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Positive Psychology: Optimism, Hope, Wisdom, and Courage

Optimism

  • One’s expectancy that good things rather than bad will happen

  • When a goals is of sufficient value, the individual would produce an expectancy about attaining that goal

  • Stable trait independent form self-efficacy

  • Attribution: the process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events

  • The optimist uses adaptive causal attributions to explain negative experiences/events

  • Makes external, variable, and specific attributions for failure-like events rather than internal, stable, and global attributes

Childhood Antecedents of Optimism

  • There is a genetic basis of optimism

  • Optimism can stem from childhood experiences that foster trust and secure attachments to parental figures

Measures of Optimism

  • Life Optimism Test (LOT)

  • Index of Optimism

    • self-mastery, self-esteem

    • can predict outcomes related to coping and adjustment

What can Optimism Predict?

  • staring college

  • performing in work situations

  • caring for Alzheimer’s patients

  • coping with cancer

  • coping in general

Hope

  • defined as a goal-directed thinking in which the person utilizes pathways of thinking (the capacity to find ways to desired goals) and agency thinking (motivations to use these ways)

  • If there’s a will, there’s a way.

Childhood Antecedents of Hope

  • Hope has no hereditary contribution but rather a learned cognitive set about goal-directed thinking

  • inherent part of parenting

  • components of hopeful that are in place by the age of 2

  • strong attachment to caregivers is crucial for imparting hope

Can Hope be Measured?

  • Hope Scale

  • Children’s Hope Scale

  • State Hope Scale

Hope can predict…

  • academics, sports, physical health, adjustment, psychotherapy

Collective Hope

  • level of goal-directed thinking of a large group of people

  • it is operative when several people join together to tackle a goal that would be impossible for any one person

Wisdom and Courage: 2 Universal Virtues

Wisdom

  • involves an integration of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding that incorporates tolerance for the uncertainties of life as well as its ups and downs

Baltes Model of Wisdom

  • Wisdom as Expert Knowledge

    • factual knowledge in fundamental pragmatics of life

    • knowledge in contexts of life and societal change

    • knowledge which considers uncertainties of life

    • procedural knowledge in fundamental pragmatics of life

    • knowledge which considers relativism values and goals

  • Definition of Wisdom: good judgment and advice in important but uncertain areas of life

Wisdom

  • found in persons seeking contemplative life (Sophia)

  • practical nature (Phronesis)

  • scientific understanding (Episteme)

  • process used to balance personal interests with environmental context to achieve a common good

  • this involves using tacit knowledge and personal values to form a judgment of or resolution for competing interests

Developing Wisdom

  • resolving conflicts leads to enhanced discernment and judgment

  • wisdom builds on knowledge, cognitive skill and personality characteristics

  • exposure to wise role-models

  • fluid intelligence, creativity, openness to experience, psychological mindedness, and general life-experiences orchestrate to produce wisdom

Characteristics of Wise People

  • Sage: the carrier of wisdom

  • Age: timeless and universal knowledge of wisdom

  • includes the understanding of affect in problem-solving

  • professional specialization does play a role in the manifestation of wisdom

Measurement of Wisdom

  • Values in Action Classification of Strengths

  • Wisdom Development Scale

    • self-knowledge

    • altruism

    • judgment

    • life knowledge/ life skills

    • emotional management

Courage

  • defined as behavioral approach despite the experience of fear, in an effort to better understand its relationship with anxiety, fear, and behavior

  • the planning and execution of great and expansive projects by putting forth ample and splendid effort of the mind

  • Confidence, with these projects, the mind self-confidently collects itself with sure hope

  • Patience, the voluntary and lengthy insurance of arduous and difficult things, which are honorable and useful

  • Perseverance, ongoing persistence in a well-considered plan

Types of Courage

  • Moral Courage: behavioral expression of authenticity in the face of discomfort, disapproval or rejection

  • Physical Courage: maintenance of societal good by expression of physical behavior

  • Vital Courage: perseverance through a disease or disability even when outcome is ambiguous

  • Physiological Courage: strength in facing destructive habits

  • Civil Courage: brave behaviors accompanied by anger and indignation that intends to reinforce societal and ethical norms without considering own social cost

