Abstract

Nowadays, positive psychology has been an interesting topic among general population as well as mental health professionals. Positive characteristic factors or characteristic strengths such as love, courage, hope or creativity, are important in researches on positive psychology, although these have been remained in fields of religion or philosophy. Therefore we reviewed one of the important positive characters, hope or optimism, in the aspect of concept and research outcome. Hope, optimism and future- mindedness have many similar perspectives, but, have been somewhat differently used. For research and application, more efforts should be made in order to define the concepts of hope or optimism psychologically. There were some studies about correlations between hope and positive results of specific health problems. Another important topic is that optimism is better than 'just not pessimism'. We expect that these efforts on positive psychology will provide mental health promotions in research and therapeutic applications for social mental health as well as individuals. (Korean J Str Res 2007;15:199∼204)

• Keywords: Hope, Optimism, Positive psychology