Speaking of Psychology - Why we need hope, with Chan Hellman, PhD, and Jacqueline Mattis, PhD

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

When the news is filled with war and climate change and other disasters, remaining hopeful about the future can feel impossible. But psychologists’ research has found that hope is not an unrealistic luxury, but a necessity. Jacqueline Mattis, PhD, of Rutgers University, and Chan Hellman, PhD, of the University of Oklahoma, discuss the difference between hope and optimism, why cultivating hope can help people facing adversity and trauma, and what all of us can do to find hope in trying and uncertain times.   For transcripts, links and more information, please visit the Speaking of Psychology Homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it mean to have hope? In difficult times, when the news is filled with war, climate change, and other disasters, remaining hopeful about the future can feel impossible. It might even feel irresponsible, like you're burying your head in the sand and ignoring the very real problems of the world. But psychologists' research have found that hope is not an unrealistic luxury. In fact, it's a necessity. cultivating hope, researchers have found, can help buffer people against the stress and trauma

of adversity and can prompt us all to work to do good in the world. So what is hope and how does it differ from optimism or resilience? How can hope help people who are facing adversity and pain? What are the greatest sources of hope in people's lives? Is hope always positive or can having unrealistic or naive hope ever cause problems? And what can all of us do to cultivate a sense of hope in trying and uncertain times? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life.

I'm Kim Mills. We have two guests today. First is Dr. Chan Hellman, a psychologist and the founding director of the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Helman's research is focused on hope as a psychological strength, and he develops hope-based interventions to help children, adults, and families coping with trauma and adversity. He has published more than 80 research studies and is the author of the book Hope Rising, How the Science of Hope Can Change Your Life.

Next is Dr. Jacqueline Mattis, a clinical psychologist and the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University. She began studying hope through her research. on the role of religion and spirituality in the lives of African American and Afro-Caribbean youth and adults. She has also studied factors that contribute to volunteerism, civic engagement, altruism, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, optimism, and positive parenting in those communities. Dr. Madison Hellman were featured speakers at APA's 2023 convention in a session on the Psychology of Hope, and I look forward to continuing that discussion today. So thank you both

for joining me. Great to be here. Thank you. Let's start with a definition, as we often do on speaking of psychology. What is hope? How do you define it? So the way that we define hope is, real simply, hope is the belief that the future can be better than today and that we have the power to make it so. I think it's really important to clarify that hope is a cognitive process, that it's a way of thinking rather than a feeling or an emotion that we might have. Dr. Mattis, does that resonate with you? Absolutely, yeah. Both the notion of pathways and the sense of agency that one can change the way that things are.

So how is hope different from optimism or confidence, Dr. Mattis? So we think about optimism as the expectation that things will work out in the future, right? that same sort of cognitive sensibility that projects you into the future. The difference between optimism and hope is that while optimism is that expectation that things will work out, hope comes with that expectation plus a plan, right? The idea that things may work out, but you have something that you have to do and that you can do to make that outcome possible. So those are the distinctions. It's hope is a verb. Why is hope important for people, mental health and well-being, Dr. Helman?

Sure. So the idea of navigating through daily stress, for instance, the ability to set goals, especially short-term, specific goals, can lead us into successful steps and can really promote that well-being. So it really becomes a protective factor when we are facing adversity of stress. What happens to people who lose hope physically and mentally, Dr. Mattis? One of the things that we know is that people who genuinely lose hope and we have to distinguish between people losing hope and people being afraid to sort of own the fact that they are hopeful, but they're scared about that reality, that they're hopeful, but there's a lot of anxiety. But when people genuinely lose hope, they become paralyzed. And that's a point at which we see people beginning

to be suicidal, right? That sense of there is no point in being here because there is nothing that I can do to change the outcome of the things that I'm facing right now. So the end of hope is often the end of people's capacity to imagine why it means, why it's meaningful and possible to be alive. And are the physiological changes that people undergo as they're maybe losing hope for whether they're good or bad reasons, Dr. Hellman? Sure, you know, as you begin to lose hope, first of all, the loss of hope is really a process where we begin to experience barriers to the pathways or strategies to the goals that were the future that we desire. And so we might begin to experience anger, frustration, and anxiety. If we're unable to overcome those,

we can slide into a sense of urgency where the difficulty becomes more of an agitated, anxious, really rash decision-making process, that it can ultimately lead to despair and desperation. So certainly hope as a framework for action impacts us both physically and psychologically. Now, people often think of hopefulness as a kind of personality trait, an outlook that you're either born with or you're not. But you've both written about how it's possible to cultivate hope. So how does one do that? I think you see that happening even in childhood. You see parents helping children to think about the big questions that are foundational to hope.

