The importance of a positive attitude towards the future and its effects in terms of better health, quality of life, individual performance and social relations has been widely documented (Andersson 1996 Cheavens et al. The difficulty in distinguishing the two resides on the one hand in the often undifferentiated meaning and use of these folk terms in everyday life, and on the other hand, in the many and often opposing conceptual definitions of each construct developed over decades and even centuries by philosophers and social scientists. 2013 Bruininks and Malle 2005 Snyder et al. Perceived hope is thus an important additional facet to consider in investigating well-being.įor several years, a recurrent debate has taken place regarding the conceptual and empirical overlap and/or differences between hope and optimism (Alarcon et al. Furthermore, perceived hope represents a fundamental construct in the prediction of health outcomes and well-being and is an important antecedent to optimism and dispositional hope. Second, perceived hope, as measured by the PHS, and optimism and pessimism as measured by the LOT-R, are psychometrically distinguished latent dimensions, optimally specified by their indicator variables. First, the Perceived Hope Scale (PHS) is a unitary and coherent measure of perceived hope. After comparing both instruments using confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modelling in Mplus, a number of encouraging results emanated from the data. The present study investigates the distinction between a new short instrument to measure hope as perceived by the general public, and dispositional optimism as measured by the revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R) in a South African sample. However, other approaches recommend distinguishing between hope and future expectancies and sustain that the differences between hope and optimism are of a more substantial nature. The predominant cognitive theories maintain that both are based on positive future expectancies regarding goal attainment. At first glance, hope and optimism appear to be two almost identical concepts.
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