The New Psychology of Hope



Recall the last time you felt the emotion of hope. You were awaiting an outcome but had no idea of how it would turn out. As you spent however many hours or days in suspense, you imagined a variety of possible scenarios, all the time wishing that things would turn out well. Perhaps you or a loved one applied for an important position or educational opportunity. After pushing the “submit” button, there’s nothing more you can do. To keep your morale up, you happily imagine the day when the “congratulations” email arrives.

Although recognizing hope as an emotion, psychologists who study this state of animated suspension have regarded it more as a set of beliefs or desires than a feeling. It is true that when you’re hoping for a positive outcome, you wonder whether you’ll get it, but this doesn’t take into account the way it can boost your happiness. Hope keeps your spirits lifted regardless of what the objective situation may be.

Hope’s Emotional Qualities

Based on the observation that psychology has missed out on studying hope’s emotional qualities, University of Missouri’s Megan Edwards and colleagues (2024) note that hope is a unique emotion. Within the “mood-as-information framework,” hope may “function as a potentially adaptive affective link to desired outcomes that remain ‘on hold’ or are in the distant future and promote effective self-regulation.” In other words, when you don’t know how things will turn out, allowing yourself to experience this positive emotion can keep you going until you do learn of the outcome, whatever it may be.

This view of hope as an emotional state is distinct from the prevailing literature that regards hope as either a drive toward achieving a goal or a belief in your own ability to achieve that goal, in other words, a sense of self-efficacy. Yet, as Edwards et al. note, “Life experience tells us that the feeling of hope can exist even when making strides toward a goal is impossible.”

Given the potential for hope as an emotion to serve an adaptive function, the University of Missouri researchers decided to investigate whether they could induce this positive mood state through experimental manipulation. Such an induction could potentially help people through the toughest of times when a desired outcome seems bleak though still attainable.

Inducing Hope Experimentally

Of all the possible ways to inspire people to feel more hopeful, Edwards and her collaborators believed that images of children could hold unique potential. As they note, there are many ways to bring about the emotion of hope, but children—and especially infants—should be among the most evocative. Consistent with Erik Erikson’s theory and the concept of generativity, “the next generation holds the possibilities for innovation, progress, and change.” This begs the question of why some people seem stuck in stagnation (the polar opposite of generativity), in which they berate the young rather than have faith in them to carry forward into the future. However, all other things being equal, the authors maintain that it’s hard to look at the face of an infant and not feel some type of reason to keep carrying on.

Across seven studies on a total of 3,357 adults, the researchers manipulated the online presentation of specific images intended to generate feelings of hope. The studies involved a variety of comparisons of photos of infants vs. adults (such as sleeping or crying) as well as photos vs. portraits of infants, baby- vs. adult-related objects, and photos of trees vs. saplings and puppies vs. dogs. Participants rated their emotions on 1 to 7 scales for happy, hopeful, hostile, nostalgic, sad, and worried. They also completed scales specifically measuring hope (e.g., “I am hopeful with regard to my life”). The key contrast on the emotion rating scales was between “hopeful” and “happy.” Non-college student participants also answered a question asking them how hopeful they felt that they would win a raffle being offered to participants in which 2 out of 400 people could pull the lucky ticket.

The findings across these multiple conditions supported the study’s prediction that photos of infants would produce stronger feelings of hope, even after factoring out happiness and the possibility that parental feelings could influence hope ratings. Even saplings vs. trees worked as hope inducers, but puppies vs. dogs did not. As the author team concluded, “In sum, the things most closely representing that which is tied to human or the world’s future (infants and tree saplings vs. objects, paintings, puppies) were the most effective at inducing feelings of hope.”

In contrast to the effect of “young life” induction on feelings of hope, there was no effect of study condition on hopefulness as a general trait (i.e., being generally hopeful). Additionally, although people overestimated their odds of winning the raffle (35 percent vs. the actual 0.5 percent), there was no effect of manipulation on this measure of hope. It may be more of a challenge to turn an individual’s entire life perspective around by providing reminders that the future might be better than the present (as represented by young life). However, as a means to help people wait when they have no choice but to do so, presenting reminders of a better future could help facilitate the adaptational process of coping with uncertainty.

Inspiring Hope When All Seems Lost, or at Least Uncertain

These fascinating results suggest that the simple exercise of taking a break from your current preoccupations to visualize a hopeful image could provide a strong antidote to feeling that there is no end in sight when you’re forced to sit tight until your future can become revealed. Moreover, you don’t have to be a hopeful or optimistic person to be able to imagine positive outcomes when that outcome is no longer in your control.

Returning to the example of that online application, the Edwards et al. findings suggest that there’s no point in talking yourself out of the prospect of success. You might even, taking a page from the study’s playbook, go ahead and browse through your social media feed for all those images of babies and young children. Puppies didn’t work in the study, but maybe newborn kittens would. There are plenty of those in people’s image streams.

Another important takeaway from the Edwards et al. study is that hope as a feeling is distinct from hope as an aspirational goal or even belief in yourself. You don’t have to experience anything other than a wave of this positive emotion to help yourself over the hump of discouragement.

To sum up, as an adaptive emotion, the ability to experience hope even when all seems lost may be just what you need as you take steps toward a more positive and fulfilling future.


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