Positive Psychology: Goals, Optimism, and Hope

Flashcards based on key concepts from the lecture on positive psychology, focusing on goals, optimism, and hope.

What are positive expectancies?

Beliefs that the future is likely to be positive.

What is optimism according to Helen Keller?

Faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

What did Klug & Maier (2015) find regarding goal progress and psychological well-being?

Greater progress towards goals is associated with more positive affect and less negative affect.

What does SMART stand for in goal setting?

• Specific: set real number with real deadlines

• Measurable: make sure your goal is trackable

• Attainable: work towards a goal that is challenging but possible

• Realistic: be honest with yourself- you know what you and your team are capable of

• Time-bound: give yourself a deadline

What is dispositional optimism?

• The tendency to believe that outcomes in one’s life will be positive, favorable, or desirable

• generalized outlook not tied to any single area of life or set of goals

• optimism acts as a personality trait with levels staying stable over time

What are intrinsic goals?

Goals that satisfy our deepest needs and values, often including personal growth and interpersonal closeness.

What is the Life Orientation Test (LOT)?

A self-report scale to measure dispositional optimism developed by Sheier and Carver.

How does hope theory define hope?

Hope consists of:

• goals: anything that people want to get, do, be, accomplish or experience

• pathways: plans or strategies people believe will lead to goals

• agency: the collection of beliefs that motivate people to work toward achieving their goals

may be a somewhat stronger predictor of achievement and well-being in controllable situations

What are approach goals?

Goals that involve attaining, achieving, or increasing something.

What are the effects of unrealistic optimism?

Leads people to take unnecessary risks, believing they are less vulnerable than they really are.

personal importance of goals in Brunstein, 1993

• generally more committed to pursuing goals that are personally important

• Grateful people more likely to make positive interpretations of situations and more likely to remember events more positively.

difficulty of goals characterized in Wiese, 2007

• Stronger positive emotions from accomplishing more challenging goals

difficulty of goals characterized in Locke and Latham, 2015

• Difficult goals also appear to be more motivating, often leading to better performance

difficulty of goals characterized in Kerr and LePelley, 2013

there may be a threshold where, beyond a certain point, greater goal difficulty leads to lowered motivation

Avoidance Goals

involve avoiding, stopping or reducing something

approach vs avoidance in Higgens, 1997

People who habitually frame goals in approach-oriented ways tend to be more successful at achieving them than those who frame goals in avoidance-oriented ways

specific goals

“detail specific, tangible rewards achieved by particular behaviors in response to particular contexts” according to Fujita and MacGregor, 2012

abstract goals

“general aims that transcend specific situations” according to Fujita and MacGregor 2012

what does Sheeran and Webb 2012 show

that people tend to perform better when their goals are more specific, and thus experience greater emotional well-being

what are extrinsic goals

Goals that primarily lead to external rewards and approval like wealth, status, or fame

what does Kassar and Ryan, 2001 and Koestner et al., 2002 show?

people with greater numbers of intrinsic goals tend to experience higher levels of psychological well-being than those with greater numbers of extrinsic goals and are more motivated to achieve their goals

dispositional optimism for coping with distress

• Optimism consistently linked to lower levels of personal distress, pessimism to higher levels of distress

dispositional optimism for coping with life transitions

• Having 1st child

  • Optimism may offer resistance to post-partum depression

• Coronary bypass surgery

  • Optimists reported less presurgical distress, more confidence in and satisfaction with their medical care, more relief and happiness shortly after surgery, and greater post-surgery lift satisfaction

Coping with HS to College Transition in Aspinwall and Taylor (1992)

• examined 3 individual differences as predictors of successful adaptation

• Self-esteem, perceived control, and optimism

• At beginning of second semester, college students completed 4 measures related to college adjustment, responding to items addressing their levels of stress, their happiness, and their general well-being

• Optimism had a direct and independent positive effect

• Perceived control and self-esteem were more indirect and depended on their relation to active rather than avoidant coping with college success

  • High self-esteem and personal control improved adjustment only if students also actively sought solutions and help for adjustment problems

  • If they avoided rather than confronted their problems, the benefits of self-esteem and personal control were diminished

learned optimism

• developed by martin seligman; process of recognizing and challenging pessimistic thoughts in order to develop more positive behaviors

