Trait Emotion Hope Scale

1. Abstract

The Trait Emotion Hope Scale (TEHS) represents a foundational advancement in affective science and psychometrics by operationalizing hope explicitly as an enduring emotional disposition rather than purely a cognitive-motivational schema. For several decades, psychological inquiry into hope has been dominated by cognitive models—most prominently C. R. Snyder‘s Hope Theory—which conceptualize hope primarily through goal-directed agency (determination to achieve goals) and pathways (perceived ability to generate routes toward those goals). While these frameworks have yielded valuable insights, they inadvertently marginalized the visceral, affective phenomenon of hope as experienced in everyday life. Developed by David B. Feldman and Hooria Jazaieri (2024), the TEHS directly bridges this conceptual divide by grounding measurement in the ’emotion set’ of Elaborated Hope Theory.

The TEHS is a unidimensional self-report instrument comprising 6 concise items evaluated on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (Definitely False) to 7 (Definitely True). Psychometric evaluation across a multi-study development program involving 2,900 participants established high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α and McDonald’s ω consistently exceeding .90), exceptional temporal stability, and robust structural validity verified through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across diverse samples. Convergent and discriminant validity analyses demonstrate that while the TEHS correlates moderately with cognitive hope, life satisfaction, optimism, and positive affect, it maintains distinct variance and exhibits significant incremental validity in predicting subjective well-being, psychological resilience, and adaptive emotion regulation over and above established cognitive measures. The TEHS thus offers a scientifically rigorous, empirically validated tool for positive psychology researchers, affective neuroscientists, and clinical practitioners seeking to evaluate the affective foundations of human flourishing.

2. Keywords

hope, trait emotion, psychometrics, positive psychology, Elaborated Hope Theory, emotional disposition, positive affect, scale development, affective science, psychological assessment, resilience, subjective well-being

3. Authors

The Trait Emotion Hope Scale was authored and validated by:

• David B. Feldman, Ph.D. — Department of Counseling Psychology, School of Education and Counseling Psychology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, United States. Dr. Feldman is an internationally recognized expert on the psychological study of hope, meaning in life, and trauma recovery.
• Hooria Jazaieri, Ph.D. — Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, United States (Corresponding author: [email protected]). Dr. Jazaieri’s scholarship bridges affective science, emotion regulation, mindfulness, and organizational psychology.

4. Purpose

The central purpose of the Trait Emotion Hope Scale is to resolve a persistent historical incongruence between theoretical psychology and human phenomenology. When laypeople are asked to describe hope, they almost invariably articulate an emotional feeling—a buoyant, comforting, or energizing affective state characterized by warmth, relief, or an inner light that persists even in the presence of adversity. In stark contrast, twentieth- and early twenty-first-century psychological research operationalized hope nearly exclusively as an instrumental, cognitive problem-solving apparatus composed of planfulness (pathways) and self-efficacy-like drive (agency). Consequently, prior assessment batteries captured how individuals think about their future goals, but largely overlooked how they feel about them.

This cognitive hegemony constrained the scope of positive psychological science in several critical ways. First, individuals confronting conditions characterized by uncontrollable distress—such as terminal illness, structural disenfranchisement, or bereavement—often report experiencing profound emotional hope despite lacking practical agency or actionable cognitive pathways. Cognitive scales frequently categorize such individuals as low in hope, misinterpreting their lack of instrumental mastery as psychological despair. The TEHS was specifically formulated to provide an instrument capable of measuring the persistent affective residue of hope that operates independently of objective goal feasibility.

In applied and clinical settings, the purpose of the TEHS is diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic. Psychotherapists frequently encounter clients who possess sophisticated strategic planning abilities and cognitive knowledge of what steps must be taken to improve their lives, yet remain emotionally detached, paralyzed, or despondent. By administering the TEHS alongside traditional cognitive hope scales, clinicians can conduct nuanced differential assessments, discerning whether a client suffers from a deficit in cognitive problem-solving (low pathways/agency) or an emotional depletion of hope (affective blunting or pervasive hopelessness). This distinction is vital for clinical formulation, guiding whether an intervention should prioritize cognitive restructuring and behavioral problem-solving or emotion-focused therapy, somatic resourcing, and experiential affective activation.

