Should we be living in the Past or in the Future?
Comparing the Influence on Wellbeing of a Past Time-Focus and a Future Time-Focus Intervention
Sabine Verschuur, 10172440
Disa Sauter, University of Amsterdam
Training & Development, Social Psychology
19/11/2016
2
Abstract
Positive Psychology Interventions have been used increasingly often in the last decades. Those interventions are often based on positive emotions and are meant to increase wellbeing. Recent research has found that emotions that focus on the future increase wellbeing more than emotions that focus on the past due to underlying mechanisms. In this experiment, pride as an emotion focused on the past was compared to hope as an emotion focused on the future. 69 participants, mostly students, underwent either a pride or a hope intervention, after which they had to fill in questionnaires on wellbeing and on the underlying mechanisms. It was expected that both conditions would increase their levels of wellbeing, but that the hope condition would have a higher increase than the pride condition. Neither pride nor hope had a significant effect on wellbeing and the higher increase of the hope condition compared to the pride condition was not confirmed either. Limitations of this study and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Introduction
In the past few years, a large amount of literature has been published about Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) (Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2005). It has been shown that these can have a positive influence on a person’s wellbeing in different contexts. Improving someone’s wellbeing could especially be important for people in hospital settings or for refugees who might have gone through difficult times, but also for people in non-clinical samples to build strength. The interventions can thus not only be used to heal people, but also to increase already existing wellbeing (Seligman et al., 2005; Wellenzohn, Proyer & Ruch, 2016). Knowing what the mechanisms of emotions are in these PPIs can thus be very valuable to further elaborate the PPIs in the future and to make them more successful. This paper will specifically look at the influence of hope and pride as PPIs on wellbeing.
3
Ryan and Deci (2001) state that there are two different views on wellbeing, which are important to distinguish to understand from which angle this paper is written. The eudemonic view states that happiness is found when someone does what is worth doing (Ryan & Deci, 2001). This ‘human actualization’ is the way to achieve wellbeing and it is measured through six different aspects: autonomy, personal growth, self-acceptance, life purpose, mastery and positive relatedness. The hedonic view however, considers wellbeing to consist of subjective happiness and judgments about the good and bad elements of life based on the experience of pleasure or displeasure (Ryan & Deci, 2001). This view considers that people themselves know better when wellbeing is achieved than when the aspects are determined by scientists like is the case with the eudemonic view. Assessments of subjective wellbeing have thus been used to evaluate this experience of pleasure or displeasure. This paper has been written considering the hedonic view as the leading definition of wellbeing.
Subjective wellbeing, hereafter referred to as wellbeing, is thus a person’s cognitive and affective evaluation of his or her life (Diener, 2000). It is a combination of emotional and cognitive judgments, which include pleasant emotions, high life satisfaction and low levels of negative moods. Even if a few differences are found across different cultures (Diener, 2009), it can be stated that there are some universal components that contribute to a high level of
wellbeing (Lucas, Diener & Suh, 1996), which has been demonstrated with a high degree of validity in global measurements. Close social relationships, meaningful goals and satisfaction with past, current and future life are important examples of components that contribute to a high wellbeing (Diener, Suh, Lucas & Smith, 1999). High levels of joy, happiness, self-esteem and affection and low levels of stress, depression and sadness are characteristics of wellbeing. Wellbeing is also described by researchers as a long-term evaluation of one’s life, which is composed of evaluations of many mood states and emotions. It can thus be stated that having many positive mood states and emotions contributes to a high wellbeing in the long-term (Eid & Diener, 2004).
4
Emotions thus play an important role when considering someone’s wellbeing. Assuring that the emotions felt by someone are positive could thus lead to a high level of wellbeing (Eid & Diener, 2004). It is important to increase wellbeing in the first place because it feels good to be happy (Diener, 2009). However, there are other important effects like the fact that happier people tend to be healthier, more successful and more motivated to achieve their goals (Diener, 2009). They also tend to volunteer more and to exhibit other desirable characteristics (Seligman, et al., 2005). The field of Positive Psychology has been growing at a high rate in the past
decades which has led to much research being done on PPIs. Seligman et al. (2005) give an overview about what is known so far about PPIs. They look at PPIs based on emotions because of the fact that emotions are such important components of wellbeing and state that those PPIs can make people lastingly happier and less depressed. They state that PPIs show a direct effect on positive mood but that continuing with given exercises in PPIs has a significant positive effect on wellbeing in the longer term.
