A new study published in the Journal of Emotion looked at hope as a meaningful emotion.
“We were interested in examining the relation between hope and meaning in life,” study author Megan E. Edwards told us. “We predicted that hope would be a particularly important emotion for fostering meaning in life.”
Feeling like life is meaningful is an important aspect of well-being, Edwards explained. Yet when we experience hardships or suffering, we tend to feel like life is less meaningful.
“Suffering, hardship, and general life difficulties is a human experience that everyone faces in some way, shape or form,” Edwards told us. “And so I was particularly interested in understanding how people continue to experience life to be meaningful when also facing hardships. Hope seemed like an important emotion for meaning as it involves believing in a better future, and therefore provides a positive feeling amid difficulties.”
Multiple studies were carried out. Participants completed a survey about their trait feelings of hope and meaning in life. A daily diary method asked people about their feelings of hope and meaning in life every day for three weeks. The researchers also used a longitudinal method which asked people to complete five similar surveys spaced out about two-three weeks. Participants were also randomly induced with cheerful feelings (watched a video of happy puppies), sad feelings (video of dogs close to end of life) or neutral feelings (how to build a brick wall video).After the video, participants then reported on their emotions and meaning in life.
“This study showed that feelings of hope (a specific positive emotion) explained the relation between positive affect and meaning in life, alongside other positive emotions,” Edwards told us. “In the fifth study, participants were randomly induced with hopeful or hopeless feelings (by reading an article about climate change that either supported that there was still hope for climate change or that climate change was hopeless). Following, they reported on their emotions and meaning in life. This study suggests that reading about hope leads to greater feelings of hope, and these feelings of hope promoted meaning in life.”
The studies showed that having hope (either at a trait level or state level) promotes meaning in life and that this was true accounting for other positive emotions or feelings of agency.
“What is extra exciting, is that only hope, but not other positive emotions, predicted future meaning in life,” Edwards told us. “It seems rather intuitive that hope helps us feel like life is meaningful. Others such as Viktor Frankl, a psychologist and Holocost survivor, also suggest that hope is deeply intertwined with meaning in life.”
It’s important for future research to test the relation between hope and meaning specifically during times of difficulty, which the current studies do not yet do, Edwards explained. But hope is a positive feeling that is activated by uncertainty and negative circumstances so looking at hope specifically during such experiences is an important next step.
“In everyday life, it’s important to think about what we can be hopeful for during times of uncertainty or difficulty,” Edwards told us. “Even if they are small things. If we can feel hopeful amid the ongoing uncertainty and suffering, we’ll feel like life remains meaningful and can continue to flourish.”