In empirical research, the TEHS provides a dedicated operationalization of the emotional dimension needed to test sophisticated affective models. It enables researchers to isolate the unique predictive capacity of emotional hope regarding neurobiological indicators of stress resilience, cardiovascular health, interpersonal prosociality, and subjective well-being. By distinguishing affective hope from generalized positive affectivity and cognitive optimism, the TEHS unlocks novel avenues for investigating how human beings maintain emotional equilibrium amid crisis.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the TEHS is trait emotion hope, defined as a generalized, stable, approach-oriented positive emotional disposition characterized by the enduring subjective feeling of hopefulness, even in the presence of adversity, uncertainty, or darkness. Unlike state emotional hope, which fluctuates dynamically in response to proximal events, trait emotion hope reflects an individual’s baseline affective set point—an integrated emotional filter through which future-oriented experiences and obstacles are interpreted.

The Affective Anatomy of Hope

Trait emotion hope is distinguished from related constructs by several key features:

• Affective Resonance vs. Cognitive Calculation: Unlike dispositional optimism or cognitive hope, which reflect probabilistic outcome expectancies (“I expect good things to happen”) or strategic determination (“I will find ways to get what I want”), trait emotion hope centers on the qualitative, experiential sensation of feeling hopeful (“I feel positive feelings of hope in my daily life”).
• Resilience Under Darkness: A defining characteristic of the construct is affective persistence in the face of counter-evidence. The emotion of hope does not require naive positive illusions; rather, it often emerges specifically against a backdrop of threat, limitation, or distress. Individuals high in trait emotion hope report feeling an internal affective buoyance (“Even in dark moments, I still feel hopeful inside”) that preserves psychic integrity when cognitive options are depleted.
• Approach Motivation and Vitality: Functionally, trait emotion hope operates within the behavioral activation system (BAS), generating an energizing, uplifting feeling that facilitates psychological exploration, openness to novelty, and sustained engagement with the social and physical environment.

Unidimensional Structure

While theoretical precursors explored whether emotional hope comprised multiple emotional sub-components (such as uplifting feelings versus solace in dark times), comprehensive psychometric investigation during scale development revealed that trait emotion hope operates as a robustly coherent, unidimensional construct. The core items tap into an integrated affective reservoir: the spontaneous, authentic presence of hopeful feelings, their frequent and natural occurrence, and their persistent emergence during hardship.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Trait Emotion Hope Scale is anchored in the theoretical architecture of Elaborated Hope Theory (Feldman & Snyder, 2005; Snyder, 2002), which expanded the classical cognitive model of hope by integrating affective feedback loops into goal pursuit dynamics.

Classical Hope Theory and Its Limitations

In its original formulation by C. R. Snyder and colleagues (1991), Hope Theory defined hope as a cognitive set composed of two reciprocally interrelated components: agency (the motivational drive directing an individual toward goals) and pathways (the cognitive capability to generate workable plans to reach those goals). In this classical cognitive paradigm, emotions were relegated strictly to epiphenomena—passive byproducts resulting from the perceived success or failure of goal-directed cognition. When pathways and agency operated unimpeded, positive emotions were thought to emerge; when blocked, negative affect followed.

The Emotion Set in Elaborated Hope Theory

Subsequent theoretical developments recognized that this linear, cognitive-first conceptualization failed to account for bidirectional affective-cognitive interactions. Human emotions are not merely reactive endpoints; they serve as primary organizers of perception, cognition, and behavior (Izard, 2000; Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 1987). Elaborated Hope Theory introduced the concept of the emotion set, positing that repeated iterations of goal pursuits leave an enduring affective residue. Over time, an individual’s developmental history of struggles, triumphs, and sustained efforts solidifies into a trait-like emotional disposition.

This emotional disposition feeds directly into subsequent goal encounters, operating as an antecedent affective frame. When an individual high in trait emotion hope enters a challenging situation, their pre-existing emotional baseline infuses the encounter with approach-oriented affect, buffering against premature cognitive abandonment and dampening threat-based neuroendocrine responses. The TEHS was engineered specifically to measure this antecedent emotional set point.

