The Effects Of Hope On Attentional Bias In College Students

Hope,as a field of positive psychology,is a positive motivational state that is based on an inter-actively derived sense of successful(a)agency(goal-directedenergy),and(b)pathways(planning to meet goals).Because the agency and pathways are pointing to the target,the goals,pathways thinking and agency thinking constitute the three elements of hope.About the definition of hope,there are two types:trait hope and state hope.Trait hope can be applied to cross situation and time;state hope reflect the level of hope in the specific time or recent events.A large quantity of studies found that hope had close relationship with academic achievement,psychological health and physical health.The individual with high level of hope can feel more positive emotions and energy.Their satisfaction and well-being of life are also significantly higher than the individual with low level of hope.At the same time,we can effectively improve the individual self-esteem,self-efficacy,well-being,etc through raising the level of hope by psychological intervention.However,the internal mechanism of the hope is as yet unknown at present and there is rare correlative research.In this study,we try to investigate the differences of the process of emotional information processing between different level of trait hope and the influence of state hope for information processing.We try to do a preliminary exploration on the internal mechanism of the hope form the view of information processing.At first,a lot of college students' trait hope was measured through the Adult Dispositional Hope Scale by Snyder' team.They were divided into three groups:high level of hope;medium level of hope and low level of hope.A few of students were selected for the formal experiment.The formal study consisted of two parts.Part 1,in order to study the differences of attentional bias between different level of trait hope,there were 66 subjects to complete the experiment through dot-probe and some of pictures from CAPS.The results showed that(a)the participants with high level of trait hope appeared attentional vigilance to positive stimulus while attentional avoidance to negative stimulus;(b)the participants with low level of trait hope appeared attentional avoidance to positive stimulus.Part 2,in order to verify the effectiveness of the induced state hope through the experimental intervention and study the influence of state hope on attentional bias,there were 64 college students to complete the experiment.Results showed that(a)the intervention can effectively induce state hope through recalling the successful experience;(b)the subjects who induced state hope appeared attentional vigilance to positive stimulus,they become sensitive to positive pictures;(3)the subjects in control group did not have attentional bias to the positive and negative stimulus.In a word,the above conclusions are revealed that the effects of hope on attentional bias for college students is exist.