New research out of Missouri is flipping the script on hope, suggesting it’s much more than just wishful thinking.
Within psychology, research on hope has traditionally focused on its motivational characteristic tying it to goal-setting. However, findings from the University of Missouri’s Department of Psychological Science are challenging the field to understand hope as an emotion that can promote a sense of meaning in life.
The team of researchers, led by Dr Megan Edwards and Dr Laura King, suggests that hope is one of the strongest positive emotions and may even be more essential to constructing a positive well-being than gratitude or happiness.
Experiencing a meaningful life has been linked to positive impacts on a person’s physical health, relationships, and even income.
“Our research shifts the perspective on hope from merely a cognitive process related to goal attainment to recognising it as a vital emotional experience that enriches life’s meaning,” says Dr Edwards, a postdoctoral scholar at Duke University.
To conduct the study, the team analysed a range of data sets on emotions from over 2,300 participants across six studies.
The studies involved a diverse group of participants, with the first two studies analysing cross-sectional data from a sample of participants from the United States. The third study involved a secondary analysis of the daily diary data of 132 Chinese adults.
While the team analysed a wide range of emotions, such as excitement, happiness and contentment, the researchers found that across all six studies, hope was the only emotion to consistently predict a strong sense of meaning.
“This insight opens new avenues for enhancing psychological well-being,” says Edwards.
“Experiencing life as meaningful is crucial for just about every good thing you can imagine in a person’s life,” says King.
In previous studies, experiencing a meaningful life has been linked to positive impacts on a person’s physical health, relationships, and even income.
“This cornerstone of psychological functioning is not a rare experience — it is available to people in their everyday lives and hope is one of the things that make life feel meaningful,” King explains.
Based on this finding, the research team put forward some key approaches people can take to foster hope in their everyday lives.
Steps you can take to foster hope daily
Celebrate the small wins: The research team suggests appreciating any positive moments, even the simple small wins, can help to cultivate hope.
Show you care: They also propose taking part in nurturing and caring activities, like gardening or looking after children.
Look for progress: Additionally, a hopeful mindset also comes from taking time to recognise any growth and progress people have made towards a positive future.
For Edwards, the goal is now to help develop more useful strategies that can assist people in finding hope even in the face of adversity and hardships.
Edwards and King’s research is published in Emotion.