Hi, I’m Carin Rockind, welcome to PPND Bites, where we give you 60-second helpings of the positive psychology news you need to know. The world news has been pretty challenging lately. No matter what your political preference there’s a lot going on. Even I began to lose hope, and I teach happiness for a living. So the question is, is there anything we can do to regain hope?
Well, CR Synder’s hope theory tells us that hope is having agency or motivation and strategies to reach your goal. And a 2018 study of 280 participants validated the original hope scale. These participants took the hope scale as well as an optimism scale and a self-efficacy scale and then stated their upcoming goals, and then looked at what predicted reaching those goals. What the researchers found is that high hope predicted having more strategies to actually reach your goals. It also predicted having more important pro-social goals. What that tells us is that if we can find some additional strategies to reach whatever our goal is with creating happiness in the world, we’re more likely to achieve it. And if we have those strategies we’ll probably have more motivation and therefore more hope. So I hope that this gives you more hope and helps you take a bite outta happiness. Bye for now.
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References
Cheavens, J. S., Heiy, J. E., Feldman, D. B., Benitez, C., & Rand, K. L. (2018). Hope, goals, and pathways: Further validating the hope scale with observer ratings. Journal of Positive Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2018.1484937