Washington: A new study has said that children as young as 5 years old understand that optimistic thinking can make a person feel better, according to a new study.
And parents’ own feelings about positive thinking may play a role in whether their children understand how thoughts influence emotions.
In the study, 90 mostly white children, ages 5 to 10, were read six illustrated stories in which two characters felt the same emotion after experiencing something positive (such as getting a new puppy), negative (such as spilling milk), or neutral (such as meeting a new teacher).
The children were then told how each character felt on a 7-point scale; the pictures on the scale ranged from a very sad face (0) to a neutral face (3) to a very happy face (6). For negative and positive events, the characters felt “medium bad” and “medium good,” respectively, with those in the ambiguous scenario feeling “OK (not good or bad).”
Researchers described the subsequent thoughts verbally, then asked the children to judge each character”s emotions and provide an explanation for those emotions. They were most interested in the degree to which children predicted different emotions for two characters in the same situation.
The study also found that children had the most difficulty understanding how positive thinking could boost someone”s spirits in situations that involved negative events-such as falling down and getting hurt.
In these coping situations, children’s levels of hope and optimism played a role in their ability to understand the power of positive thinking, but parents” views on the topic played an even larger part.
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