Positive fantasies about the future breed hope

Hope can be defined as a future-oriented emotion that powerfully affects our behavior. In psychology, however, the presently most prominent conceptualizations of hope emphasize its cognitive components and define hope as a positive expectation for the future. Contrary to this view, the present chapter describes how hope can emerge from positive fantasies (vis-à-vis expectations of an uncertain future). Such positive fantasies, in contrast to expectations, freely appear in one's stream of thought, unconstrained by the perceived probability that the desired future will occur. On the behavioral level, positive fantasies have different consequences depending on whether people indulge in these fantasies or mentally contrast them with reality. A large body of research shows that indulging in positive fantasies leads to unchanged engagement, whereas mentally contrasting leads to both the pursuit of reachable futures and disengagement from unreachable ones, allowing people to invest their resources wisely when action alternatives exist. When facing unreachable futures with no action alternatives, however, indulging in positive fantasies seems to be the apt self-regulatory option as indulging allows people to stay in the field by providing hope for a better future.