“Gratitude is thanking someone, and happiness is showing it”: A qualitative study of Colombian children’s perspectives on gratitude.

Abstract

Gratitude as a character strength is linked with positive emotions and can potentially provide many benefits to children and adolescents. Yet little is known about how and why children typically experience gratitude, and how to promote its development. We conducted focus groups and written exercises with 38 Colombian fifth graders to explore different components of their gratitude experiences: namely, the benefactors, benefits, feelings and behaviors associated with gratitude. There were many commonalities in these components, with all main coding categories found in both girls’ and boys’ answers, and in both public and private schools. Particularities in gratitude experiences were more fine-grained and connected with everyday details of children’s family configuration and economic opportunities. One emergent category in the analysis was the degree of effort that children saw benefactors (particularly family members) as investing in them. These findings can be used to help inform educational interventions, making them more relevant to children in urban Colombian and other Latin American contexts.