Origins of Early Adolescents’ Hope: Personality, Parental Attachment, and Stressful Life Events

Psychology has recently increased attention to identifying psychological qualities in individuals that indicate positive mental health, such as hope. In an effort to understand further the origins of hope, we examined the relations among parental attachment, stressful life events, personality variables, and hope in a sample of 647 middle school students from one middle school in a southeastern U.S. state. The results showed statistically significant correlations between hope and all four predictor variables as well as students’ grade levels and socioeconomic status (SES) levels. The results of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis further revealed that after controlling for grade level and SES, the personality variable of neuroticism contributed significance variance to early adolescents’ hope scores. Furthermore, the quality of parental attachment accounted for significant variance in hope scores over and above the demographic variables of grade and SES as well as extraversion scores. Contrary to expectations, students’ levels of neuroticism did not moderate the relation between stressful life events and hope. The frequency of occurrence of stressful life events was inversely associated with early adolescents’ individual differences in hope regardless of neuroticism levels. Implications for hope interventions are discussed.