Psychological vulnerability, resilience, and subjective well-being: The mediating role of hope
Introduction
The scientific study on subjective well-being has been of interest in the last three decades with the remarkable rise of the positive psychology movement which focuses on the human strengths and virtues and also building the best qualities in life (Seligman, 2002). As a human strength, subjective well-being can be defined as being satisfied with life, experiencing long term affect of pleasure and feeling less negative emotions. In other words, subjective well-being is a multidimensional concept which refers a global appraisal of individuals' own life in terms of cognitive dimensions including general life satisfaction and affective dimensions which refer to the presence pleasant affect, and absence unpleasant affect. Happy individuals experience high levels of satisfaction with their lives, greater positive emotions, and less negative emotions (Diener, 2000, Diener et al., 2002).
A bulk of research examined demographic variables that may predict subjective well-being such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, educational level, marital status, income (Vera-Villarroel, et al., 2012). Some other researches have also focused the association between subjective well-being and internal factors and human strengths like gratitude, self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism, forgiveness, hope, meaning in life, social self-efficacy, loneliness and shyness (Hombrados-Mendieta et al., 2013, Li et al., 2014, Snyder and Lopez, 2007). In a longitudinal study, it was yielded that positive psychological constructs, positive emotions, stress and anxiety may be significant predictors of well-being (Avey, Wernsing, & Mhatre, 2011).
Previous studies have indicated that resilience that can be accepted as a human strength may have a substantial impact on subjective well-being (Doyle et al., 2015, Liu et al., 2013). Resilience has been defined broadly and variously over the years. While Thornton and Sanchez (2010, p.455) defined resilience as a “dynamic process that enables the individual to respond or adapt under adverse situations”, Connor and Davidson (2003, p.76) defined it as “as the personal qualities that enable one to thrive in the face of adversity”. People who are resilient are more persistent in the face of adversity, can struggle better with threatening circumstances, deal effectively with stress and hardship, have more capacity to respond life stressors and cope better with everyday difficulties (Mandleco and Perry, 2000, Smith, 2006).
Resilience involves positive patterns of adaptation in defiance of adversity and this adaptation process develops over time (Wright, Masten, & Narayan, 2013). Connor and Davidson (2003) have discussed resilience as an important target of treatment in maladaptive situations such as anxiety and depression. Ong, Bergeman, Bisconti, and Wallace (2006) suggested over time high-resilient individuals may recover effectively from daily stress. Therefore, resilience can be seen as an important predictor to enhance subjective well-being. Similarly, studies indicated that resilience was positively related to mindfulness, positive affect, and life satisfaction, happiness, extraversion and negatively related to negative affect and neuroticism (Bajaj and Pande, 2015, Lü et al., 2014).
Contrary to resilience that has also been termed as “invulnerability” psychological vulnerability can be seen as a negative predictor of subjective well-being. The vulnerability can be defined as at risk for developing psychopathology and susceptibility to undesirable outcomes (Wright, et al., 2013). Sinclair and Wallston (1999, p.102) suggested that psychological vulnerability refers to cognitive structures which make individuals more fragile to stress and described it as a “pattern of cognitive beliefs reflecting a dependence on achievement or external sources of affirmation for one's sense of self-worth”.
Psychological vulnerability is a natural result of being human and each individual was endowed with a degree of vulnerability which may cause psychological problems in cases of experiencing stressful conditions (Zubin & Spring, 1977). Previous literature on psychological vulnerability indicated that there was a positive relationship between psychological vulnerability and negative affect and depressive symptoms. On the other hand, the psychological vulnerability was negatively correlated with positive affect, life satisfaction, dispositional optimism, and self-efficacy (Sinclair & Wallston, 1999). Additionally, some research suggests that there is a link between the psychological vulnerability and adaptive constructs which are closely associated with subjective well-being such as life satisfaction, social safeness and flourishing (Satici et al., 2016, Uysal, 2015).
Hope as a human psychological strength is the cognitive process that helps people to have positive expectation to reach desired goals and to perceive that these goals can be met. Hope has been defined as “a cognitive set that is based on a reciprocally derived sense of successful agency (goal-directed determination) and pathways (planning to meet goals)” (Snyder et al., 1991, p.571). Therefore, hope consists of three components: (a) goals which refer anything that an individual has a wish to get or reach, (b) pathway thinking which refers producing different or possible ways and planning routes to reach these goals and (c) agency thinking that refers tendency to develop and maintain motivation to meet desired goals, and having energy to use pathways to achieve goals (Snyder, 2002, Taysi et al., 2015).
Snyder (2002) suggested that hope is an important factor for people with lower well-being and is positively related to psychological well-being, and physical health. Findings from recent studies have also revealed that hope is a significant predictor of life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect and flourishing (Demirli, Türkmen, & Arık, 2015). High-hope individuals evaluate stressful situations as challenging rather than threatening and judge situations generally in positive ways (Rubin, 2001). These individuals are also confident, energized, and experience lower levels of depression (Snyder, 1999). Additionally, hope was found positively linked with increased self-esteem, positive thoughts, optimism, psychological well-being, physical health and resilience and negatively linked with depression and externalizing behaviors (Karaırmak, 2007, Snyder, 2002, Snyder and McCullough, 2000). In their study which has a longitudinal conceptual framework, Meeks et al. (2016) proved that hope may be related to quality of life, social support, and anxiety. Valle, Huebner, and Suldo (2006) indicated that individuals who state higher levels of hope were more likely to report higher levels of life satisfaction a year later. Hope was also found as a factor that promotes resiliency and a positive inner source for both future and present-oriented life (Granek et al., 2013). Additional studies indicated that hope may act as a mediator between adaptive variables like life satisfaction and maladaptive variables like psychological distress (Rustoen, Cooper, & Miaskowski, 2010). Therefore, hope might play a significant role in the influence of resilience and psychological vulnerability on subjective well-being.