The mechanisms by which PPIs work have been described by Wellenzohn, Proyer and Ruch (2016). They claim that different time-focuses of PPIs are associated with different working mechanisms. PPIs with a future time-focus have been shown to increase positive emotions by shifting someone’s attention towards a more positive outlook (Quoidbach,
Mikolajczak & Gross, 2015). In this way, people create a more positive information-processing bias for themselves. PPIs with a past time-focus are effective through another mechanism. Those work by savoring and re-experiencing positive emotions (Wellenzohn et al., 2016). Consciously remembering positive experiences thus also contributes to well-being, even though it seems that PPIs with a future time-focus contribute more (Wellenzohn et al., 2016). The authors
furthermore claim that PPIs with a present time-focus work best because people get the benefits of both mechanisms.
To date, no study has yet been done to directly compare PPIs based on different
5
This study will thus compare two PPIs; one with a past focus and one with a future time-focus. The present time-focus will not be used as both mechanisms might play a role and that it will thus be impossible to compare them. The emotion that will be used in the PPI with the past time-focus will be pride and the emotion for the PPI with the future time-focus will be hope. First an overview will be given of the literature of those two emotions and the effects they have on wellbeing. This will lead to the three hypotheses that will be tested.
Pride is considered to be a universal self-conscious emotion (Tracy & Robins, 2008). It is defined as a positive emotion that is experienced after an individual achievement, which is often associated with someone’s self-esteem (Onwezen, Bartels & Antonides, 2014). It is most felt when a person feels responsible for his or her behavior and evaluates this behavior by comparing it to personal or social norms and values. Pride is an important motivating emotion and it reinforces people to behave in a socially valued way so that people keep a positive self-concept and others’ respect (Tracy & Robins, 2007). It can thus be seen as a way to provide information about someone’s social status, which can have positive consequences.
It is important however to note that there are two facets of pride1. Besides authentic pride, the other existing facet is hubristic pride (Tracy & Robins, 2007). While authentic pride is the result of attributions to unstable, controllable causes, hubristic pride results from
attribution to stable and uncontrollable causes. People thus feel authentic pride when they feel they practiced a lot and put much effort to achieve a goal. Hubristic pride on the other hand is felt when people attribute their success to the fact that they are great at something without having had to practice or work for it (Tracy & Robins, 2007). People feeling hubristic pride often feel superior to their peers while people feeling authentic pride do not.
Herrald and Tomaka (2016) have shown that authentic pride is related to the development of a positive sense of self-esteem. This could possibly mean that increasing
1 The study was combined with another student who compared authentic and hubristic pride. It is therefore
6
someone’s feeling of authentic pride based on past achievements could lead to an increased level of wellbeing. Contrariwise, hubristic pride seems to be related to a negative sense of self-esteem and to less social relations because of negative evaluations by other people (Tracy & Robins, 2007). This paper will thus only look at authentic pride, hereafter referred to as pride, because of its positive effects and will not look at hubristic pride.
Besides the development of a positive sense of self-esteem (Herrald & Tomaka, 2016), pride interventions have also shown to increase performance-related motivation, self-efficacy and organizational citizenship behaviors (Verbeke, Belschak & Bagozzi, 2004). Even though the direct link between pride and wellbeing has not yet been researched, it could be said that all those other positive aspects contribute to a high wellbeing, as they are often seen as part of wellbeing in the literature. When asking someone to think of a moment in the past when pride was felt, the next hypothesis can be expected:
H1a: A pride intervention will improve wellbeing.
