Implicit notions of a happy person in elementary school students

Abstract

The article is devoted to the substantiation and results of a study of implicit notions of a happy person in elementary school students. The methodological foundation is constructed by D.A. Leontiev’s two-level model of happiness, K. Riff’s concept of happiness as the basis of psychological well-being, and V.L. Sitnikov’s concept of the image of a person. The deployed research method is “SPI(H) — the Structure of a Person’s Image (Hierarchical)” (V.Sitnikov) including the verbal and non-verbal associative experiment with the subsequent content analysis. The novelty of the study lies in the comparison of the image of a happy person and self-image through the psychosemantic method including a comparative analysis of the notions of a happy person in children from complete and incomplete families. A happy person is associated by elementary school children with an emotionally positive attitude towards life, a responsible and caring attitude towards people, the presence of a family and active interaction with it, less often with success in educational and intellectual activity and material well-being, as well as the presence of friends. A happy person is idealized by younger students, however, their image is more abstract compared to children’s self-images. Elementary school students from complete families are characterized by greater conformity of the self-image with the image of a happy person whereas only half of the children from incomplete families show such correspondence. The predominant modality of both images is positive in all children. Social, bodily, and metaphorical characteristics are more common in the image of a happy person among children from incomplete families while the conventional social role characteristics dominate among children from complete families. The prospects for further study of the image of a happy person in elementary school children within the framework of family psychology are outlined.