Measures of Courage

  • Woodard-Pury Courage Scale

    • one’s job or self-interest

    • one’s beliefs

    • individual social and/or moral situations

    • situations relevant to family

  • Values in Action Inventory of Strengths

Positive Psychology: Optimism, Hope, Wisdom, and Courage

Optimism

  • One’s expectancy that good things rather than bad will happen

  • When a goals is of sufficient value, the individual would produce an expectancy about attaining that goal

  • Stable trait independent form self-efficacy

  • Attribution: the process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events

  • The optimist uses adaptive causal attributions to explain negative experiences/events

  • Makes external, variable, and specific attributions for failure-like events rather than internal, stable, and global attributes

Childhood Antecedents of Optimism

  • There is a genetic basis of optimism

  • Optimism can stem from childhood experiences that foster trust and secure attachments to parental figures

Measures of Optimism

  • Life Optimism Test (LOT)

  • Index of Optimism

    • self-mastery, self-esteem

    • can predict outcomes related to coping and adjustment

What can Optimism Predict?

  • staring college

  • performing in work situations

  • caring for Alzheimer’s patients

  • coping with cancer

  • coping in general

Hope

  • defined as a goal-directed thinking in which the person utilizes pathways of thinking (the capacity to find ways to desired goals) and agency thinking (motivations to use these ways)

  • If there’s a will, there’s a way.

Childhood Antecedents of Hope

  • Hope has no hereditary contribution but rather a learned cognitive set about goal-directed thinking

  • inherent part of parenting

  • components of hopeful that are in place by the age of 2

  • strong attachment to caregivers is crucial for imparting hope

Can Hope be Measured?

  • Hope Scale

  • Children’s Hope Scale

  • State Hope Scale

Hope can predict…

  • academics, sports, physical health, adjustment, psychotherapy

Collective Hope

  • level of goal-directed thinking of a large group of people

  • it is operative when several people join together to tackle a goal that would be impossible for any one person

Wisdom and Courage: 2 Universal Virtues

Wisdom

  • involves an integration of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding that incorporates tolerance for the uncertainties of life as well as its ups and downs

Baltes Model of Wisdom

  • Wisdom as Expert Knowledge

    • factual knowledge in fundamental pragmatics of life

    • knowledge in contexts of life and societal change

    • knowledge which considers uncertainties of life

    • procedural knowledge in fundamental pragmatics of life

    • knowledge which considers relativism values and goals

  • Definition of Wisdom: good judgment and advice in important but uncertain areas of life

Wisdom

  • found in persons seeking contemplative life (Sophia)

  • practical nature (Phronesis)

  • scientific understanding (Episteme)

  • process used to balance personal interests with environmental context to achieve a common good

  • this involves using tacit knowledge and personal values to form a judgment of or resolution for competing interests

Developing Wisdom

  • resolving conflicts leads to enhanced discernment and judgment

  • wisdom builds on knowledge, cognitive skill and personality characteristics

  • exposure to wise role-models

  • fluid intelligence, creativity, openness to experience, psychological mindedness, and general life-experiences orchestrate to produce wisdom

Characteristics of Wise People

  • Sage: the carrier of wisdom

  • Age: timeless and universal knowledge of wisdom

  • includes the understanding of affect in problem-solving

  • professional specialization does play a role in the manifestation of wisdom

Measurement of Wisdom

  • Values in Action Classification of Strengths

  • Wisdom Development Scale

    • self-knowledge

    • altruism

    • judgment

    • life knowledge/ life skills

    • emotional management

Courage

  • defined as behavioral approach despite the experience of fear, in an effort to better understand its relationship with anxiety, fear, and behavior

  • the planning and execution of great and expansive projects by putting forth ample and splendid effort of the mind

  • Confidence, with these projects, the mind self-confidently collects itself with sure hope

  • Patience, the voluntary and lengthy insurance of arduous and difficult things, which are honorable and useful

  • Perseverance, ongoing persistence in a well-considered plan

Types of Courage

  • Moral Courage: behavioral expression of authenticity in the face of discomfort, disapproval or rejection

  • Physical Courage: maintenance of societal good by expression of physical behavior

  • Vital Courage: perseverance through a disease or disability even when outcome is ambiguous

  • Physiological Courage: strength in facing destructive habits

  • Civil Courage: brave behaviors accompanied by anger and indignation that intends to reinforce societal and ethical norms without considering own social cost

Measures of Courage

  • Woodard-Pury Courage Scale

    • one’s job or self-interest

    • one’s beliefs

    • individual social and/or moral situations

    • situations relevant to family

  • Values in Action Inventory of Strengths

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