive affectivity oran extraverted and active temperament (Watson, 2002). Westress, though, that the association between zest and happinesswas not so robust as to suggest redundancy. So, most childrendescribed as zestful were also seen as happy, but there weremany happy children who were not described as zestful. As aprecursor of happiness, zest seems more sufficient than it doesnecessary.

It was interesting that only children and youngest childrenwere described as happier than other children, a finding notpreviously reported (Veenhoven, 2005). What they share incommon – perhaps – is not being displaced by a younger child


in the family. Further research on the effect of birth order onchildren’s happiness would be helpful to clarify this issue.

The result also showed that based on parental report, socio-economic status had effects on children’s happiness just likeamong adults (cf. Diener et al., 1985). Children from the lowerclass were described as less happy than other children, and thisis a finding that should be underscored. That ‘‘money does notbuy you happiness’’ is commonly believed, but the facts of thematter imply that poverty takes a toll on the well-being of theyoungest among us. Although we do not know the exact expla-nation for this, one can speculate that poverty could undercuthappiness in multiple ways involving the child directly or indi-rectly – e.g., lack of basic material resources, limited access tohealth care, lack of family time and so on.

Findings from the current study have implications for inter-ventions to bolster well-being. Interventions that target characterstrengths may provide a way to leverage happiness (Seligmanet al., 2005). Deliberate attempts to cultivate the psychologicalgood life – like those embodied in character education classes orafter-school youth development programs (e.g., Berkowitz, 2002;Roth and Brooks-Gunn, 2003) – should probably choose certaincharacter strengths as initial targets rather than others. Wealready know how to nurture gratitude (Miller, 1995) and hope(Gillham et al., 1995; McDermott and Snyder, 1999). Less clearis how to teach love or zest, although we do know some of theirnaturally-occurring precursors: secure attachments with caregiv-ers in the case of love and physical health and safety in the caseof zest (Peterson and Seligman, 2004). In any event, the presentresults suggest that the links between certain character strengthsand happiness are established rather early (cf. DeNeve andCooper, 1998). Interventions accordingly should take placesooner as opposed to later.

We would like to note that this is a cross-sectional study.Therefore, we do not know the temporal sequencing of charac-ter strengths and happiness among young children described inthe present study. In our studies of youth, we find evidence thatcharacter strengths predict later happiness to a greater degreethan happiness predicts later character strengths (e.g., Park andPeterson, 2005, Unpublished manuscript). However, this pattern


may not hold for very young children. We prefer a cautiousinterpretation for the time being that happiness and strengths ofthe heart simply go hand-in-hand among the young.

Relying on what parents have to say about their children hasa long tradition in developmental psychology, and the strategycertainly has a modicum of validity. Indeed, research has explic-itly confirmed that parents and young children agree highlyconcerning the positive emotions that the children experience(Levine et al., 1999), and it is clear in the present data that wewere not tapping a simple halo effect.

However, we are also the first to point out that our researchmethod is but a starting point that needs to be checked againstmore painstaking observational and experimental assessments ofhappiness and character among young children. Further fine-grained longitudinal studies including very young children thatcombine different assessment strategies to understand develop-ment, correlates and consequences of character strengths andwell-being are necessary.

The present study is significant in that it demonstrated thatresearch on positive traits can be extended to very young chil-dren using parental descriptions, allowed an understanding ofthe earliest manifestations of character strengths and their pos-sible continuity with analogous traits among youth and adults.Open-ended descriptions by parents of their young childrencould be reliably coded for mention of the 24 VIA strengths aswell as for degrees of happiness, providing positive psychologywith a new research strategy applicable not just to children butto all individuals – the quick, the famous, or the dead – unwill-ing or unable to complete the questionnaires that are the mostcommon research strategy in positive psychology (Park andPeterson, in press b).

NOTES

1 Some children as young as three years of age were described as always say-ing ‘‘thank you,’’ which we coded as gratitude. However, we suspect thatsuch children may have been taught a phrase only and not the spirit of grati-tude which among older individuals accompanies happiness.2 This may look like a Lake Woebegone effect – all children above average –but in fact, this result reflects in most cases a parent’s description of his or


her child as being intelligent or skilled at certain tasks, like spelling or math-ematics, rather than being across the broad intelligent. Psychologists con-tinue to debate whether intelligence is singular or plural, but many of theparents in our study have come down on the side of multiple intelligences(Gardner, 1983).

AUTHOR NOTES

This research was supported by the grant from the Values InAction Institute to the first author. We thank Lisa Christie,Russell Lebo, and Leeann Kartashevsky for their help in mak-ing this research possible.

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Address for correspondence:NANSOOK PARKDepartment of PsychologyUniversity of Rhode Island,Kingston, RI, 02881,USA.

E-mail: park@uri/edi


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