Integration with Broaden-and-Build and Appraisal Theories

The TEHS also interfaces with Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions. Positive emotions broaden momentary thought-action repertoires and build enduring physical, intellectual, and social resources. Hope is unique among positive emotions because it often arises in contexts of acute stress, fear, or adversity (Lazarus, 1999). Within Richard Lazarus’s cognitive-mediational appraisal framework, hope is appraised when an outcome is desired, uncertain, but perceived as possible. The TEHS captures the individual’s enduring propensity to activate this resilient emotional state across life domains.

7. Validity

The construct validity of the Trait Emotion Hope Scale was established through a multi-tiered validation protocol comprising three empirical studies across heterogeneous adult samples (total N = 2,900; Feldman & Jazaieri, 2024).

Convergent Validity

To establish convergent validity, the TEHS was correlated against validated measures of cognitive hope, optimism, emotional reactivity, and well-being. Analyses confirmed statistically significant positive associations with:

• Cognitive Hope: Snyder’s Adult Hope Scale (AHS; r values typically between .55 and .68), demonstrating substantial convergence while confirming that the two scales share only 30% to 46% of common variance, leaving the majority of variance unique to affective hope.
• Dispositional Optimism: Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R; r ≈ .50 to .62), reflecting alignment with general positive expectations for the future.
• Positive Affectivity: The Positive Affect subscale of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; r ≈ .52 to .65).
• Subjective and Psychological Well-Being: Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; r ≈ .45 to .58) and Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS; r ≈ .50 to .63).
• Resilience and Tenacity: Brief Resilience Scale (BRS; r ≈ .40 to .52) and Short Grit Scale (Grit-S; r ≈ .32 to .44).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established through rigorous differentiation from conceptually unrelated or inversely related constructs:

• Negative Affect and Distress: Strong, statistically significant negative correlations were observed with depressive symptomatology, anxiety, and perceived stress measured via the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; r values ranging from −.38 to −.55).
• Hopelessness: Strong inverse relationship with Beck’s Hopelessness Scale (BHS; r ≈ −.60 to −.72).
• Social Desirability: Correlations with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale were minimal to negligible (r < .15), demonstrating that responses are not distorted by impression management or social approval bias.
• Alexithymia: Moderate inverse correlations with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20; r ≈ −.35 to −.45), confirming that individuals high in trait emotion hope exhibit greater emotional clarity and awareness.

Incremental and Predictive Validity

Hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated significant incremental validity. After controlling for demographic covariates, the Big Five personality traits (BFI), and Snyder’s cognitive hope (agency and pathways), the TEHS accounted for statistically significant additional variance in life satisfaction (ΔR² = .04 to .07, p < .001), flourishing, depressive symptom reduction, and adaptive emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal measured via Gross’s ERQ). This confirms that emotional hope carries distinct clinical and psychological predictive power beyond cognitive problem-solving.

8. Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the Trait Emotion Hope Scale has been demonstrated across diverse demographic cohorts, showing high internal consistency and stability across time.

Internal Consistency

Across the development and cross-validation samples (N = 2,900), the 6-item scale demonstrated high internal consistency:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Alpha coefficients consistently ranged from .91 to .94 across independent adult samples, well exceeding the gold-standard psychometric benchmark of .80 for basic research and .90 for applied diagnostic instrumentation.
• McDonald’s Omega (ω): Hierarchical and categorical omega coefficients (ω_total) similarly yielded values between .92 and .94, demonstrating structural reliability and confirming that the scale is free of significant multidimensional error.
• Corrected Item-Total Correlations: All six items exhibited corrected item-total correlations exceeding .72, with values ranging up to .85, confirming that each individual item contributes meaningfully to the measured construct without redundancy.

