The Emotions of Hope: From Optimism to Sanguinity, from Pessimism to Despair

Abstract

The concept of hope has become a topic of growing interest across many areas of sociological research and theory, motivated in part by the widening perception of an uncertain future given the deterioration of the social fabric of contemporary societies. Hope has been theorized to be primarily a cognitive assessment of a goal-intention, a state of mind based upon the prospect that some desired objective, outcome, or situation will be realized, and where obstacles, obstructions, and unforeseen circumstances, even fate, can determine success or failure. The cognitivist theory of hope as necessarily involving agency and planning is critically evaluated, and it is argued that hope, while not itself an emotion, is an affect-laden phenomenon. Hope theorists have not systematically investigated the specific emotions that might be involved in hope. To address this lacuna, a sociological theory of the emotions of hope is presented. This conceptualization utilizes basic-emotion theory and the author’s hierarchical classification of primary, secondary, and tertiary emotions. As whatever is hoped for is seen with increasing optimism or pessimism, opposite clusters of emotions––the tertiary-level emotions of sanguinity and despair––emerge at the valenced poles of hope, hopefulness and hopelessness. Sanguinity includes in its meaning the primary emotions acceptance, joy–happiness, and anticipation, and the secondary emotions optimism, fatalism and love. But if pessimism ensues from plans unravelling and obstacles becoming unsurmountable, a sense of hopelessness comes to include an opposite set of emotions, consisting of the primary emotions disgust, sadness, and surprise, and the secondary emotions loneliness, disappointment, and shock. Sanguinity is a positive resource, but can become pathological if based on an unrealistic sense of over-confidence. The phenomenological nature of despair is explored in terms of the collapse of one’s social resources and social involvements, the demise of one’s social world, and a disintegration of self-representation. The ambiguous nature of hope is discussed, as what is hoped for is apt to be abstract and ill-defined, so that the reality of a hope, realized, can differ from what was imagined, and can involve self-deception concerning the sociomoral reality of what has actually happened.