Hope and Rational Optimism

Facing Our Difficulties

Sometimes, the struggles we face, both as individuals and as a society, seem insurmountable. While there is much around us that is good, some problems and conflicts—personal, relational, political—can appear intractable. It may not always be reasonable to be optimistic, but that does not mean we need to be paralyzed. Even if there are no reasons to be optimistic, there may nevertheless be grounds for hope.

Hope Versus Optimism

The terms “hope” and “optimism” are sometimes used interchangeably. While there are various resemblances between these two states, there are also differences. Optimism tends to concern expectations that the future will be positive. Hope may not. Hope may be present even if we think a positive outcome is not especially likely. Even in such cases, there may still be reasons for action and reasons to hope.

Source: khmelev / Adobestock

Aquinas understood hope as a desire arising from the perception of “a future good [that is] difficult but possible to obtain.” Likewise, Milona and Stockdale argue that hope entails a desire for something good in the future and a belief that this is possible, but it extends beyond belief and desire to include a reason for action to try to obtain the future good. Even when circumstances are difficult, and we cannot necessarily expect a good outcome, there may be reasons to hope for it and to work for it.

Rational Optimism

But what of optimism? Psychologists often consider optimism a psychological asset, and there is empirical research to support its beneficial effects on health. Philosophers, however, tend to be more skeptical of optimism.

Many philosophers consider optimism to be an “epistemic deficiency.” If we tend to think a positive outcome is more likely than it is, then we do not have a rational view of the situation. While there is undoubtedly something correct in this philosophical perspective, the picture is arguably somewhat more complicated. There are varieties of optimism, and some of them are, in fact, rational. Such forms of rational optimism were the topic of one of our recent papers at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard.

One intriguing fact about optimism is that, in the West, at least, it tends to increase (not decrease) with education. This might seem unusual if optimism were always irrational. While there are undoubtedly cases in which we simply misjudge probabilities (e.g., “when 70 percent of the population take themselves to be less likely to be divorced than the average person, they cannot all be correct”), there are other instances in which our optimism may be grounded in reasons. We might be optimistic about a positive outcome because we have the resources to bring about a good outcome (“resourced optimism”), or we might be optimistic about a good outcome because we are willing to work hard towards it (“agentive optimism”). Sometimes, optimism might also not concern expectations about the future at all but really be more about a way of looking at the world: seeing the glass half full rather than half empty (“perspectival optimism”).

Thus, in addition to the “groundless optimism” rightly criticized by philosophers, there are also other forms of optimism that, at least at times, can be rational. Our paper describes the conditions for such optimism to be rational and considers other issues of the scope of optimism, its moral and practical implications, and its relation to hope. We’ve also provided a brief summary elsewhere for those who do not want to read the whole paper.

Empirical Research on Hope and Optimism

Given the challenges we face and the importance of hope and “rational” optimism in confronting our challenges, it also makes sense to try to study such dispositions empirically—to learn about their causes and effects. Some of our prior research on hope has indicated the important effects of hope on various other aspects of health and well-being, both for adults and for adolescents. A lot of empirical research has been carried out on optimism as well, again indicating effects on health. While this is of interest in its own right, the existing research does not adequately distinguish between the grounds of optimism and whether it is rational or irrational. This might also explain why, while the associations between health and optimism are seen in the U.S., they are not seen in Japan. Irrational forms of optimism may perhaps not function as well there.

To understand these nuances better so as to promote rational forms of optimism, along with health and well-being globally, we need more nuanced measures, and over the past years, we have been working to produce these and have recently introduced an assessment of optimism that distinguishes the different forms of optimism: groundless, resourced, agentive, and perspectival. We’ve also introduced a new, and arguably conceptually more adequate, measure of hope since the measure most frequently used at present (that of Charles Snyder) does not adequately capture the notion of difficulty that plays such an important role in the philosophical discussions of hope and in our own daily experience, when we are sometimes not optimistic about the future, but can nevertheless hope and work towards a good outcome.

We’ve collected quite a bit of data on these new measures of hope and optimism (and you are welcome to use them as well) and are in the process of reporting on their psychometric properties. We hope that in doing so, these measures might empower new research in this field so that we can promote hope, rational optimism, and human well-being.

Optimism Essential Reads

Why Bracing Yourself for the Worst Is Not Always Best

Are You an Optimist or Pessimist About Our Changing World?

Facing the Weeks, Months, and Years Ahead

We need hope, and we need rational—agentive, resourced, perspectival—optimism to confront the many challenges of society today. In many ways, we are a divided, polarized society, and it can be difficult to have hope. Next week, our country will have an election, and regardless of what happens, roughly half of the country will be disappointed with the outcome—many bitterly so. Some may be disappointed with both possible outcomes. Regardless of what happens, however, we will need to continue to work together. We will need to continue to have hope.

Those on the “winning” side need to reach across the divide and discern how we can work together. Those whose preferred candidate does not triumph, rather than resisting, can likewise ponder how, or in what ways, we might together seek the common good. Our attitudes towards others, and towards our country, will shape what we can hope for together.

There is much that we share, and we all want to flourish. While we may understand the precise meaning of flourishing differently and propose different means to attain it, there is a lot that we nearly all desire for our lives, including, as we’ve argued elsewhere, happiness, health, meaning, being good, having good relationships, and material security. Seeking these things together requires hope. Seeking these things together and also recognizing the good that we have already accomplished together in this country and around the world requires a perspectival optimism: seeing the glass half full rather than half empty. Seeking the good together requires making use of our resources, and our agency, to try to realize our hopes—our individual hopes and our hopes for life together.