Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (35 page)

a study of fast-food outlets
: Peterson and Luthans, “The positive impact and development of hopeful leaders.”

Indeed, research has examined
: S. P. Buckelew, R. S. Crittendon, J. D. Butkovic, K. B. Price, and M. Hurst, “Hope as a predictor of academic performance,”
Psychological Reports
103 (2008): 411–14; J. Ciarrochi, P. C. Heaven, and F. Davies, “The impact of hope, self-esteem, and attributional style on adolescents’ school grades and emotional well-being: A longitudinal study,”
Journal of Research in Personality
41 (2007): 1161–78; L. A. Curry, C. R. Snyder, D. L. Cook, B. C. Ruby, and M. Rehm, “Role of hope in academic and sport achievement,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
73 (1997): 1257–67; M. W. Gallagher and S. J. Lopez, “Hope, self-efficacy, and academic success in college students,” poster presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Boston, 2008; R. Gilman, J. Dooley, and D. Florell, “Relative levels of hope and their relationship with academic and psychological indicators among adolescents,”
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
25 (2006): 166–78; S. C. Marques, J. L. Pais-Ribeiro, and S. J. Lopez, “The role of positive psychology constructs in predicting mental health and academic achievement in children and adolescents: A two-year longitudinal study,”
Journal of Happiness Studies
12, no. 6 (2011): 1049–62. Related research also includes the longitudinal studies listed subsequently.

The most compelling evidence
: C. R. Snyder, H. S. Shorey, J. Cheavens, K. M. Pulvers, V. H. Adams III, and C. Wiklund, “Hope and academic success in college,”
Journal of Educational Psychology
94 (2002): 820–26; L. Day, K. Hanson, J. Maltby, C. Proctor, and A. Wood, “Hope uniquely predicts objective academic achievement above intelligence, personality, and previous academic achievement,”
Journal of Research in Personality
44 (2010): 550–53; S. J. Lopez and M. W. Gallagher,
Academic Trajectories
(under review).

Three of these studies
: Ibid.

In the fourth study
: K. L. Rand, A. D. Martin, and A. Shea, “Hope, but not optimism, predicts academic performance of law students beyond previous academic achievement,”
Journal of Research in Personality
45 (2011): 683–86.

When Gallup asked one million people
: Unpublished analysis of data from the Gallup-Healthways Wellbeing Index and the Gallup Student Poll.

Because of this observation
: M. W. Gallagher and S. J. Lopez, “Positive expectancies and mental health: Identifying the unique contributions of hope and optimism,”
Journal of Positive Psychology
4 (2009): 548–56.

According to well-being expert Ed Diener
: E. Diener, “Subjective well-being,”
Psychological Bulletin
95 (1984): 542–75.

Even a brief intervention
: S. C. Marques, J. P. Ribeiro, and S. J. Lopez, “Building hope for the future: A program to foster strengths in middle-school students,”
Journal of Happiness Studies
12 (2011): 139–52.

Longitudinal studies of workers
: J. B. Avey, F. Luthans, R. M. Smith, and N. F. Palmer, “Impact of positive psychological capital on employee well-being over time,”
Journal of Occupational Health Psychology
15 (2010): 17–28.

For example, in a recent study of firefighters
: L. Steffen, “The relationship of dispositional hope with daily stress and affect in fire service” (under review). For a general discussion of goal shielding, see A. Achtziger, P. M. Gollwitzer, and P. Sheeran, “Implementation intentions and shielding goal striving from unwanted thoughts and feelings,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
34 (2008): 381–93.

may contribute directly to meaning and purpose
: D. B. Feldman and C. R. Snyder, “Hope and the meaningful life: Empirical and theoretical associations between goal-directed thinking and life meaning,”
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
24 (2005): 401–21.

Rick Snyder, my mentor
: For a complete account see C. R. Snyder, S. J. Lopez, and J. T. Pedrotti,
Positive Psychology: The Scientific and Practical Explorations of Human Strengths
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010).

Rick’s work on hope and pain
: C. R. Snyder et al., “Hope against the cold: Individual differences in trait hope and acute pain tolerance on the cold pressor task,”
Journal of Personality
73 (2005): 287–312.

In one study, hopeful people
: Ibid.

These coping studies
: N. Nollen, C. Befort, K. Pulvers, A. James, H. Kaur, M. Mayo, Q. Hou, and J. Ahluwalia, “Demographic and psychosocial factors associated with increased fruit and vegetable consumption among smokers in public housing
enrolled in a randomized trial,”
Health Psychology
27 (2008): 252–59; R. Floyd and D. McDermott, “Hope and sexual risk-taking in gay men,” paper presented at the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, August 1998; K. Pulvers, L. Cox, S. J. Lopez, J. Selig, and J. Ahluwalia, “Hope for coping with the urge to smoke: A real-time study,” poster presented at the Society of Behavioral Management, San Diego, 2008; K. Pulvers, L. Cox, S. J. Lopez, J. Selig, and J. Ahluwalia, “Hope for coping with the urge to smoke: A real-time study” (under review); C. Feudtner, “Hope and the prospects of healing at the end of life,”
Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
11 (2005): 23–30; C. Feudtner, K. W. Carroll, K. R. Hexem, J. Silberman, T. I. Kang, and A. E. Kazak, “Parental hopeful patterns of thinking, emotions, and pediatric palliative care decision-making: A prospective cohort study” (manuscript submitted for review, 2010).

Professor Carla Berg
: C. J. Berg, M. Rapoff, C. R. Snyder, and J. M. Belmont, “The relationship of children’s hope to pediatric asthma treatment adherence,”
Journal of Positive Psychology
2, no. 3 (2007): 176–84; A. D. Branstetter, C. J. Berg, M. S. Rapoff, and J. M. Belmont, “Predicting children’s adherence to asthma medication regimens,”
Journal of Behavior Analysis in Sports, Fitness, and Medicine
1, no. 3 (2010): 172–85.