What's happening? What do you want? So you have to sort of ask questions that help you with the big imaginings around. What are the good things that you want to have happen? If optimism and hope are both rooted in the sense of a positive outcome can be, possible. What does that positive outcome look like? And it can be as simple as I want my bottle or I want a cookie or I want this person to be my friend, whatever it might be, asking the big questions about what do you want to have happen? And then what can you do to make it happen? So all of those

questions are implicit in the work of being hopeful. And we see those being socialized into young people. And to the extent that we can continue to socialize ourselves to ask those questions explicitly or implicitly, we can always cultivate hope. And, you know, Dr. Hellman mentioned the reality that part of hope involves the recognition that they're always going to be barriers. Life will happen to us along the way. And so being able to name what the barriers are and then think about how do I get through this particular thing and how do I reimagine. what the possibilities are. So you might start with one hopeful outcome. Barriers come into play.

You realize that the thing that you wanted may not be possible, at least in the way that you imagined it at the beginning, and then being able to sort of pivot to something that is as closely related to the original outcome or something else that's desired. But always it's rooted in this sense of,

what do I want, how do I get there, how do I recruit the resources that I need to make that outcome happen? And I'm hearing you say that the hope is something that you learn from the earliest days of your life as a person. So, Dr. Helmut, let me ask you, what if you come from a very adverse background and you haven't really learned a lot of hope as a baby? What happens as you grow up? Can you learn to hope coming from that kind of adversity? Sure.

And that's really the foundation of a lot of the work that we're doing, how does trauma and adversity? rob us of hope. And, you know, certainly from those earliest days where we begin to potentially nurture a secure attachment with caring adults, when that is not in place or not as predictable, we begin to have struggles with regards to relationships and, you know, finding others trustworthy. Part of what we're finding is that You know, when we look at the future from the context of fear and worry, or we spend more time ruminating on past events, that these are some of the things that can really diminish our capacity for hope. It doesn't necessarily rob us of hope, but it influences the nature of the goals that we maybe begin to set. So, for instance, when we're in distress, our goals may be from an avoidant framework.

That is, what are the outcomes that we do not want to occur? And that very much is going to influence those pathways components. Whereas when we see that hope has been nurtured, there's more likely to be an aspirational potential for those goals. So it's not so much that hope is either something you have or don't have. It's just how those environments really begin to influence the nature of the goals we set, the pathways that we have available to us. And then, you know, I do some work right now with adjudicated youth. And so we begin to think about what future do I see possible for me.

And how does that influence the goals and the planning that I engage in today? So if I don't, for instance, in some of these youth that I'm working with, you know, they see themselves transitioning to the adult correction system. And so why would they engage in program services today? So really, the work is around how do we interrupt that? And then how do we begin to nurture the idea of what is possible? for me that raises a question of people, for example, who are, say, sentenced to life in prison. How do you have hope when you know that you're pretty much going to be here forever?

I mean, where do you find the resilience and the hope within yourself, Dr. Mattis? You know, I think one of the things that I find particularly profound about human beings is the fact that we are not, we're not content. fully or limited fully by our circumstance. So you find some of the most hopeful people in the conditions and settings that are, that one might imagine as hopeless, right, or as a kind of environment that would produce hopelessness. Part of hope is recognizing the parameters that you're actually operating in. So if you are sentenced to life in prison and you, you know, you may know the system well

enough to know that it's right. It's true. You will never see the outside. but your hope is not linked necessarily to the outside. You can have hope about things that are going on on the inside of, you know, whether it's prison or wherever it might be. So people, and I don't think it's a compensatory thing. I think people find ways of figuring out how to create the bigness of life,

given the space that they are operating in. And life can be large regardless of where you are, right? And so whether you're on the inside of a prison or in any other context, I think people find ways of imagining what is the, how big can this life be? And there are lots of people who find ways of achieving that. And there are people who are free and don't, right? Yeah, exactly. One of the things that I really like about what Dr. Mattis is talking about and just made me, you know, really start to think in this moment is, you know, in these various contexts, What are the drivers of hope?