To make sure that pride is seen as a past time-focus emotion in this intervention, people will have to think back to a moment they felt proud in the past. It is expected that this will make them re-experience the emotion of pride of that specific moment (Wellenzohn et al., 2016). This leads to the next hypothesis:
H1b: The effect of the pride intervention on wellbeing will be mediated by the ‘savoring and re-experiencing of the past emotion’ mechanism.
In contrast to pride, hope is an emotion with a future time-focus. Hope is often goal-related (Snyder, 2002). People hope to reach certain goals and two important components help them to reach those goals: the pathways they need to take to achieve these goals, and their agency or motivation to achieve them. Hope is positively related to well-being and is essential to be able to cope with stressful situations (Folkman, 2010). It has been shown in multiple settings that hope interventions work against depression and that they improve wellbeing (Snyder, 2002).
7
These interventions have proven to work for survivors of a natural disaster (Retnowatia,
Ramadiyantia, Suciatia, Sokanga & Viola, 2015), for patients newly diagnosed with cancer (Peh, Kuh & Mahendran, 2015), for older palliative home care patients (Duggleby, Degner, Williams, Wright, Cooper, Popkin & Holtslander, 2007) and for people coping with pain (Berg, Snyder & Hamilton, 2008). It can thus be expected that hope interventions have a positive influence on wellbeing, which leads to the second hypothesis:
H2a: A hope intervention will improve wellbeing.
Based on the theory of Wellenzohn et al. (2016), it is expected that the effect of the hope intervention on wellbeing will be mediated by a shift in the attentional focus towards a more positive outlook:
H2b: The effect of the hope intervention on wellbeing will be mediated by the ‘shift in the attentional focus towards a more positive outlook’- mechanism.
Even though both interventions are expected to have a positive effect on wellbeing, the theory about the underlying mechanisms suggest that the effect will be stronger for the
intervention with a future time-focus compared to the intervention with the past time-focus (Wellenzohn et al., 2016). The third and last hypothesis will thus be:
H3: The hope intervention will improve wellbeing more than the pride intervention.
Knowing if these two emotions are worth to use as PPIs will thus be beneficial for people who want to increase their wellbeing. Not only will the emotions hope as a future time-focus PPI and pride as a past time-time-focus PPI be understood, but also the mechanisms underlying the PPIs. Other emotions could then possibly be used as well based on these mechanisms.
8
Procedure2
The data was collected through an online survey. The survey started by collecting some demographics about the participants and then turned to the first measurement of wellbeing. The participants were then randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. Participants in the hope condition underwent the hope intervention, and answered some questions as a manipulation check. Then, some additional questions regarding the underlying working-mechanisms were asked. Finally, wellbeing was measured again. The manipulation check and the working-mechanisms questions were done before the second measurement of wellbeing to prolong the time between the first and second measurement and to make the purpose of the experiment less obvious to the participants. The second condition followed the same procedure, but with the pride intervention and manipulation check instead of the hope ones.
Participants
69 people participated in the survey, with 31 participants in the pride condition and 38 in the hope condition. The majority of the participants were students as some of them received credits for participating. However, the survey was also posted on Facebook, so 19 non-students participated as well. The minimum age was set on 18 to make sure participants had a minimum of life experience, and the maximum age was set on 70, to avoid that too many other factors like illness of loneliness could have an influence on wellbeing.
Demographics
To start, some basic information like age, gender and education was asked to get a better picture of the tested population.
Wellbeing
2 The experiment has been conducted together with another student. Part of this study overlapped with the other
one, but there were some differences. The participants thus had to respond to more questionnaires than described in this paper. These are not be described here.
9
The Satisfaction with Life Scale was used to measure the wellbeing of the participants (Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985). This scale consists of five questions that participants can agree or disagree with on a hundred-point scale. The test has a high reliability, ranging between α = .79 and α = .89. Wellbeing was measured twice during the procedure. It is
important to notice that this could possibly have measured mood instead of long-term wellbeing. However, as already described, it can be argued that mood is part of wellbeing and that it can lead to high levels of wellbeing in the longer term depending on how long the intervention is. As it is expected that all the participants will be Dutch, the Dutch translation of the Satisfaction with Life Scale was used (Arrindell, Heesink, & Feij, 1999). See Appendix A for the
Satisfaction with Life Scale.
