Being able to reframe negative events in a positive manner, actively cope with everyday challenges, and find comfort in spiritual faith and practices is how we create hope – and how we make today matter.
How hopeful are people across countries and cultures? What is the basis of hope? What sustains hope?
These are some of the questions being explored in the International Hope Barometer Research Programme, for which Professor Tharina Guse of the Department of Psychology at the University of Pretoria (UP) is South Africa’s co-principal investigator.
Global events in the recent past would not ordinarily provide fertile ground for hope to flourish. And yet, it does. What makes hope thrive, though, differs among countries and between cultures. The two countries with the highest levels of perceived hope, South Africa and Israel, endorsed different world views. For South Africans, hope is anchored in positive emotions, social relationships, the willingness to help others, religious faith and the connection to a higher power. Generally, they believe in the good. In the Israeli research sample, self-worth and believing in luck played a greater role in a hopeful mindset.
Researchers:
- Professor Tharina Guse, Co-principal Investigator, University of Pretoria
- Dr Andreas Krafft, Principal Investigator, University of St Gallen, Switzerland
- Professor Alena Slezackova, Co-principal Investigator, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
- Author Prof Tharina Guse, University of Pretoria, Dr Andreas Krafft, University of St Gallen, Switzerland & Prof Alena Slezackova, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
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