When it comes to finding meaning in life, you need this emotion

Reams of stories have been written about happiness and its contribution to a good life. We’ve all heard, too, that gratitude lifts well-being.

And while both effects are backed by science, a new study suggests that a different emotion is even more powerful when it comes to providing life with meaning, bolstering mental health and boosting resilience.

You have to have hope.

The researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia note that hope “isn’t just wishful thinking.” They describe hope as a “powerful emotional force that gives our lives meaning.” And they assert that it “may be even more essential to well-being than happiness or gratitude.”

In a news release about the study, which was published in the journal Emotion, the researchers note that the field of psychology has linked hope to motivation and setting and accomplishing goals. But researchers from the university’s Department of Psychological Sciences report that “hope stands apart as one of the strongest positive emotions that directly fosters a sense of meaning.”

“Our research shifts the perspective on hope from merely a cognitive process related to goal attainment to recognizing it as a vital emotional experience that enriches life’s meaning,” said Megan Edwards, who earned a doctorate at University of Missouri and is now a postdoctoral scholar at Duke University. “This insight opens new avenues for enhancing psychological well-being.” She was one of the lead researchers looking at hope.

The team analyzed six studies that included more than 2,300 participants of varied backgrounds. They considered different emotions, including amusement, contentment, excitement, happiness and hope.

Hope was the only emotion they considered that “consistently predicted a stronger sense of meaning.”

The other lead researcher, Laura King, a professor of psychological sciences, said meaning in life predicts important outcomes like happiness, high-quality relationship, physical and mental health and even a higher income.

“Experiencing life as meaningful is crucial for just about every good thing you can imagine in a person’s life,” King said in the release. “This cornerstone of psychological functioning is not a rare experience. It is available to people in their everyday lives and hope is one of the things that makes life feel meaningful.”

Others tout hope

Last August, North Carolina State University found hope is more beneficial than mindfulness for helping people manage their stress levels and stay engaged at work during prolonged stressful periods. Their study was published in the journal Stress and Health.

Looking ahead helps in those periods much more than living in the moment, they reported.

“There’s a lot of discussion about the benefits of mindfulness, but it poses two challenges when you’re going through periods of stress,” Tom Zagenczyk, co-author of that study and a professor of management in North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management, said in a written statement on Science Daily. “First, it’s hard to be mindful when you’re experiencing stress. Second, if it’s a truly difficult time, you don’t necessarily want to dwell too much on the experience you’re going through.”

Their study was among professional musicians during the pandemic, when things were very stressful, and in a follow-up months later.

“Fundamentally, our findings tell us that hope was associated with people being happy and mindfulness was not,” said Kristin Scott, study co-author and a professor of management at Clemson University. “And when people are hopeful — and happy — they experience less distress, are more engaged with their work, and feel less tension related to their professional lives.”

Writing for Harvard Health in 2021, Dr. Adam P. Stern, a psychiatrist, reported that “greater degrees of hope are associated with improved coping, well-being and engagement in healthy behaviors. It also protects against depression and suicide. Among teens, hope is linked with health, quality of life, self-esteem and a sense of purpose. It is an essential factor for developing both maturity and resilience.”

America’s founding fathers knew a bit about hope, as well. In the Declaration of Independence, they listed three unalienable rights: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Not happiness itself, but the hope that it would come.

Crafting hope again and again

The study’s research team offered suggestions for “simple ways to build hope each day:”

• Pay attention and appreciate the positive moments, including the little ones.
• Seize opportunities “even in chaotic times.” It creates the sense you’re moving forward, they said.
• Appreciate growth and potential, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.
• Investing your time in activities that nurture growth. Caring and nurturing both grow hope.
• When times are tough, look forward. Things change “and hope begins with the belief that they will,” the researchers said.

Those aren’t the only ways to promote hope. Back in 2005, Texas A&M University showed that humor fuels hope. The study, which appeared in the International Journal of Humor Research, found that “laughter might be the best medicine for transforming the faintest glimmers of hope into an eternal spring.”

In a news release at that time, the researchers called humor a “legitimate strategy for relieving stress and maintaining a general sense of well-being while increasing a person’s hope.”

It wasn’t a secret, either. Other studies showed that more than 8 in 10 people considered lightheartedness crucial to deal with stressful life events.

Co-authors are Jordan A. Booker and Kevin Cook at Missouri and Miao Miao and Yiqun Gan at Peking University in China.