Pride Intervention
The intervention was based on an intervention of Ashton-James and Tracy (2012). The participants had to think five minutes about a moment in their life that they felt proud, as a consequence of their effort and work. They had to write about it with a minimum of 250 words. A few guiding questions were given to make the participants think about the situation. See Appendix B for the pride intervention.
Hope Intervention
To make the intervention for the hope condition as similar as possible to the pride intervention, the described pride intervention was rephrased as a new one based on a hope intervention (Berg et al., 2008). The participants had to think five minutes about a moment that they would like to achieve in the future. They also had to write about it with a minimum of 250 words based on a few guiding questions. See Appendix C for the hope intervention.
10
As a manipulation check the State Hope Scale (SHS) was used for all participants (Snyder, Sympson, Ybasco, Borders, Babyak & Higgins, 1996). This six-item questionnaire reflects both the pathways and agency components of hope and has a reliability of α = .88, with α = .59 for the pathways subscale and α = .86 for the agency subscale. The overall mean of the test should thus be higher for the hope condition than for the pride condition. To check if the pride intervention worked, seven items from the Authentic and Hubristic Pride Scale (AHPS) (Tracy & Robins, 2007) were used. The items used were the ones about authentic pride (α = .88). It was expected that the mean of these items would be higher for the pride condition than for the hope condition. As there was no Dutch translations of these tests available, the tests were
translated by a student from English to Dutch and translated again to English by another student to make sure the items were well translated. See Appendix D for the SHS and Appendix E for the AHPS.
Working mechanisms
To find out if the possible mechanisms mediate the relationship between the emotion in the PPI and wellbeing, questions were asked to the participants to determine if they were savoring positive emotion (‘To which degree did you experience the positive emotions again while doing this exercise?’) or if a shift in attentional focus had occurred (‘To which degree did your attention shift to positive things, in the sense that you were better able to perceive these?’) (Wellenzohn et al., 2016). Participants answered those questions on a ten-point scale (0 (not at all) – 9 (very strong)),
11
Results
Conditions
To check if the conditions were similar at the start of the experiment, the demographics were compared. An independent t-test was done to check for differences between the groups in age. With an average of M = 24.45 (SD = 8.20) for the pride condition and M = 28.76 (SD = 13.72) for the hope condition, there was no significant difference between the groups, t (61.88) = -1.61, p = .111. A Chi-square test was done to check for distribution across the groups of participant sex. There were 13 men and 18 women in the pride condition and 19 men and 19 women in the hope condition. There was no significant difference for the distribution of participant sex across conditions, χ² (1) = .45, p = .504. Finally, the average level of wellbeing as the baseline measure was compared to be sure that there were no differences in wellbeing between conditions at the start of the experiment. The conditions did not differ significantly, t (66.50) = 1.43, p = .157, M = 75.15 (SD = 14.21) for the pride condition and M = 69.42 (SD = 19.06) for the hope condition.
Manipulation check
To see if the manipulation did work, two independent t-tests were done to compare the AHPS and the SHS scores between the groups. It was expected that the participants in the pride condition would have a higher score on the AHPS than the participants in the hope condition. The participants in the hope condition however, were expected to score higher on the SHS than the participants in the pride condition. Unfortunately the manipulations did not have any effect. For the AHPS, the pride condition scored on average M = 3.25 (SD = .46), while the hope condition had an average of M = 3.12 (SD = .57). The pride condition did not score significantly higher on the AHPS than the hope condition, t (67) = 1.08, p = .284. Looking at the SHS, the pride condition scored an average of M = 5.80 (SD = 1.12) while the hope condition scored M = 5.79 (SD = .89). There was no significant difference between the two conditions, t (67) = .44, p
12
= .965. As the manipulations did not work, it was not expected anymore that the results of the formulated hypotheses would be significant.
