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Temperament and Happiness in Children in India

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Abstract

The relation between temperament and happiness was assessed in a sample of 441 children aged 7–14 years drawn from a population in Northern India. Parents assessed their children’s happiness and rated their children’s temperament using the Emotionality, Activity, and Sociability Temperament Survey (EAS). Children self-reported their own happiness using a single-item measure, the Oxford Happiness Scale Short Form, and the Subjective Happiness Scale. Parents’ temperament ratings conformed to the four factor structure proposed by Buss and Plomin (Temperament: early developing personality traits. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, 1984): Emotionality, Activity, Sociability, and Shyness. Temperament accounted for between 4 and 11% of the variance in children’s happiness depending on the measures. Children who were more social and active, and less shy, were happier. This result parallels the well-established relation between happiness and personality in adults and is similar to recent research on happiness and temperament in children; temperament traits akin to extraversion were positively associated with happiness. However, despite that neuroticism and its temperament counterpart are strongly and consistently linked to happiness in adults, the relation between happiness and the temperament trait associated with neuroticism (i.e., Emotionality) was weak. This suggests that the relations between temperament and happiness in children may not completely generalize across cultures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of British Columbia, Okanagan, 3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7, Canada

    Mark D. Holder

  2. Okanagan College, Kalamalka Campus, 7000 College Way (C 311), Vernon, BC, V1B 2N5, Canada

    Ben Coleman

  3. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Kamlesh Singh

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  1. Mark D. Holder
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  2. Ben Coleman
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  3. Kamlesh Singh
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Correspondence to Mark D. Holder.

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Holder, M.D., Coleman, B. & Singh, K. Temperament and Happiness in Children in India. J Happiness Stud 13, 261–274 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-011-9262-x

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