In plain language
“Positive thinking” is often treated as one thing, but psychologists actually distinguish several kinds: self-esteem (how worthy and competent you feel), hope (how confident you are that you can reach your goals and find routes to them), and attributional style (how you habitually explain the good and bad events that happen to you). This study asked whether these three forms of positive thinking do different jobs — do they predict different outcomes in teenagers’ lives?
The researchers followed 784 Australian high school students over time. At the start, students completed measures of verbal and numerical ability, the three positive thinking variables, and their emotional well-being (positive feelings, sadness, fear, and hostility). Later, the team collected school grades, teacher ratings of adjustment, and repeat measures of hope, self-esteem, and well-being, and used multi-level statistical modelling to see which variables predicted which outcomes over and above prior ability and prior well-being.
Each kind of positive thinking turned out to be distinctive in its own context. Hope was the best predictor of school grades and the only variable useful across every outcome domain; negative attributional style best predicted growing hostility and fear; and low self-esteem best predicted growing sadness — with sadness in turn eroding self-esteem, suggesting a “downward spiral”. The findings matter for anyone trying to build resilience in young people: which psychological strength you cultivate should depend on which outcome you care about.
Key findings
- Hope was the most reliable predictor of total school grades and of grades in individual subjects (English, Religious Studies, Math, Science, and Design), outperforming self-esteem and attributional style.
- Hope was the only positive thinking variable with predictive utility across all outcome domains — grades, teacher-rated behavior, and self-reported emotion — and it predicted lower teacher ratings of behavioral problems.
- Negative attributional style was the best predictor of increases in hostility and fear over time.
- Low self-esteem was the best (and only distinctive) predictor of increases in sadness, while self-esteem did not predict academic grades — consistent with reviews concluding self-esteem’s importance has been overstated.
- Sadness at Time 1 predicted decreases in self-esteem at Time 2, and low self-esteem predicted increases in sadness — a reciprocal “downward spiral” between the two.
- The agency component of hope (“I can do this”) was a more reliable predictor than the pathways component, predicting as well as the full hope scale on its own.
How to cite
APA
Ciarrochi, J., Heaven, P. C. L., & Davies, F. (2007). The impact of hope, self-esteem, and attributional style on adolescents’ school grades and emotional well-being: A longitudinal study. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 1161–1178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.02.001
BibTeX
@article{ciarrochi2007impact,
title = {The impact of hope, self-esteem, and attributional style on adolescents' school grades and emotional well-being: A longitudinal study},
author = {Ciarrochi, Joseph and Heaven, Patrick C. L. and Davies, Fiona},
journal = {Journal of Research in Personality},
year = {2007},
volume = {41},
pages = {1161--1178},
doi = {10.1016/j.jrp.2007.02.001}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.