Hypothesis 1
A repeated-measure ANOVA’s was conducted to test H1a (a pride intervention will improve wellbeing). It was expected to find a main effect of time. This was not found, F (1) = 1.70, p = .203. Because no relationship was found, the mediation analysis for H1b (the effect of the pride intervention on wellbeing will be mediated by the ‘savoring and re-experiencing of the past emotion’ mechanism) was not done as the mediator had no relationship to explain. An independent T-test was done to see if there was a difference between groups in the question regarding the mechanism ‘savoring and re-experiencing of the past emotion’. The pride
condition did score higher on this item, M = 6.00 (SD = 1.91) than the hope condition, M = 5.29 (SD = 2.35), but this difference was not significant, t (67) = 1.36, p = .179. As there was no difference between the conditions, the mechanism could not explain the relationship for only one condition. H1a and H1b can thus both be rejected.
Hypothesis 2
To test H2a (a hope intervention will improve wellbeing), a repeated-measure within-subjects ANOVA was done again. With F (1) = 3.81, p = .059, there was again no significant main effect of time, but there was a trend in the expected direction. The fact that no significant result was found could in this case perhaps be explained by the small number of participants. As there was no relationship to explain here either, the mediation analysis for H2b (the effect of the hope intervention on wellbeing will be mediation by the ‘shift in the attentional focus towards a more positive outlook’- mechanism) was not done. Instead, an independent T-test was done to compare the scores of the underlying mechanism across both conditions. The hope condition scored on average M = 4.63 (SD = 2.27) while the pride condition scored even higher with M =
13
5.13 (SD = 2.00). This was not a significant difference, t (67) = .955, p = .343. It can be concluded that H2a and H2b both have to be rejected.
Hypothesis 3
Finally, a repeated between-subjects ANOVA was done to test H3 (the hope intervention will improve wellbeing more than the pride intervention). It is first important to point out that a main effect of time was found here, F (1) = 4.73, p = .033. Participants in both conditions did become happier after undergoing the intervention. This significant result can be explained by the fact that participants of both conditions are taken into account in this analysis. There is thus more power. However, the main expectation from this analysis was to find an interaction where it was expected that the hope intervention would increase the level of wellbeing more than the pride intervention. This was not the case, F (1) = 1.18, p = .282. It can thus be concluded that H3 is rejected as well. See table 1 for the average levels of wellbeing for both conditions at the two times of measurement.
Table 1.
Average level of wellbeing before and after interventions of pride and hope.
Conclusion & Discussion
In conclusion, it can be stated that undergoing an intervention based on a positive emotion does have a positive effect on wellbeing, but that the conditions considered separately
14
did not result in a significant improvement of wellbeing. No difference was found between an intervention based on a past time-focus emotion like pride and an intervention based on a future time-focus emotion like hope. The expectation that the hope condition would have a higher increase of wellbeing than the pride condition was not confirmed in this experiment. It can be concluded that all of the hypotheses have been rejected.
The theory stated that PPIs based on emotions would improve wellbeing. For emotions with a past time-focus, it was expected that wellbeing would be improved by making people re-experience their positive emotions. For emotions with a future time-focus, this effect would be caused by a shift in attention in people towards a more positive outlook. Because both
interventions did not have an effect, it can be questioned if these emotions are good to use in PPIs. It could be the case that these emotions do not activate the mechanisms enough, or that the mechanisms themselves are not as strong as stated by Wellenzohn et al. (2016). The theory also stated that the future time-focus emotion would have had more effect on wellbeing than the past focus one. The fact that this effect has not been found could mean that the future time-focus mechanism has a weaker effect than is thought, or that the past time-time-focus mechanism has more effect than is stated by Wellenzohn et al. (2016). Apparently, the difference between the two mechanisms is not that important and should thus not be taken into account when making an intervention based on an emotion. It can even be questioned if PPIs, like stated by Seligman et al. (2005), are successful at all. Even if participants did experience an increase of wellbeing, other interventions might have a more robust effect. Future research could perhaps look at different kinds of interventions that might have more effect, like mindfulness or an intervention based on sports.
