Psychology expert says hope helps people persevere through troubled times

LAWRENCE -- In a year marked by terrorist attacks, war and high alerts, it is easy to understand why many Americans may feel hopeless.

Still, a University of Kansas professor who specializes in the concept of hope said there is reason to believe that better days are ahead.

Rick Snyder, M. Erik Wright distinguished professor of clinical psychology at KU, said maintaining a sense of hope is the most effective antidote against the feelings of helplessness and victimization.

"What the terrorists wanted was to make Americans feel so fearful that we could not concentrate on anything else," Snyder said. "This fear immobilizes us. I say let us prove them wrong; let us re-engage in those goals that give meaning to our particular lives."

But hope is not merely optimism; it entails creating reasonable goals and finding practical ways to reach those goals, Snyder said. In other words, unlike the old saying, having the will doesn't necessarily mean you have the way.

To achieve your goals, you must couple willpower -- or perceived motivation -- with what Snyder calls "waypower" -- or the perceived ability to map out your method of reaching those goals.

Snyder has written or co-written four books on the concept of hope, and he is working on developing a course on positive psychology at KU. His most recent book is "The Handbook on Positive Psychology" (Oxford University Press, December 2001). Several of his books contain a simple eight-item questionnaire called the Hope Scale, which he developed to measure a person's level of hope.

Snyder has used the Hope Scale to demonstrate that children with a strong sense of hope tend to fare better in school. Moreover, high-hope students were more likely to get better grades and graduate from college than their low-hope counterparts.

That's why, he said, one of the best gifts a parent could give a child this holiday season is the gift of hope.

"I think that we -- as a species -- were probably given hope in the sense that to be able to hope is what has gotten us through some amazingly difficult times," he said. "I would even be so bold as to suggest that hopeful people have been the ones who have survived and propagated."

But how does a parent give his or her child a sense of hope -- especially in this day and age? For starters, Snyder said, turn off the television.

As the year comes to an end and news programs air endless streams of year-in-review specials, the images of war and planes striking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon will certainly do more harm than good, he said.

"The media, in my estimation, is not doing us any favor by continuing to play these disaster images," Snyder said. "There's a saying that bad news sells. I think that we citizens probably make that true. We immediately need to tell our children, 'Yes, this was terrible and awful,' but our actions afterwards show that we are not immobilized by this fear. Indeed, we have the capability to hope just as we did before these incidents. I think it's the most wonderful gift we can give our children."