Hope, values, and goals: Predicting goal success and mental health outcomes

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2016-05

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The Ohio State University

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Abstract

With this study, we aimed to further understand the relations among goals, values, and hope. Hope consists of agency, which is the motivation to pursue a goal, and pathways, or the perceived ability to construct routes to attain the goal. Previous research demonstrates that high hope individuals achieve their goals more often and have better psychological functioning when compared to low hope individuals (Feldman & Dreher, 2012; for a review see Cheavens & Ritschel, 2014). Additionally, according to Hope Theory (Snyder, 2002), successful goal pursuits occur in the context of and align with one’s values; therefore, values may be an important individual difference associated with goal pursuits and mental health functioning. In this study, 162 students from introductory psychology classes participated in three study sessions. In the first session, participants completed self-report questionnaires of demographics, psychological functioning, and values. Participants listed three goals that they planned to achieve in the following week and month, and ranked their top five values. The second and third sessions took place one week and one month later, respectively, and participants gave updates on goal progress. All goals were coded for concordance with each of the 10 values by objective raters (N = 3). We found that all values were positively correlated with hope and negatively correlated with symptoms of psychopathology. Hope at time 1 predicted goal completion at the one-week and one-month follow-up. Although hope was related to all values in bivariate analyses, significant variance in hope scores was accounted for only by the value of benevolence in multivariate analyses. Finally, results showed that hope moderates the relationship between congruence and monthly goal completion.

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hope, values, goals, mental health

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