Optimistic expectations have benefits for effort and emotion with little cost

Using metaphors to build hope and hopefulness from depression

Helplessness and hopelessness are common key dynamics of depression that often inhibit therapeutic progress and client recovery. Based on a case example, this article examines the processes for effectively communicating therapeutic interventions aimed toward building hope when other approaches have failed. It explores the use of therapeutic metaphors including assessing for positive outcomes, building the PRO Approach for creating therapeutic metaphors and using Hope Theory as an example of an evidence-based process for facilitating both hope and enhanced treatment outcomes. It concludes with an illustrative metaphor within a hypnotic model and a step-by-step process for building your own hope-enhancing metaphors.

Using emotion to guide decisions: the accuracy and perceived value of emotional intensity forecasts

Forecasts about future emotion are often inaccurate, so why do people rely on them to make decisions? People may forecast some features of their emotional experience better than others, and they may report relying on forecasts that are more accurate to make decisions. To test this, four studies assessed the features of emotion people reported forecasting to make decisions about their careers, education, politics, and health. In Study 1, graduating medical students reported relying more on forecast emotional intensity than frequency or duration to decide how to rank residency programs as part of the process of being matched with a program. Similarly, participants reported relying more on forecast emotional intensity than frequency or duration to decide which universities to apply to (Study 2), which presidential candidate to vote for (Study 3), and whether to travel as Covid-19 rates declined (Study 4). Studies 1 and 3 also assessed forecasting accuracy. Participants forecast emotional intensity more accurately than frequency or duration. People make better decisions when they can anticipate the future. Thus, people's reports of relying on forecast emotional intensity to guide life-changing decisions, and the greater accuracy of these forecasts, provide important new evidence of the adaptive value of affective forecasts.

Do liberals value emotion more than conservatives? Political partisanship and Lay beliefs about the functionality of emotion

Relying on feelings to guide thoughts and plans may be functional from the perspective of the individual but threaten the cohesion of social groups. Thus, liberals, who prioritize caring and fairness for individuals, may view emotion as more functional than do conservatives, who prioritize preserving social groups, hierarchies, and institutions. To test this, participants in three studies (total N = 1,355) rated political partisanship, beliefs about the functionality of emotion, and well-being. Study 3 also assessed how much participants prioritized “individualizing” versus “socially binding” values (Graham et al., 2011). Across all studies, the more liberal participants were, the more they viewed emotion as functional, despite reporting less emotional well-being. In Study 3, the link between liberalism and valuing emotion was mediated by more liberal participants’ greater endorsement of individualizing than socially binding values. These results suggest that emotion is viewed as more functional by those who prioritize the needs of individuals, but as less functional by those who prioritize the cohesion of social groups.

What do expectations change? Optimistic expectations, job crafting, job satisfaction and a new theoretical model

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of optimistic expectations on job satisfaction at work and whether job crafting behaviour plays a mediating role in this effect. At the same time, this model presents the need for “expectation management” in the context of work psychology to the attention of all academics and practitioners.

Design/methodology/approach

To test the hypotheses of the study, data were obtained from 475 health-care workers in a public hospital. Hypotheses were tested using Process Macro Model of Hayes (2018).

Findings

The result of the analyses determined that the optimistic expectations for the organization as a whole have a positive effect on job satisfaction, both directly and indirectly, and that job crafting behaviour has a partial mediating role in this effect.

Research limitations/implications

The first limitation is that the data were obtained only by a cross-sectional method. The second is that among the various workplace behaviours and workplace psychologies job crafting and job satisfaction were examined in the study. The partial mediation effect between the research variables reveals the existence of many other variables and constitutes the third limitation. The fourth is that only optimistic expectations effects on positive behaviours and positive psychological states were evaluated in this study. Finally, a fifth limitation of this study is that the sample is limited to those working in the health sector and public hospitals.

Practical implications

First, the data were obtained only by a cross-sectional method, and the longitudinal method was not implemented in how the study was designed. Second, among the workplace behaviours, only job crafting behaviour and only job satisfaction as a workplace psychology were analysed. Third, partial mediation effect was found to be among the other variables might indicate the role of additional variables that could be uncovered by further research. Fourth, only optimistic expectations and their effects on positive behaviours and positive psychological states at the workplace were evaluated. Fifth, the sample is limited to those working in the health sector and public hospitals.

