Predicting hopelessness: The interaction between optimism/pessimism and specific future expectancies

Abstract

Improving our understanding of hopelessness is central to suicide prevention. This is the first study to investigate whether generalised expectancies for the future (optimism/pessimism) and specific future-oriented cognitions (future thinking) interact to predict hopelessness and dysphoria. To this end, participants completed measures of future thinking, optimism/pessimism and affect at Time 1 and measures of affect and stress at Time 2, 10–12 weeks later. Results indicated that changes in hopelessness but not dysphoria were predicted by the interaction between positive future thinking (but not negative future thinking), optimism/pessimism and stress beyond initial levels of hopelessness and dysphoria. Additional moderating analyses are also reported. These findings point to the fruits of integrating personality and cognitive processes, to better understand hopelessness.

Notes

¹Anti-goals are defined as values that an individual sees as undesirable (see Carver & Scheier, 1998, p. 18).

²In previous case-control studies, participants have completed a measure of verbal fluency before they begin the Future Thinking Task (FTT), to ensure that the “experimental” groups do not differ from the control groups in terms of general cognitive fluency. As this was not a comparative study and given time constraints, this was deemed not to be necessary. However, in the interests of rigour, in a previous study (O'Connor et al., 2004), we administered the Beck Hopelessness Scale and a measure of verbal fluency to 30 participants. Correlational analyses revealed no significant associations.

³This is consistent with other studies in the field (e.g., Hunter & O'Connor, 2003; MacLeod et al., 1998; O'Connor et al., 2000b).

⁴Mean hopelessness increased from M=3.77 (BHS-T1) to M=4.01 (BHS-T2). This increase was not significant, t(90) = 0.762, ns.

⁵Due to issues concerning statistical power, the interactions were examined using separate regression analyses (Chaplin, 1991).