The relationship between meaning in life and optimism

- Grounds, Mathew

Title
The relationship between meaning in life and optimism
Creator
Grounds, Mathew
Subject
Optimism, Positivism, Meaning (Psychology)
Date
2008-11-06T07:25:26Z
Type
Mini-Dissertation
Identifier
uj:14598
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/10210/1519
Description
M.A., For many decades now the emphasis within psychology, psychiatry and related human science fields has been on disease, disorder and deficit. This has been referred to as the disease model (Lampropoulas, 2001) or vulnerability/deficit model (Ickovics & Park, 1998). In recent times the stirrings of an alternative way of viewing human beings and human functioning is emerging. This new world-view may be referred to as positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Positive psychology offers a way of viewing people that emphasises the positive in respect of health - both mental and physical - in as much as individuals, inter-personal functioning and groups are concerned. Positive psychology thus serves as an antidote to the traditional emphasis on pathology and deficits. Ickovics and Park (1998) suggest that this change in focus from illness to health represent nothing less than a paradigmatic shift in theoretical psychological thinking. Several authors (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Strümpfer, 1995; Lightsey, 1996) make reference to diverse aspects of human beings that are thought to function as psychological or, resistance, resources. Typically these resistance resources are thought to help protect the individual against the effects of stressors in life and to have positive consequences for the individual in terms of physical and other areas of health (Antonovsky, 1979). It is this writer’s contention that both the constructs of interest in this study, optimism and meaning in life, are just such resistance resources and therefore readily belong to the new, affirming vision of man represented by positive psychology. This study will add to the empirical data needed to support the emerging science of strength and resilience, thereby assisting to divert psychology from it’s historical obsession with disease and malaise. Another of the more general aims of this study is to contribute towards the field of salutogenesis by adding new constructs to the existing framework of GRRs and to further understand these constructs. It will also help in encouraging the attitudinal shift that will be necessary to reorient the discipline back to its neglected missions of “making normal people stronger and more productive and making high human potential actual” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 8). The more specific aim of the study is to investigate the existence of, and nature of, the relationship between two variables, optimism and meaning in life. The results of the study indicate that a high positive correlation does indeed exist between the two constructs of interest, optimism and meaning in life. In conclusion, the value of having and maintaining both meaning in life and optimism in life was supported. This and future research into human strengths and psychological resources, as identified by Antonovsky (1979, 1987), Lightsey (1996), and others, serves to deepen and expand our understanding of the roles played by these vitally supportive and succourative factors in human functioning and well-being.
Contributor
Dr. I. van der Merwe
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