And where do we find meaning and purpose, which is highly associated with our capacity to hope? And so, you know, whether it's developing social relationships, meaningful social relationships, and the context of corrections, and probably more to Dr. Mattis's areas, you know, even that context of spirituality and how that can influence. influence and be a significant driver of our hope. Is it possible to have too much hope and can having unrealistic or naive hope lead to problems in people's lives? Dr. Mattis, you're smiling.

I'm smiling. I'm smiling. Take this one. I don't know that I can imagine a world in which there is too much hope. You know, and again, I think that part of the miraculous and beautiful and magnificent thing about human beings is the way in which we can cultivate and blossom hope. And because hope is not easily calibrated as this amount of hope is enough. And then once you cross that barrier, it's too much. People can imagine outcomes that others can't imagine. And so while others may respond

to an individual as if they are too hopeful about the possibilities that lie ahead of them, all of us make it miles because people could only imagine inches and we decided that inches are just not enough. Like there's got to be something. When you think about our popular culture, I used to love watching Disney movies with my nephews and my God kids. And one of the things that I loved is that a lot of these Disney movies are about. There's a boundary that your parents or community says you should never cross because it's too dangerous to go beyond that place. there's always a kid who's like, but I wonder what's beyond there. And I think so I think hope is very much like that. It's the, we have to have at least some people in every family, community,

friendship group who wonders at the, but how big could it get? And who who figures out a plan to sort of cross the bridge from what others see as possible to the things that people dream is impossible. and then bridge from there to the other impossible setup that are out there. So I don't think you can have too much help. Dr. Hellman, you agree? I see you nodding. I'm just really excited about that framework. We actually talk about children's movies as a fantastic way to help teach and nurture hope among our youth, our young children. You know, every one of those Disney movies, the main character had a great.

the main character had a pathway and had that agency and then experienced a tremendous barrier. I mean, that's the highlight of the movie. And then what I really love about using movies like that as a way to help teach hope is that in every case, especially in those Disney movies, the way the main character overcomes those significant barriers is almost always the same. And that's their friends. Their friends come together. And it just demonstrates that hope is such a social gift, you know, something that we can share. And so on one hand, we can help teacher think or children think about, you know, how do your friends help you overcome barriers?

And then really, what is your role? You know, how do you help your friends when they're facing those difficulties? So it's just a fantastic. And I totally agree that, you know, this idea of how. having too much hope is I kind of understand where it's coming from, but I know the evidence so far isn't really supporting that there's sort of these negative consequences to too much hope. And to me, it further illustrates this, what I think will be an emerging conversation is this idea of collective hope. and, you know, that as an individual, we can face some frustrations and some barriers,

but when we come together collectively, there's certain power in having a shared vision of what could be. Now, both of you have talked in other interviews about your own histories and life experiences that led you to become interested in hope and the science of hope studying it. Dr. Mattis, could you tell us your story first and then we'll talk to Dr. Helman? I had a colleague who used to talk about the idea that you, you know that you've lived a certain kind of life when you couldn't have predicted you're here from you there. And one of the things that I'm always attentive to is the reality that there's nothing that would have predicted me being here in the space that I am right now. when I think about, I talk about my great-great-grandfather a lot, right, because he is the first named, enslaved person that I know of in our family. Others who were enslaved in our family who, I don't know what their names were.

But I think about what Samuel Easton, who's my great-great-grandfather, I think about what he endured on an everyday basis, right? And the idea that he had to develop in his head, that it was possible for him to buy his way out into freedom and that it was possible to figure out how to buy his children into freedom and to buy his wife, which he never was able to do. But as far as our family story goes, but when there are externalities that you, that are so immense, right, systems and structures that are intent on your, your destruction, essentially, and on diminishing you and your humanity. And if he could find a way of imagining a set of possibilities that he then worked his way through, that for me is the ultimate example of, I don't think anything is possible. I would never ever say that, right? But I think much more is possible about our lives than we could have imagined.

And I think about the fact that Sam Easton couldn't have imagined his great, great-grandchildren. He couldn't have imagined us in another country that he didn't even know about necessarily. And he couldn't have imagined that we would be able to achieve the things that he actually set in motion, right? Through small actions and the ways that he raised his twin sons and the way that they then learned to raise their children and the things that they moved out of our path so that other things were made possible, all of those things are, for me, the result of people, deciding to hope. And I'm very conscious of the fact that I am the, I am the result of my mother's hope, right? Her decision every day to struggle to educate her four children, despite enormous

barriers and enormous challenges. And, you know, she got to see us get to the places where she hoped us into and beyond. So I'm, I'll leave it at that. I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm, I'm, I'm, the product of someone's hope, which also means I have responsibility to hope for my nephews and my nieces in ways that I, you know, were done for me. And, you know, we talk a lot in psychology about generational trauma, but what you're talking about is generational hope. Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. And without that, generations die.

