Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (9 page)

The most compelling evidence for the added value of hope comes from four longitudinal studies. These long-term studies give us the opportunity to assess how the passage of time influences the link between hope and academic success.
Three of these studies followed college students’ success from their freshman year to their graduation (or their attrition or the six-year mark, whichever came first).
In the fourth study, researchers examined the hope-productivity link for first-year law students.

The setup for each study was simple. Researchers recruited first-semester students to complete a standardized measure of hope along with other scales, and requested access to their personal school records for some years to come. Researchers then unobtrusively followed the students by examining student records each term or so. Statistical models determined the relationship between hope and outcomes such as GPA, on-going enrollment, and graduation. Each study controlled for the other determinants of school success, such as GPA at previous academic levels and entrance exam scores.

The findings from the studies of college students in the United States and in the United Kingdom are remarkably similar. In each study, how students think about the future predicts benchmarks of academic progress and success, including how many courses they enroll in, how many credits they earn, their GPA across those courses, their cumulative GPA, and the likelihood that they will graduate. Of note, one study showed that low-hope students are three times more likely to be dismissed from school for poor grades. Another study, which pitted hope against ACT scores, found that hope is a better predictor of ongoing enrollment and graduation than this standardized entrance exam.

The study of hope in law students provided the most surprising results. Undergraduate GPA and Law School Admission Test (LSAT)
scores were collected from student records and each student completed a hope scale when they entered the program. These measures predicted academic success during what might be the most stressful semester in law school—the first. When predictors were ranked from strongest to the weakest, undergraduate GPA was the best and LSAT scores were the worst. And hope? A student’s level of hope predicted his or her law school ranking better than the LSAT.

Have you ever met a happy, hopeless person? I haven’t.
When Gallup asked one million people if they smiled or laughed a lot yesterday, the hopeful said yes much more often than did the hopeless.
Because of this observation I decided to take a closer look at the overlap between hope and happiness with the help of psychologist Matt Gallagher of Boston University. We asked people if they were hopeful and satisfied with their lives, then measured the presence of good feelings and the absence of bad ones.
According to well-being expert Ed Diener of the University of Illinois, someone who is satisfied with life, experiencing positive emotions, and not experiencing negative emotions meets the basic criteria for a happiness diagnosis. We wanted to know if being hopeful predicted (or was predicted by) these symptoms of happiness. Indeed, hope proved to be a strong, unique predictor of satisfaction and emotions. This work led us to suggest that hope is a symptom of happiness.

Anecdotal data, poll results, and correlational findings suggest that happiness and hope go together like chocolate and peanut butter. But does hope lead to happiness and well-being? And if so, how?

To date, hope research suggests that the answer is
probably
.
Even a brief intervention with students designed to boost their hope led to a measurable increase in life satisfaction.
Longitudinal studies of workers have also suggested that employees high in hope experience more well-being over time. And it appears that hope buffers well-being from the
effects of negative life events, shielding us from adversity, protecting us from stress and sadness, and making room for happiness.
For example, in a recent study of firefighters coping with the daily stress inherent in their jobs, those first responders with the highest hope were able to protect themselves psychologically from the stress that could accumulate over an entire shift. Perhaps this leaves them with less anxiety to manage when they go from firehouse to home.

Our thoughts about the future may do more than buffer us from the bad in life—they
may contribute directly to meaning and purpose in life and, so, to our well-being. Studies by psychology professor David Feldman of Santa Clara University showed a correlation between hope and meaning that was the highest researchers have measured for any factor associated with hope, perhaps because hope spurs us to pursue what matters to us most, which in turn gives us a sense of control and purpose that is key to well-being.

Despite the promise of this research, the definitive studies examining a causal link between hope and happiness have not yet been done. So, for now, I will say that
hope is necessary but not sufficient for happiness.

Rick Snyder, my mentor at the University of Kansas, once appeared on ABC’s
Good Morning America
to conduct a live experiment showing hope in action. He started by introducing a classic research tool called the cold pressor test, which uses a tank of ice water to assess pain tolerance. Then he challenged the host, Charlie Gibson, the medical expert, Dr. Tim Johnson, and the weather guy, Tony Perkins, to dunk their right fists into the tank for as long as they could stand it. Tony pulled out his hand first, and stood shaking life back into it while Charlie and Tim continued their battle of wills. Just as the segment ended, Tim gave up, but Charlie vowed to keep his hand in the freezing water throughout the break.

When they came back from the commercial, and Charlie was declared the winner, he asked Rick what the test had to do with hope. Rick’s reply: his studies had shown that hopeful people consistently tolerate more pain than their less hopeful counterparts. Then he revealed to viewers that the
Good Morning America
team had taken a standardized hope test prior to the show, and that their scores had accurately predicted the order in which each would call it quits.

Rick’s work on hope and pain has since been replicated in numerous controlled experiments.
In one study, hopeful people tolerated pain almost twice as long as people who were less hopeful.

These coping studies sparked research into how hope could promote healthy behaviors, including fruit and vegetable consumption, regular exercise, safe sex practices, and quitting smoking. In each case, hope for the future is clearly linked with daily habits that support health and prevent disease.