In this paper, it was aimed to investigate the possible mediating role of hope in path analyzes and it was hypothesized that hope would mediate the relationships between resilience, psychological vulnerability, and subjective well-being on cross-sectional data. In other words, it was proposed that while resilience may facilitate the development of hopeful thinking, psychological vulnerability may inhibit hope, and hopeful thinking may lead to high or low levels of subjective well-being. Although most previous studies indicated that hope may mediate the relationships between different variables, to our knowledge, no study has compared the relationships of resilience, psychological vulnerability and subjective well-being in a Turkish sample.
Section snippets
Participants and procedure
A cross-sectional survey was conducted between October 2015 and December 2015 with 332 [195(58.7%) female, 137(41.3%) male] voluntary university students in Istanbul and Eskisehir, two large-sized cities in the northwest and middle part of Turkey. The mean age of the participants was 20.96 years (SD = 2.01). Participants were attending classes in one of the four grades of higher education (26.2, 22.9, 21.7 and 29.2% were in the first, second, third and fourth year, respectively). Table 1 shows
Correlation and descriptive statistics of variables
Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations are displayed in Table 2. Inspection of the skewness and kurtosis indices for all variables in the study proved normal (skewness ranged from − 0.81 to 1.05, and kurtosis from − 0.58 to 0.75). All the variables revealed significant associations with each other. As expected, positive affect and life satisfaction were positively associated with hope and resilience and negatively associated with psychological vulnerability. Conversely, negative affect
Discussion
Hope that helps individuals cope with various life challenges and may serve to drive well-being of people can be defined as a “unidimensional construct involving an overall perception that goals can be met” (Snyder, et al., 1991, p.570) and involves two interrelated cognitive components: agency and pathways (Snyder, 2002). Research has established that hope directly associated with positive outcomes, adjustment and subjective well-being (Snyder, 2002). On the other hand, lower levels of hope
References (57)
- et al.
Online communication and subjective well-being in Chinese college students: The mediating role of shyness and social self-efficacy
Computers in Human Behavior
(2014) - et al.
Resilience and affect balance as mediators between trait emotional intelligence and life satisfaction
Personality and Individual Differences
(2013) - et al.
Resilience as a mediator between extraversion, neuroticism and happiness, PA and NA
Personality and Individual Differences
(2014) - et al.
An analysis of hope as a psychological strength
Journal of School Psychology
(2006) - et al.
Turkish version of the psychological vulnerability scale: A study of validity and reliability
- et al.
Longitudinal effects of hope on depression and anxiety: A latent variable analysis
Journal of Personality
(2007) - et al.
A longitudinal analysis of positive psychological constructs and emotions on stress, anxiety and well-being
Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies
(2011) - et al.
Mediating role of resilience in the impact of mindfulness on life satisfaction and affect as indices of subjective well-being
Personality and Individual Differences
(2015) - et al.
Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC)
Depression and Anxiety
(2003) - et al.
Investigation of dispositional and state hope levels' relations with student subjective well-being
Social Indicators Research
(2015)
Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index
American Psychologist
The satisfaction with life scale
Journal of Personality Assessment
Subjective well-being
Adaptation of the brief resilience scale into Turkish: A validity and reliability study
The Journal of Happiness & Well-Being
Resilience and well-being amongst seafarers: cross-sectional study of crew across 51 ships
Psychometric properties of the satisfaction with life scale among Turkish university students, correctional officers, and elderly adults
Social Indicators Research
Positive and negative affect schedule: A study of validity and reliability
Turk Psikoloji Dergisi
Development of a theoretically derived model of resilience through concept analysis
Contemporary Nurse
Trajectory of parental hope when a child has difficult‐to‐treat cancer: A prospective qualitative study
Psycho‐Oncology
Hope as a mediator between personality traits and life satisfaction
Studia Psychologica
The relationship between social support, loneliness, and subjective well-being in a Spanish sample from a multidimensional perspective
Social Indicators Research
Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives
Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal
Investigation of personal qualities contributing to psychological resilience among earthquake survivors: A model testing study
Self-Efficacy, loneliness, effort, and hope: Developmental differences in the experiences of students with learning disabilities and their non-learning disabled peers at two age groups
Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal
The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work
Child Development
Resilience as a mediator between extraversion, neuroticism and happiness, PA and NA
Personality and Individual Differences
Confidence limits for the indirect effect: Distribution of the product and resampling methods
Multivariate Behavioral Research
The hope construct, will, and ways: Their relations with self-efficacy, optimism, and general well-being
Journal of Clinical Psychology
Cited by (155)
The impacts of organizational support and customer incivility on employee vulnerability and job performance: The moderating role of employee mental health
2024, International Journal of Hospitality ManagementLife satisfaction during temporary housing after an earthquake: Comparing three cases in Italy
2023, International Journal of Disaster Risk ReductionHope and well-being
2023, Current Opinion in PsychologyEvaluating a longitudinal multilevel mediation model of self-concept clarity, hope, and subjective well-being in adolescents
2024, International Journal of Behavioral DevelopmentPredictors of subjective well-being and life satisfaction of people in late age: applied aspect
2024, Perspektivy Nauki i ObrazovaniaHow consumers' economic and psychological vulnerabilities impact their consumption regulation during crisis
2024, Journal of Consumer Behaviour