“Hopelessness Predicts Mortality”
: S. Stern, R. Dhanda, and H. Hazuda, “Hopelessness predicts mortality in older Mexican and European Americans,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
63 (2001): 344–51. Similar evidence for the hope-longevity link can be found in S. A. Everson, D. E. Goldberg, G. A. Kaplan, R. D. Cohen, E. Pukkala, J. Tuomilehto, and J. T. Salonen, “Hopelessness and risk of mortality and incidence of myocardial infarction and cancer,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
58 (1996): 113–21.

Chapter 5: How Investing in the Future Pays Off Today

AJ’s mother, Mary
: Portion of AJ’s story was shared in J. Clifton,
The Coming Jobs War
(New York: Gallup Press, 2011).

“Hello Mr. Clifton”
: AJ sends frequent updates to Jim and other Gallup associates. In July 2012 I got the chance to visit with him. He is excited about the future and is surrounded by people who will help him get there.

Let’s go back to middle school
: M. Destin and D. Oyserman, “Incentivizing education: Seeing schoolwork as an investment, not a chore,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
46 (2010): 846–49.

The second group saw a graph:
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/53/celebrities08_The-Celebrity-100_EarningsPrevYear.html
.

Thanks to the work of Roy Baumeister
: R. Baumeister and J. T. Tierney,
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
(New York: Penguin Books, 2011).

But a study led by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen
: G. Oettingen and T. A. Wadden, “Expectation, fantasy, and weight loss: Is the impact of positive thinking always positive?,”
Cognitive Therapy and Research
15, no. 2 (1991): 167–75.

A group of newly minted professionals
: G. Oettingen and D. Mayer, “The motivating function of thinking about the future: Expectations versus fantasies,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
83, no. 5 (2002): 1198–1212. For more about how to make fantasies more functional, see G. Oettingen, D. Mayer, J. S. Thorpe, H. Janetzke, and S. Lorenz, “Turning fantasies about positive and negative futures into self-improvement goals,”
Motivation and Emotion
29 (2005): 237–67.

This is what writer and activist
: B. Ehrenreich, “Pathologies of hope,”
Harper’s
, February 2007, available at
http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/hope.htm
. For a broader discussion of her views on optimism and happiness, see B. Ehrenreich,
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009).

The components of hopeful thinking
: C. R. Snyder, “Genesis: Birth and growth of hope,” in C. R. Snyder, ed.,
Handbook of Hope: Theory, Measures, and Applications
(San Diego: Academic Press, 2000), pp. 25–57.

Heather Barry Kappes
: H. B. Kappes, G. Oettingen, and D. Mayer, “Positive fantasies predict low academic achievement in disadvantaged students,”
European Journal of Social Psychology
42 (2012): 53–64; H. B. Kappes and G. Oettingen, “Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
47 (2011): 719–29.

Reflecting on these findings
:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-pitfalls-of-positive-thinking
.

Chapter 6: The Future Is Ours to See

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert
: Daniel Gilbert,
Stumbling on Happiness
(New York: Knopf, 2006).

In one of his quirky early studies
: D. Gilbert, E. C. Pinel, T. Wilson, S. J. Blumbert, and T. P. Wheatley, “Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
75 (1998): 617–38.

In his book
Thinking, Fast and Slow:
D. Kahneman,
Thinking, Fast and Slow
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011).

“The soldier who took over”
:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=all
. Here is the leadership task and solution as described by Kahneman. “Think it through for yourself: haul a log to a six-foot-high wall, then get both the log and the group to the other side. The log can’t touch the ground or the wall. The group members can’t touch the wall, either.” This is how Kahneman described the typical approach to getting to the other side: “A common solution was for several men to reach the other side by crawling along the log as the other men held it up at an angle, like a giant fishing rod. Then one man would climb onto another’s shoulder and tip the log to the far side. The last two men would then have to jump up at the log, now suspended from the other side by those who had made it over, shinny their way along its length and then leap down safely once they crossed the wall. Failure was common at this point, which required starting over.”

“Our forecasts were better”
:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=all
.

The head of an investment firm
: Ibid.

“While I was prepared to find”
: Ibid.

“Facts that challenge such basic assumptions”
: Ibid.

In my own head I sometimes still hear Doris Day
: J. Livingston and R. Evans, “Que Será, Será (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)” (1956), Doris Day rendition available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc
.

Our small parental behaviors
: B. Sacerdote, “How large are the effects from changes in family environment? A study of Korean American adoptees,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
121 (2007): 119–58. For a delightful discussion of the economics of parenting, listen to
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/29/the-economists-guide-to-parenting-economist-kids-photo-gallery
/and
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/freakonomics-radio/freakonomics-how-much-influence-does-parent-have-childs-education
.

“Get parents in, and you can achieve anything”
: J. Edelberg and S. Kurland,
How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood School Renaissance
(New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), p. 29. The entire account of the Nettelhorst transformation draws on this book.

Jacqueline Edelberg and Susan Kurland
: Ibid.

Some initiatives
: Ibid.

Chapter 7: The Present Is Not What Limits Us

This was my first lesson in self-determination
: E. L. Deci and R. M. Ryan,
Intrinsic Motivation and Self-determination in Human Behavior
(New York: Plenum, 1985). See also
http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/
.

Whether you test children or adults
: C. R. Snyder et al., “The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
60 (1991): 570–85; C. R. Snyder et al., “The development and validation of the Children’s Hope Scale,”
Journal of Pediatric Psychology
22 (1997): 399–421.