Character Strengths of Young Children and their Emotional Well-being in the Italian Context

• DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/ud9jf_v2
• Publication Date: 2025-02-11T00:49:10Z
• Authors: Kayina Abudurexiti; Massimo Stella; Laura Franchin
• Keywords: Developmental Psychology; Psychology; Child Psychology; Social and Behavioral Sciences

Character strengths are positive traits that emerge in early childhood. Guided by character strength theory, this study investigates character strengths of Italian children aged 3 to 6. We examined an Italian translation of the Character Strengths Inventory for Early Childhood (CSI-EC-Italy) with data from 123 parents in two phases: (i) Exploratory graph analysis identified 16 distinct character strengths with 40 items, leading to a condensed, more reliable version of the questionnaire (CSI-ItaCC), increasing the minimum reliability from 0.55 to 0.74; (ii) Regression analysis linked these strengths to emotional well-being, as measured by the I-PANAS-SF and SDQ. Results showed that in the Italian data, kindness was the strongest indicator (β = 0.64, t = 8.22, p <.001) of positive prosocial behavior. Creativity emerged as the strongest indicator (β = 0.28, t = 3.27, p = .009) of positive affect. Social intelligence was most strongly associated with (β = -0.36, t = -3.95, p < .001) fewer child difficulties, while leadership was most strongly associated with (β = -0.28, t = -3.14, p = .013) less negative affect. Our results indicate that different character strengths contribute uniquely to children’s emotional wellbeing.