Social implications

This study draws attention to “Expectation Management” as a management activity worth exploring and its potential in terms of social and working relations.

Originality/value

This study provides versatile answers to the question of why individuals perform differently despite working under the same conditions. The model suggested in the study takes the conventional way of thinking in the literature one step further by offering an alternative answer to this critical question, whose answers we have been discovering step by step since the Hawthorne studies. In addition, the proposed model draws attention to the need for “expectation management” in the context of business psychology in theory and practice.

Anesthesiology Residency and Relationship Health: A Psychological Approach

This article explores an often-untouched subject in anesthesiology residency: relationships. The authors examine the importance of fostering all types of relationships (eg, personal, professional, self) and the impact of the training process on relationships and total well-being. Common issues in relationships during anesthesiology residency are shared through real-life anecdotes from physicians who are currently in or have completed their residencies. Psychological principles including optimism bias, cognitive dissonance, social comparison, and self-efficacy are explored as contributing to dysfunction in relationships. Strategies are offered for each psychological domain as a resource for faculty and program leadership to improve the residency experience in anesthesiology.

Encouraging hindsight in advance: Age progression in therapy - and life

Each person forms a relationship to the dimension of time, called a "temporal orientation." How that relationship is defined and prioritized, whether consciously or non-consciously, plays a huge role in the way people go about living their lives. In psychotherapy, the quality of one's expectations plays a pivotal role in virtually every phase of treatment. As a class of hypnotic interventions, age progression treatment strategies are intricately connected to expectancy since they typically involve guiding the client experientially, i.e., subjectively, into the future. While absorbed in this suggested projection, clients may have the opportunity to imagine and experience the consequences of current or new choices, integrate suggestions at deeper levels for eventual activation, rehearse new patterns of thought, feeling or behavior, and, in general, obtain a greater overview of his or her life than a narrower focus on day-to-day living typically affords. To paraphrase Milton Erickson, one can think of it as encouraging hindsight while it is still foresight.

Unrealistic Optimism and Risk for COVID-19 Disease

Risk perception and consequently engagement in behaviors to avoid illness often do not match actual risk of infection, morbidity, and mortality. Unrealistic optimism occurs when individuals falsely believe that their personal outcomes will be more favorable than others' in the same risk category. Natural selection could favor overconfidence if its benefits, such as psychological resilience, outweigh its costs. However, just because optimism biases may have offered fitness advantages in our evolutionary past does not mean that they are always optimal. The current project examined relationships among personal risk for severe COVID-19, risk perceptions, and preventative behaviors. We predicted that those with higher risk of severe COVID-19 would exhibit unrealistic optimism and behave in ways inconsistent with their elevated risk of morbidity and mortality. Clinical risk scores for severe COVID-19 were calculated and compared with COVID-19 threat appraisal, compliance with shelter-in-place orders (March 13–May 22, 2020) and travel restrictions, compliance with public health recommendations, and potential covariates like self-rated knowledge about COVID-19 in a robust dataset including 492 participants from McLennan County, TX, USA. While those with high clinical risk acknowledged their greater likelihood of experiencing severe illness if infected, they actually reported lower perceived likelihood of becoming infected in the first place. While it is possible that those with higher clinical risk scores truly are less likely to become infected, the pattern and significance of these results held after controlling for possible occupational exposure, household size, and other factors related to infection probability. Higher clinical risk also predicted more recent travel within Texas and lower distress during the pandemic (i.e., feeling less stressed, depressed, and helpless). Additional behavioral data suggested that those with higher clinical risk scores did not generally behave differently than those with lower scores during the shelter-in-place order. While unrealistic optimism may provide some short-term psychological benefits, it could be dangerous due to improper assessment of hazardous situations; inferring that optimism bias has evolutionary origins does not mean that unrealistic optimism is “optimal” in every situation. This may be especially true when individuals face novel sources (or scales) of risk, such as a global pandemic.