Psychological Development and Education ›› 2018, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (4): 403-409.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2018.04.03

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The Occurrence and Development of Children's Gratitude Awareness in Helping Situations

CHEN Qingqiu, XU Hua, WU Nan   

  1. Teachers College of Beijing Union University, Beijing 100011
  • Online:2018-07-15 Published:2018-07-15

Abstract: To examine the critical age and developmental trend of children's gratitude awareness, a total of 118 children aged 3 to 6 were selected as subjects in this study. Three experimental tasks in various helping situations were designed to explore the different stages that children acquire the gratitude awareness. The three helping situations were:a generous benefactor vs. a stingy person (situation 1), a giver vs. a good person (situation 2) and a situation of expanding the gratitude virtue to others (situation 3). The results show that the critical age of the gratitude awareness in situation 1 and situation 2 is 5 years old, and it is speculated that the critical age of the awareness of gratitude expanding in situation 3 is after age 6. The awareness of gratitude in each situation increases with ages.

Key words: gratitude awareness, helping situation, children

CLC Number: 

  • B844

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