Hmm. So, Dr. Hellman, what about your path? Yeah, so this could take a couple of days. So roughly in the eighth grade, I transitioned into homelessness. It was a conscious decision for me. And I spent my high school years as a homeless youth. And moving into homelessness was a short-term goal centered around well-being and safety. and, you know, spending most days in school trying to keep that hidden because I was really afraid to become involved in the system, you know, at that time.

And so, you know, managed that through high school and then stumbled around for a while until I became successful in college. My first semester grade point average is a 0.56. I failed every class except advanced swimming and life-saving. I like to swim. But, you know, it really informs the work that I think about because I am every day in awe that I'm here and that I get these experiences of even being, here today with you both is such a blessing. And so I think why is that? And what, you know,

and that's why for me, hope is a social gift. And there were important people in my life at really critical times that helped guide me into a future of what could be. And, you know, it brings back that importance of what future do I believe is possible. And helping children, youth and families understand that they matter and that that future that they deserve and can be a part of is possible. And now, Dr. Helman, a lot of your work focuses on developing hope-based interventions to help people dealing with trauma and adversity, which obviously you yourself did. What are some of those interventions? What did you learn from your experience that you're able to pass on now? Sure. So we actually have started to use.

use hope really more as a framework for action. Dr. Mattis made the comment at the very beginning that I love, hope is a firm. It is about taking action. And so it's the idea of how do we begin the process of client-centered or person-centered goal setting. Oftentimes the system infuses the goals that clients need to navigate through. But this is a process where they are having a a voice within the context of goals. So I'm talking about parents who have had their children removed and their system involved. So at what point do they get to be involved in setting goals for themselves and their families and then how our program services pathways to helping them achieve those kinds of goals?

Ultimately, we've taken that to an organizational framework where we're working to create hope-centered organizations like human services or health departments, etc. Dr. Mattis, you came to your interest in hope through studying religion and spirituality in African-American communities. Do you think that religion or spirituality is a necessary ingredient for hope? Or do atheists or people who don't consider themselves spiritual find hope in other places? I think there are different tools that people use to find hope for people who are religious or religiously spiritual, and I'll distinguish between the terms religiosity and spirituality, for people who are religious or religiously spiritual, their faith

can often be the source of their hope, right? So let me take a step back and define this and then come back to that point. So religiosity, we can think about as a system of beliefs that are codified, and passed along over time that help us understand big existential questions through the idea of the existence of a god or system of gods. So if you are religious, there's a god involved and there's a community involved because religio sort of comes back, that Latin word comes back to the notion of community. And so for people who are religious, a god or system of gods can be the foundation of the idea that there is something, bigger than us that is guiding how life unfolds. And for some people and some religious communities, the idea of a predestination that there is a bigness to a set of possibilities surrounding your life that you may not be aware of, but there is a God that is guiding you towards that.

So that the idea that you are loved by God or that you are, especially for Judea Christian communities, the idea that you're loved by God, that there are things that you are going to accomplish as a purpose to your life helps reinforce a sense of hope. However, spirituality, in contrast to this idea of belief in God and in the rituals and practices and the texts around that, spiritual people believe in the idea that there is a sacredness to life that makes life and living things inviolable. So if I can be religious, and not spiritual. So I can have texts around me and have practices

that I engage in and believe in a God, but not treat others around me as if their lives are sacred. And so, you know, I like to think about religio-spiritual people as people who believe in something bigger than themselves and also believe that fundamentally

life is sacred. But there are atheists who are spiritual who believe that life is sacred in whatever way they construct that. And for them, it's the sacredness of life, that is the foundation and the idea that life is still filled with purpose. It may not involve a God, but it's still filled with purpose. And we are connected to each other in that purposefulness. That may be the foundation for them of that same sensibility. So at the roots,

they're very similar. It's just God's absent for one set of people. Does that influence the degree of hope that a person might feel? So if you don't believe in a God or you don't believe in an afterlife? Are you possibly less hopeful than people who do think that there's something more? I don't believe that that's true. I think there are people who can be profoundly hopeful who do not believe in a God. And I think there are people who believe in God who are not hopeful at all. Right. So I think it's how we make meaning of the world and how we embrace, Dr. Hellman used the language of battering before to the extent that we see our lives and our presence here on this planet at this time as mattering. And the people around us as mattering, that I think helps shape the foundations of our