This study however, also has some limitations that might explain why the hypotheses were rejected. A possible explanation for the fact that the first hypothesis was rejected is that the emotion of pride could be less a past time-focus emotion than expected. It is possible that people did not re-experience the emotion of pride, but that pride was experienced as a present
time-15
focus emotion. Participants might have thought about a situation in the past, but the feeling of pride itself about that situation could have been felt at the present moment. Despite the fact that the instructions in the pride intervention were written in a way that the participants should have had to think of a situation they had felt proud of in the past, it could be that they instead thought of a situation in the past they now felt proud of. This could also explain why the underlying mechanism ‘re-experiencing the past emotion’, which was expected to play a mediating role in the relationship between the pride intervention and wellbeing, was not felt strongly by the participants in the pride condition. For future research, it is important to make sure that the pride emotion actually was felt in the past and that participants are re-experiencing this emotion. This can be done for example by doing the experiment in a lab setting instead of an online survey. If the intervention is done by a researcher in a lab setting, whereby the intervention is an oral interview instead of a written assignment, the researcher can give more structure to the intervention so that the pride emotion is more with a past time-focus than it was in this experiment.
The second hypothesis was also rejected, but the number of participants could be the reason for this. The level of significance for the main effect of time in the hope condition was p = .059 with 38 participants. The aim at the start of the experiment was to get at least 51
participants in every condition. Due to practical reasons, the data collection was stopped after two weeks which meant that the target number of participants was not reached. It is thus possible that with a higher power the result would have been significant.
The measurement of the working mechanisms was based on the measurement in the article of Wellenzohn et al. (2016). However, after receiving some feedback from participants, it became clear that these questions had been unclear to many participants. Per mechanism, only one question was used, see Appendix F. This is quite minimal. Furthermore, both questions have only been tested once in the experiment of Wellenzohn et al. (2016), so more research is needed to make sure the questions have a high reliability and validity. The measurement of the
16
mechanisms could thus be elaborated and developed in future research to better measure and understand the mechanisms.
Besides the interpretation of this measurement, one should also be careful with
interpreting the measurement of wellbeing. Because of the short interventions and the short time between the two measurements of wellbeing, it can be argued that mood is being measured instead of wellbeing. If the study could be done with interventions spread over a longer period of time, it would also be easier to interpret the measurement of wellbeing.
Finally, a feedback point received from many participants was that the word limit was too high which was felt as annoying by many. It could be argued that participants were more irritated and counting words in the end, instead of really thinking about the emotions they were supposed to think of. It also turned out that the word limit was an important barrier for many participants to actually finish the experiment. Many people started with the experiment but stopped when they saw that they needed to write down the 250 words. It could thus be argued that the interventions were not successful because of the way they were given. The interventions were based on interventions done in previous research, but it is possible that they differed too much from the originals. For this problem, an experiment in a lab setting would be a solution as well. In an oral interview, the word count will not be a problem that can make people withdraw from the experiment. This would not only lead to the fact that participants would actually think more about the intended emotion, but it would also lead to more participants finishing the experiment, which could solve the problem of the small number of participants.
In conclusion, two major changes should be implemented in future research. First, the number of participants should be higher in both conditions to obtain greater statistical power. Second, the interventions can be done in a better way by structuring them more and by conducting them in a lab setting instead of doing the research through an online survey. If the intervention is more framed, participants will hopefully have less irritations and feel the intended emotion more strongly, which will make the experiment successful. Ideally, the
17
intervention would also be spread over a longer period. It would thus be useful to do a
replication of this study with the recommended changes to see if the results will turn out to be different or that this study is a challenge to the existing theory.
18
Appendices
Appendix A – Satisfaction with Life Scale
Instructie
Op de volgende bladzijden vindt u vijf uitspraken waar u het al of niet mee eens kunt zijn. Wilt u door één van zeven antwoordmogelijkheden te omcirkelen, aangeven in hoeverre een bepaalde uitspraak op u van toepassing is? Probeer bij elke uitspraak zo eerlijk en open mogelijk
antwoord te geven.
