O conceito de felicidade em crianças

Abstract

Com o intuito de contribuir para a compreensão do bem-estar subjetivo e o aprimoramento dos processos de avaliação da qualidade de vida subjetiva infantil, este estudo buscou conhecer o conceito de felicidade em crianças. Participaram 200 crianças (52,5% meninas) de 5-12 anos, estudantes de escolas públicas e privadas de Porto Alegre, que responderam individualmente sobre o que pensam sobre a palavra felicidade e como definem felicidade. As respostas foram analisadas por análise de conteúdo, e comparações foram efetuadas para sexo, faixa etária e tipo de escola. Os conteúdos mais mencionados foram sentimentos positivos, lazer e amigos. As meninas destacaram sentimentos positivos na felicidade, enquanto os meninos referiram mais o lazer. A realização de estudos com base na visão das próprias crianças viabiliza avaliações mais adequadas da satisfação de vida e do bem-estar subjetivo infantil, bem como o desenvolvimento de programas de intervenção mais efetivos junto às mesmas.

Children’s and Adolescents’ Conceptions of Happiness

“…This is surprising given that adolescents compared to children tend to give more importance to relationships with peers rather than family (e.g., Fuligni & Eccles, 1993;Greenberg, Siegel, & Leitch, 1983). The obtained results are in line with the study by Giacomoni et al (2014), as children aged 11-12 mentioned family and peers to same extent. From a cultural psychological perspective, this effect might be due to collectivism which may override the developmental effect.…”

“…Chaplin (2009) found gender differences when children elaborated on the causes of happiness. Giacomoni et al (2014) also found differences between girls' and boys' conceptualizations of happiness. Yet, previous research on adults' conceptions of happiness did not find gender differences (Lu & Gilmour, 2004).…”

“…One exception is Giacomoni, Souza, and Hutz's (2014) study which investigated conceptions of happiness in Brazilian children aged 5 to 12. Participants mentioned eight different definitions of happiness (see Table 1).…”

“…Yet adolescence is regarded as the time when people have the cognitive and emotional capacities to reorganize their selfconceptions and to imagine alternative and future selves in order to develop a coherent sense of self (see Kroger, 2005;Schwartz, Donnellan, Ravert, Luyckx, & Zamboanga, 2013, for overviews). Because the development of a sense of self and identity are central to adolescents' psycho-social development, we expect that aspects of happiness referring to eudaimonia will only be mentioned by adolescents, not by children (see Freire et al, 2013;Giacomoni et al, 2014).…”

“…In particular, we investigated how children and adolescents define happiness and study differences in these lay theories across age groups and gender. To our knowledge only two studies have focused on happiness conceptions in children and adolescents (Freire et al, 2013;Giacomoni et al, 2014).…”