When it comes to their health, hopeful people tend to make good choices. This is true for Rose, the heart patient who closely follows her medication regimen to stay healthy. It was true for John, the farmer, when he recovered his hope and set challenging goals (for example, harvesting and baling) in order to keep his farm as well as to take better care of his day-to-day health. Finally, for the first time in his life, he accepted support from professionals, from his wife and friends, and ultimately, from his son. Each positive behavior and interaction gave John more energy, which he used to persevere.

The same is true for other people managing chronic health conditions—even for children.
Professor Carla Berg of Emory University wondered if hope in young asthma patients was associated with adherence to their treatment regimen, a daily inhaled steroid. The children, diagnosed with moderate to severe asthma, completed a youth version of the hope scale and were directed to take their medication as prescribed. With all the controls in place, Berg tracked their adherence with electronic monitoring of the child’s metered dose over a fourteen-day period, then examined the relationship between compliance and
variables, including demographic characteristics. Among all the factors studied, a child’s hope was the only significant predictor of who followed doctors’ orders.

How we think about the future clearly affects our health. This makes me think that my doctor should be asking me questions about my hopes and dreams. He never has. Has yours?

“
Hopelessness Predicts Mortality.”
This headline about the work of medical researcher Stephen Stern grabbed my attention. As I read the story beneath it, memories of my sessions with John flooded back. I truly believe that, had John not worked so hard, hoped so hard, he would have died. If he didn’t commit suicide or die of kidney disease, his hopelessness would have taken its toll some other way. I believed this when I treated John at the time, but I did not have a shred of evidence to support a link between hopelessness and mortality, or between hope and longevity. That all changed when I read Stern’s research.

Scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio set out to study mortality in older members of the local community. Psychiatry professor Stern and his colleagues began with a big question: “Why do some people die while others, who may be no less ill or in no less physical danger, continue to live?” Finding an answer would require following a large group of people over a long period and accounting for the many factors that could undermine each person’s health.

Stern’s group recruited 795 San Antonio residents, ages 64 to 79, who had taken part in a large prospective study of heart disease that began in 1979. Between 1992 and 1996, the participants added to their extensive research profiles by completing tests measuring cognitive performance as well as health markers (such as number of illnesses, blood pressure, body mass index), lifestyle factors (such as exercising, drinking, and smoking), and social well-being.

Stern set out to determine if hope is, in fact, a matter of life and death. Included in the home-based assessment was a simple question about hope: “Are you hopeful about the future?” (Or, for the many Mexican-American subjects, “Tiene esperanzas acerca del futuro?”) Of the respondents, 722 people (91 percent) said “yes” while 73 people (9 percent) said “no.” These two groups, the hopeful and the hopeless, proved to be equally matched in terms of their sex and ethnic makeup. No one type of person cornered the market on hope. They reported the same level of education, just under twelve years of formal schooling. Surprisingly, they even had comparable health at the time of the first home visit and no significant differences in blood pressure, body mass index, and drinking behavior.

What differences did show up? Many more of the hopeful were rated “high” in physical activity (48 percent versus 28 percent), while fewer of them were current smokers (15 percent versus 25 percent). The hopeful also scored much lower on a standard measure of depression and significantly higher on measures of social well-being and number of social contacts. The hopeful were on average one year younger (69 versus 70) and slightly better off financially.

After the study, both the hopeful and the hopeless were thanked for their participation, but they weren’t told anything about their results. They received no recommendations for health care or other interventions. They were simply left to lead their lives as they chose. Meanwhile, the researchers followed the hopeful and the hopeless from a distance. Using names and Social Security numbers, they collected mortality statistics from local newspaper obituaries, San Antonio city records, and National Death Index reports. Death certificates were reviewed to determine the causes of death for each participant who passed. Finally, a certified nosologist, an expert in disease classifications, coded each cause and shared the results with the researchers.

By August 1999, the results were clear. Of the hopeless group, 29 percent had died, compared to only 11 percent of the hopeful participants. There were no cases of suicide, but 25 participants had died of
cancer, and another 25 from heart disease; these diseases claimed 7.2 percent of the hopeless compared with 2.8 percent of the hopeful.

This finding—that hopelessness is a strong predictor of mortality—held up even when taking into account all the other factors measured, including ethnicity, sexual identity, drinking, perceived health, and number of medical illnesses (and the variables on which the groups differed, such as age and socioeconomic status). That is, when all other differences were statistically controlled, the people who said they felt hopeless were
more than twice as likely
to die during the follow-up period as the people who said they were hopeful about the future.

Even after more than a decade, Stern still refers to the findings as “striking.” When I asked how he explained the link between hope and longevity, he said he thought it was “behaviorally mediated.” In other words, hope for the future drives particular behaviors in the present that, in turn, result in a longer or shorter life. For example, he pointed out, “If you are hopeless you are less likely to keep doctor’s appointments.”

All of the scientific studies I’ve discussed in this chapter demonstrate that hope is not simply an attitude or belief that benefits us in some mysterious way. Hope can lift our spirits, buoy our energy, and make life seem worth living. It also changes our day-to-day behavior. How we think about the future has a direct impact on how well we do today. The following chapter, which wraps up the first part of this book, focuses on the link between hope and action, and why hope is so different from optimism and wishing.