"Feeling bad" and "feeling good": how do children differentiate them?

The aim was to investigate some aspects of children’s conceptualization of “feeling good” (well-being) and “feeling bad” (discomfort) as states implied in either positive or negative events in their daily life. Our interest was to observe whether positive and negative internal states are represented as symmetrical or asymmetrical concepts and the relationship between the two types of states. In the first study we addressed this issue by examining how children aged 5, 7 and 9 narrated personal events associated with either positive or negative internal states. In this paper, we analysed children’s narratives in terms of looking at whether internal states made reference to the physical or the psychological domain. While older children, compared to younger, characterized “feeling bad” in psychological terms vs. physical, at all ages children characterized “feeling good” mostly in psychological terms. In the second study, the interest was to further explore children’s representation by proposing a task based on a more abstract kind of knowledge. To fulfil this goal, we investigated children’s ability to define general linguistic expressions referring either to positive or to negative internal states. We found that only for “feeling bad”, but not for “feeling good”, age influenced children ability to introduce elements belonging to both physical and psychological domains. Results were discussed in terms both of dimensions underlying discomfort and well-being