Faculty Mentor(s)

Dr. Kendra Thomas, Psychology

Document Type

Poster

Event Date

4-12-2024

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to conduct an exploratory analysis to understand if high pessimism and high virtuous Ithemba hope (see table below) can coexist as individual differences. The virtue of Ithemba hope is operationally defined as a purposeful vision in adversity, encouraging others for the common good (Thomas et al. under review). A qualitative study has suggested that the virtue of hope can coexist with pessimism especially in the context of high adversity, showing that anticipating bad events with a hopeful mindset can result in positive outcomes of flourishing (Thomas et al., 2022). This study builds on the construct of virtuous hope and will search for more variables it relates to such as pessimism, that we measure as the opposite of optimism. Hope and optimism have long been regarded as distinct but correlated variables. Rand (2008) suggests that, despite sharing many overlapping qualities, particularly in their goal-oriented nature, hope differs from optimism. Optimism focuses on the broader belief that positive outcomes will occur with the impact of both internal and external factors. In contrast, hope focuses on situation-specific expectancies and outcomes along with the personal impact on goals. The sample (n=397) consisted of students attending a liberal arts institution who were also enrolled in an introductory psychology course. The majority of the sample identified as female (70.7%), while the remaining sample identified as male (28.2%) or other (1%). This study utilized an existing dataset to explore for differences suggesting high pessimism and high virtuous hope can coexist. The dataset included many measures such as big-five personality traits, religion, spirituality, flourishing, and forgiveness. Four groups (high pessimism and virtuous hope, high pessimism and low virtuous hope, low pessimism and high virtuous hope, low pessimism and virtuous hope) were created for comparison. Further relational analysis will utilize the various measures for comparison between the groups and will be analyzed before the conference. Through these comparisons, we hypothesize that pessimism and virtuous hope will significantly differ enough to coexist with each other as separate variables of well-being.

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