Test-Retest Reliability

Temporal stability assessments conducted over varying intervals (e.g., 4- to 8-week intervals) demonstrated robust test-retest reliability coefficients (r_tt > .80), indicating that the TEHS successfully captures an enduring trait disposition rather than short-lived, situational state mood fluctuations.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural validity of the TEHS was confirmed through an exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic sequence adhering to modern psychometric standards (Costello & Osborne, 2005; Fabrigar et al., 1999).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial item development and reduction in Study 2, an initial pool of candidate affective items was subjected to principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood exploratory factor analysis. Multiple extraction criteria—including Kaiser’s eigenvalue rule (λ > 1.0), Cattell’s scree test, and parallel analysis—consistently pointed to a single dominant factor.

• The primary factor accounted for over 65% to 72% of the total variance across candidate sets.
• All retained 6 items exhibited high standardized factor loadings onto this single construct, ranging from .74 to .89.
• No secondary factors exhibited eigenvalues greater than 1.0, and the ratio of the first-to-second eigenvalue routinely exceeded 5:1, providing clear empirical evidence of essential unidimensionality.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

In Study 3, the hypothesized unidimensional model was cross-validated using confirmatory factor analysis on an independent, diverse international sample utilizing robust maximum likelihood (MLR) and diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS) estimation procedures appropriate for ordinal Likert indicators (Li, 2016).

The 1-factor model demonstrated good fit to the empirical data across all conventional global fit indices (Hu & Bentler, 1999; Schermelleh-Engel et al., 2003):

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): > .97 (values ≥ .95 indicate good model fit)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): > .96
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): ≤ .06 (90% CI [.045, .072])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): ≤ .03
• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): Within acceptable structural parameters given sample size sensitivity.

All standardized factor loadings (λ) in the CFA model were statistically significant (p < .001), ranging between .76 and .88, confirming that each item is an indicator of the latent trait emotion hope factor.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Trait Emotion Hope Scale is a self-administered psychological assessment instrument designed for straightforward administration and scoring.

• Test Type: Self-report psychometric questionnaire
• Construct Assessed: Trait Emotion Hope (dispositional affective hope)
• Target Population: Adults (general population, non-clinical and clinical samples)
• Number of Items: 6 items
• Language: English
• Administration Format: Self-administered (paper-and-pencil, computer-based, or mobile survey delivery)
• Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 to 7:
  • 1 = Definitely False
  • 2 = Mostly False
  • 3 = Somewhat False
  • 4 = Slightly False / Neutral / Neither True nor False
  • 5 = Somewhat True
  • 6 = Mostly True
  • 7 = Definitely True
• Scoring Protocol:
  • Reverse Scored Items: None. All 6 items are positively keyed.
  • Total Score Calculation: Can be expressed as a summed composite score (ranging from 6 to 42) or as a mean item score (ranging from 1.0 to 7.0) calculated by dividing the total sum by 6.
  • Interpretation: Higher scores reflect greater levels of trait emotion hope—an enduring tendency to experience positive, resilient feelings of hope in everyday life and during adversity.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Trait Emotion Hope Scale was published in 2024 in Frontiers in Psychology by Dr. David B. Feldman and Dr. Hooria Jazaieri.

• Year of Publication: 2024
• Licensing and Copyright: The original validation study was published open-access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). Under this license, researchers and clinicians are permitted to use, adapt, and administer the instrument for non-commercial and academic research purposes, provided appropriate attribution is given to the original authors.
• Fee Structure: Free of charge for academic, educational, and empirical research applications.
• Contact Information: For inquiries regarding commercial usage, large-scale clinical trials, or translated adaptations, interested parties may contact Dr. Hooria Jazaieri at Santa Clara University ([email protected]).

12. References

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• Costello, A. B., & Osborne, J. (2005). Best practices in exploratory factor analysis: Four recommendations for getting the most from your analysis. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation, 10, Article 7. https://doi.org/10.7275/jyj1-4868
• Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction with Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13
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• Feldman, D. B., & Jazaieri, H. (2024). Trait Emotion Hope Scale. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1322807. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1322807
• Feldman, D. B., & Snyder, C. R. (2005). Hope and the meaningful life: Theoretical and empirical associations between goal-directed thinking and life meaning. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24(3), 401–422. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2005.24.3.401
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13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)