De zeven antwoordmogelijkheden zijn: 1. helemaal mee oneens
2. tamelijk mee oneens 3. een beetje mee oneens
4. niet mee eens en niet mee oneens 5. een beetje mee eens
6. tamelijk mee eens 7. helemaal mee eens
1. Mijn leven is ideaal in de meeste opzichten. 2. Mijn levensomstandigheden zijn uitstekend.
3. Ik ben tevreden met mijn leven, alles bij elkaar genomen.
4. De belangrijkste dingen die ik van het leven verwacht, heb ik tot nu toe ook gekregen. 5. Als ik mijn leven opnieuw kon leven, zou ik heel weinig anders doen.
19
Appendix B – Pride Intervention
Instructie
Denk de komende vijf minuten na over een moment wanneer je erg goed presteerde als gevolg van je inzet. Je voelde je goed over je prestaties, maar je voelde je niet superieur ten opzichte van je leeftijdsgenoten. Beschrijf dit moment zo gedetailleerd mogelijk in minimaal 250 woorden waarin je ook de antwoorden op de volgende vragen verwerkt:
- Hoe heb jij je voorbereid op dit moment waardoor je zo goed presteerde? - Hoe kwam het dat jij je er zo trots over voelde?
20
Appendix C – Hope Intervention
Instructie
Denk de komende vijf minuten na over een doel dat je graag zou willen bereiken in de toekomst. Denk na over hoe je dit doel dan kan bereiken en hoe je jezelf gaat motiveren om dit doel te bereiken. Beschrijf het doel zo gedetailleerd mogelijk in minimaal 250 woorden waarin je ook de antwoorden op de volgende vragen verwerkt:
- Op wat voor manieren wil jij dit doel gaan bereiken? Heb jij hier bijzondere strategieën voor?
- Hoe ga jij je ervoor motiveren om dit doel te bereiken? - Hoe komt het dat dit zo’n belangrijk doel is voor jou?
21
Appendix D – State Hope Scale Instructie
Lees elke vraag aandachtig. Maak gebruik van onderstaande schaal en kies welk nummer het beste omschrijft hoe jij op dit moment over jezelf denkt. Neem een moment de tijd om te focussen op jezelf en hoe het in jouw leven gaat op dit moment. Zodra je het gevoel van het ‘hier en nu’ hebt, beantwoord de onderstaande vragen.
1 – Absoluut niet 2 – Vaak niet 3 – Soms niet 4 – Een beetje niet 5 – Een beetje wel 6 – Soms wel 7 – Vaak wel 8 – Absoluut wel
1 – Wanneer ik vastloop bij een bezigheid, kan ik veel manieren bedenken om dit op te lossen. 2 – Op dit moment ben ik actief mijn doelen aan het najagen.
3 – Er zijn veel manieren om de problemen die ik nu heb op te lossen. 4 – Ik zie mezelf nu als behoorlijk succesvol.
5 – Ik kan veel manieren bedenken om mijn huidige doelen te bereiken. 6 – Op dit moment, voldoe ik aan de doelen die ik voor mezelf heb gezet.
22
Appendix E – Authentic and Hubristic Pride Scale Instructie
Hieronder vindt u een aantal woorden en zinnen die verschillende gevoelens en emoties beschrijven. Lees elke vraag en geef aan in welke mate u zich herkent in die emotie (i.e. hoe u zich op dit moment voelt). Maak hierbij gebruik van de onderstaande schaal:
1 – Helemaal niet 2 – Enigszins 3 – Gematigd 4 – Heel erg 5 – Extreem veel
1 – Alsof ik het waard ben 2 – Succesvol
3 – Geoefend
4 – Als of ik iets bereik 5 – Zelfverzekerd 6 – Voldaan 7 – Productief
23
Appendix F – Working-mechanisms Instructie
Geef hieronder aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op jou van toepassing zijn:
1. In welke mate heb jij positieve emoties opnieuw ervaren tijdens het doen van deze opdracht?
Helemaal niet 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Helemaal wel
2. In welke mate is jouw aandacht nu meer gericht op positieve dingen, in de zin dat je ze nu beter bent gaan inzien?
24
Literature
Arrindell, W. A., Heesink, J., & Feij, J. A. (1999). The satisfaction with life scale (SWLS): Appraisal with 1700 healthy young adults in The Netherlands. Personality and individual differences, 26 (5), 815-826.