hope. And it doesn't have to be rooted in, I don't think there's either one of those stances, either being religious or being atheist, that influences the degree of hope that one has. I think it really is about how you make meaning in the world. And the extent to which you have the capacity, the joy of being able to imagine. And for some people, the capacity to imagine has been so squashed by others around them, by structures around them, that their hope may be much smaller,

but it's not because of anything else than the fact that hope is a function of who is around you either saying, you know, fueling the fire or throwing water on it. So if you happen to find a life where you can make meaning and there are others around you who can, you know, add fuel to that fire and egg you on. And you can deauthorize those who are causing harm to you, which is not always easy, right?

And deauthorizing means someone tells you that you will never be that big and you say, eh, I'm not listening. That's you. That's about, that narrative is about you or just watch me, right? So that capacity in people and the capacity to simply wildly ignore is a real tool in being able to fuel one's own hope. Dr. Helman, do you see that as well? I mean, have you ever made comparisons between people who are religious and spiritual and the level of hope that they might feel compared to other folks? Yeah.

So I agree with everything that Dr. Mattis said. you know, that there are hopeful people who are atheists and there are hopeful people who are deeply, deeply religious and vice versa as well. I have been involved in some research where we've looked at youth and their participation versus lack of participation or not participating. And what we find is that youth who are engaging in prayer, for instance, do report higher levels of hope. But we also find that youth who engage in mindfulness and meditation also report higher levels of hope.

And so I think it's really more about a connectedness that Dr. Mattis, that spirituality aspect that we find meaning and purpose and, you know, faith or religion provides sort of some framework around that. What are the big questions yet to be answered in the areas that you're studying? Dr. Mattis, let's start with you. There's so many. I think the question of, one of the questions for me is how hope is linked to other human virtues.

So I'm really interested in the link between hope and one's willingness to be altruistic. or hope and one's willingness to engage in what I think about as the inconvenient virtues, forgive, right? So forgiveness. So what is it about some people's ability in some moments to imagine that a different kind of relationship is possible between them and others? Or a different kind of world is possible, especially in the kinds of times that we're seeing right now. And what does that mean in terms of our ability to either forgive? or extend ourselves to others, to allow ourselves to be open to seeing things from the standpoint of another human being who we may disagree with profoundly and may not like, but need to figure

out how to embrace their humanity. So I think for me that the question of the link between hope and the inconvenient virtues is a real issue. And I would love to see studies of hope in children. So children experience life and life's barriers in very different ways than adults do. And I don't see a lot of studies on how six-year-olds who are faced with a moment where they can imagine and dream and plan a pathway, how they do that, and how they ignore the adults who tell them, oh, that's not possible. You can't do that, right?

And then they just become their purests. beautiful six-year-old selves and like they go off and do the thing. And then they look back at you like, ah, tell me another thing I can't do. So I think master hopers at early ages, I would love to see a set of studies on. And Dr. Helman, what were your big questions? What are you looking at now? So sure, first of all, I'd love to read those studies that Dr. Mattis just said that she would like to see her as engaging in. I will say that we actually just worked with a school district in the state of Washington where they had a parent teacher or a parent night and the elementary aged youth, first, second, third, fourth, fifth graders taught their

parents about hope. So it was a hope-centered curriculum in that space, which was fun to watch. So we'll see. We'll see what the data says on that. The two areas that come to mind for me that I'm really interested right now is the new sort of conceptualization of collective hope using goals, pathways, and willpower, that we exist in a social environment. And so I think about the importance of a community coming together with a shared vision of what could be. And that as an individual, I might be frustrated and overwhelmed, but that together we can find those pathways and strategies. is a shared energy. And so I'm really interested in that in the context of social movements.

And also in the context of climate change, perhaps. And then the final area that I'm also interested in is how do we use the framework of hope to advance social policy? We have such a tremendous divide. And so it makes me wonder if we start with the idea of identifying common goals such as well-being, that it's the pathways we can debate, and that if we collectively can come together that well-being is the common goal, then the framework of hope may be a framework to help resolve tremendous conflict. Well, this has been really interesting. I appreciate

both of you joining me today, and I thank you for the important work that you're doing and the hope that you're giving us all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingof psychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Our sound editor is Chris Kondyin. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.