• stable vs temp, global vs situation-specific, internal vs external

• Seligman and his colleagues developed the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) to measure people’s explanatory styles

what is the right way to criticize (child and self)

• be accurate with blame when criticizing self and child

  • saying “you’re so lazy” makes child believe he is lazy and it is permanent and unchangeable

• when appropriate, criticize with an optimistic explanatory style

  • focus on specific and temporary personal causes and avoid blaming the child’s character or ability

if someone falsely accuses us, we dispute with them but when we have pessimistic thoughts, rarelt do we dispute them

1. recognize pessimistic thought

2. dispute with ABCDE model

ABCDE Model

• A: Adversity

• B: Beliefs

• C: usual consequences

• D: disputation of your routine belief

• E: Energization that occurs when dispute successfully

disputations

involve checking out the accuracy of the beliefs about ourselves that are encouraging us to feel pessimistic

4 ways to make disputations convincing

• Evidence

  • Show negative belief is factually incorrect

  • Most negative beliefs are overreactions

  • E.g., “worst in class”…ask other students about their grade

• Alternatives

  • Ask yourself if there are alternative ways to look at the problem which are less damaging to yourself, and focus on causes that are changeable

  • Scan for all possible contributing causes (pessimists latch on to worst of all these causes, usually permanent and pervasive one)

  • Focus on causes that are changeable, specific, and nonpersonal

• Implications

  • Negative belief may be true…so, decatastrophize.

  • E.g., I’m factual and straightforward. What’s the implication? Doesn’t mean I won’t have any friends.

• Usefulness:

  • Is belief destructive? How can you change situation in future?

Measuring Hope

• The Hope Scale, which measures hope in a trait-like way

• The State Hope Scale, which measures one’s momentary, or “state” level of hope

Psychological Health and Well-being:

• Greater hope and optimism are associated with lower depression and anxiety, as well as higher self-esteem and meaning in life (e.g., Feldman & Snyder, 2005).

• People with higher hope and optimism also tend to follow through on their goals and experience greater goal accomplishment than people with lower levels of these constructs.

Physical Health and Well-being:

• Higher hope and optimism are associated with health-promoting behaviors (e.g., being a non-smoker, regular exercise).

• People with higher optimism and hope also appear to cope better with pain and may perceive painful stimuli as less painful than people with lower levels of these constructs (Sheier & Carver, 1992; Snyder et al., 2005).

Unrealistic optimism (aka, optimism bias)

• Study: Weinstein (1980) listed 24 negative events ranging from relatively small (your car turns out to be a lemon) to catastrophic (developing cancer), and asked college students to estimate their risk for each. For nearly all the events, most students indicated they were at lower risk than other students at their school of the same age and gender. Statistically, this is impossible.

• May lead people to take unnecessary risks, believing they are less vulnerable than they really are.

• Not easy to change.

Culture and positive expectancies

• Positive expectancies may have different effects in groups facing high societal barriers.

• This is perhaps most apparent in research on the psychological phenomenon known as John Henryism, the tendency to respond actively to stressors with the expectation that determination and hard work will lead to success. (Named for 19th century African American folk hero, John Henry.)

• Studies show that people with high levels of John Henryism, but who also have few financial resources and face high societal barriers, have increased risk of cardiovascular problems and generally diminished physical health (Brody, Yu, Miller, Ehrlich, & Chen, 2018; Mujahid, James, Kaplan, & Salonen, 2017).

• Black Americans, facing discrimination and significant structural barriers, are particularly vulnerable to this set of circumstances (Bennett et al., 2004).

what does the Shigehiro Oishi and Ed Diener (2001) show comparing the goals of white american college students with Asian American college students

• In a series of studies, they asked students to write down goals they planned to pursue during the next month and rate each on the degree to which it was independent and interdependent.

• A month later, participants reported how much progress they had made toward these goals and completed a life satisfaction survey.

• The results revealed a cultural difference: The more progress the White students had made toward achieving independent goals (those to achieve fun and enjoyment for themselves), the more satisfied they felt about their lives. In contrast, among the Asian American students, making progress on independent goals wasn’t related to life satisfaction at all. For them, more progress on interdependent goals (those to benefit family or friends), was related to greater life satisfaction.