Ashton-James, C. E., & Tracy, J. L. (2012). Pride and Prejudice How Feelings About the Self Influence Judgments of Others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38 (4), 466-476.
Berg, C. J., Snyder, C. R., & Hamilton, N. (2008). The effectiveness of a hope intervention in coping with cold pressor pain. Journal of Health Psychology, 13 (6), 804-809.
Carver, C. S., Sinclair, S., & Johnson, S. L. (2010). Authentic and hubristic pride: Differential relations to aspects of goal regulation, affect, and self-control. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(6), 698-703.
Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American psychologist, 55 (1), 34.
Diener, E. (2009). Subjective well-being. In The science of well-being (pp. 11-58). Springer Netherlands.
Diener, E. D., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of personality assessment, 49 (1), 71-75.
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., Smith, H. L. (1999). Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125 (2), 276-302.
Duggleby, W. D., Degner, L., Williams, A., Wright, K., Cooper, D., Popkin, D., & Holtslander, L. (2007). Living with hope: initial evaluation of a psychosocial hope intervention for older palliative home care patients. Journal of pain and symptom management, 33 (3), 247-257.
Eid, M., & Diener, E. (2004). Global judgments of subjective well-being: Situational variability and long-term stability. Social indicators research, 65 (3), 245-277.
25
Folkman, S. (2010). Stress, coping, and hope. Psycho‐Oncology, 19 (9), 901-908.
Herrald, M. M., & Tomaka, J. (2002). Patterns of emotion-specific appraisal, coping, and cardiovascular reactivity during an ongoing emotional episode. Journal of personality and social psychology, 83 (2), 434.
Lucas, R. E., Diener, E. & Suh, E. (1996). Discriminant validity of well-being measures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 616-628.
Peh, C. X., Kua, E. H., & Mahendran, R. (2016). Hope, emotion regulation, and psychosocial well-being in patients newly diagnosed with cancer. Supportive Care in Cancer, 24 (5), 1955-1962.
Retnowati, S., Ramadiyanti, D. W., Suciati, A. A., Sokang, Y. A., & Viola, H. (2015). Hope Intervention Against Depression in the Survivors of Cold Lava Flood from Merapi Mount. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 165, 170-178.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual review of psychology, 52 (1), 141-166. Scheier, M. F., Wrosch, C., Baum, A., Cohen, S., Martire, L. M., Matthews, K. A. & Zdaniuk, B.
(2006). The life engagement test: Assessing purpose in life. Journal of behavioral medicine, 29 (3), 291-298.
Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions. American psychologist, 60 (5), 410.
Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological inquiry, 13 (4), 249-275.
Snyder, C. R., Sympson, S. C., Ybasco, F. C., Borders, T. F., Babyak, M. A., & Higgins, R. L. (1996). Development and validation of the State Hope Scale. Journal of personality and social psychology, 70 (2), 321.
Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2007). Emerging insights into the nature and function of pride. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16 (3), 147-150.
26
Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2007). The psychological structure of pride: a tale of two facets. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92 (3), 506.
Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2008). The nonverbal expression of pride: evidence for cross-cultural recognition. Journal of personality and social psychology, 94 (3), 516. Verbeke, W., Belschak, F., & Bagozzi, R. P. (2004). The adaptive consequences of pride in
personal selling. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 32 (4), 386-402. Wellenzohn, S., Proyer, R. T., & Ruch, W. (2016). How do positive psychology interventions
work? A short-term placebo-controlled humor-based study on the role of the time focus. Personality and Individual Differences, 96, 1-6.
