Hope

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers the way in which hope and optimism are understood. In psychology, hope and optimism tend to be equated with one another, and both are cast in terms of hedonic personal resources. Psychological models such as Learned Optimism, Hope Theory, and Dispositional Optimism tend to ground hope/optimism in self-confidence, problem-solving, and beliefs about personal agency. They thus envisage hope and optimism as largely cognitive, modifiable personal traits which have instrumental benefit in enabling an individual’s goal pursuit. Philosophers make a clearer distinction between hope and optimism than most psychologists, and have distinguished between hoping-that and hoping-in. Hope can be sustained in relation to other agents. This collective, interpersonal understanding of hope can be contrasted with the intrapersonal psychological construal. The collective aspects of hope resonate with earlier psychoanalytic understandings of hope that emphasized how hope exists between agents and is grounded in the confidence of trust.