Research Review

[014 Research Review | FUTURE SELF series: 2] Cultivating optimism is an essential cornerstone in the coaching profession. A coaching tool called, “Future Self” is often used to create such a perspective. It guides a client to craft a clear picture of who they are going to be at some distant point in the future, anywhere from 9 to 20 years and includes the positive perspectives, knowledge, and experiences played out over the designated time period. It provides an opportunity to learn from the amassed wisdom of those years. 

[013 Research Review | HOPE series: 4] In 2002, C.L. Snyder and his colleagues set out to see if hope had anything to do with what Hanson (1994) termed the “lost talent.” These are the students who have high natural talent, academic ability, and innate intelligence who do not achieve the success one might expect based on their potential. They drop out of college early, or don’t go in the first place. They struggle to find jobs that convert to careers. This study marked the first time hope theory was used to sort out why some students succeed and others don’t. 

[012 Research Review | HOPE series: 3] Both flow and hope have been apparent in high performing athletes since the first Olympic games almost 3,000 years ago. However, Curry et al. (1997) point out that psychology researchers had never explored it because there wasn’t a measurable theory to use. Enter hope theory in the early 1990s. C.L. Snyder and his colleagues proposed a mechanistic definition of hope as a person’s perception of their own agency, or motivation, and their ability to map pathways towards achieving goals. This two pronged theory with specific mechanisms made it possible to design and refine measurement tools for detecting levels of agency levels of agency and pathways relative to certain goals.

[011 Research Review | Hope Series: 2] C.L. Snyder casts human psychology as a spectrum of strength, just like a rainbow is a spectrum of light. It’s a continuum of being, with each possible color connected to all the others. Snyder’s hope theory distinguishes hope as first a cognitive, rather than an emotional, process. Emotional patterns result from hope, but thought patterns cause it.