Hope – a driving force of optimal human development
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
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| Description | In psychology, hope can be understood as hopeful thinking, emotional experience, character strength, or a transcendental phenomenon. In our research we distinguish between two main perspectives of hope: dispositional hope (an individualistic, cognitive perspective) and perceived hope (a transcendental, spiritual perspective). The common aim of a number of our research studies on hope was to explore the role of dispositional and perceived hope in life satisfaction, depression, quality of interpersonal relationships, and physical health. We investigated how hopeful thinking gets reflected in different kinds of life experience in children, students, adults, old people, but also homeless shelter workers and clients. Recently, we studied the role of hope in subjective well-being on a large sample of 1,400 respondents from the Czech Republic, aged between 15 and 80 years. We found that more hopeful people were more satisfied with life, maintained high-quality interpersonal relationships, and were also healthier. Perceived hope and meaningfulness turned out to be the two main independent (negative) predictors of depression. The results also show that people who participate in volunteering and charity activities can be significantly happier than other people. They tend to have more optimistic expectations for the future and experience greater meaningfulness and spirituality in their lives. Hope seems to be a driving force of optimal human development and a valuable key to the flourishing of both the individual and the whole society. |