Seligman (2000) put forward the concept of \u201cpositive psychology\u201d by emphasizing that the science of psychology rather emphasizes the abnormal aspects of human beings and does not try to understand and develop their positive and strong aspects, and that the findings of psychology should be used to teach people how to be more normal, happier, better and more successful (Linley et al., 2006).<\/p>\n
The positive psychology approach has begun to work on the possibilities that modern life provides for people and on achieving a happy life, as opposed to the negative aspects of human behavior such as failure, pathology, helplessness and burnout (Caprara & Cervore, 2003).<\/p>\n
One of the potentials emphasized by positive psychology is \u201cpositive psychological capital\u201d. Positive psychological capital is one of the topics that researchers have shown great interest in recent years. The reason for this is that positive psychological capital, which consists of optimism, psychological resilience, self-efficacy and hope, has a high degree of importance in terms of mental health. Positive psychological capital also indicates positively oriented situational psychological capacities of individuals (Luthans et al., 2004).<\/p>\n
Positive psychological capital enables individuals to exert extra effort for the work they have to do, to be motivated by the expectation of positive outcomes, to find solutions to problems and to cope with potential difficulties (Meyers et al., 2013, p. 621).<\/p>\n
This capital is considered to be a psychological resource that encourages personal development and work performance of individuals due to its situational characteristics, as well as being developable and directable (Luthans et al., 2007). It is important that people are motivated to use this effective resource. For this purpose, it is important for individuals to consciously use the qualities that constitute positive psychological capital for children in family and school environments as their own experts.<\/p>\n
Positive psychological capital refers to a holistic structure at the second level that includes the four dimensions mentioned above in the context of their relationship with well-being and is greater than the sum of the independent effects of these dimensions (Luthans et al., 2007). The most basic feature of this holistic synergistic structure is that it is not a structure that shows continuity in every condition and situation, such as immutable personality traits; it includes personal level qualities that differ according to conditions and situations.<\/p>\n
According to Luthans et al. (2008), this structure, which is open to development and change, is an important factor for personal development, performance and success. The development and strengthening of this structure depends on the preferences of individuals as well as educational institutions. Family and school institutions should work towards developing the qualities that constitute this capacity.<\/p>\n
Some studies have found that those who have positive thoughts about themselves have higher levels of self-perception (Schuettler & Kiviniemi, 2006), have more positive expectations (Brown, 1984) and set higher goals (Baron, 1990).<\/p>\n
In the research on positive psychological capital, it has been determined that people with strong positive psychological capital have high job satisfaction, problem solving skills, stress management, motivation and success (Ak\u00e7ay, 2012). Research has also revealed that positive psychological capital can be developed (Luthans, 2002; Luthans et al., 2007; \u00c7etin & Bas\u0131m, 2012).<\/p>\n
Studies on optimism, psychological resilience, self-efficacy and hope, which are dimensions of positive psychology, aim to increase awareness of positive psychological capital and protect individuals against life's problems, stress, difficulties and negative situations.<\/p>\n
a) Optimism<\/strong> While optimism is defined as the quality of being able to adapt to different conditions in life, pessimism, which is the opposite of this, is seen as a quality that fuels negative emotions and shows the inadequacy of the person in psychological terms (Daco, 1989; Seligman, 1998). Goleman (2000) defined optimism as a strong expectation that everything will develop positively despite all kinds of difficulties that people face in their lives.<\/p>\n When we look at the personal characteristics of optimistic people, it is seen that when they encounter a problem, they seek for a solution to the problem instead of remaining passive (McGinnis, 1998). Therefore, optimistic people see the problems they experience as temporary and believe that they will overcome these obstacles and difficulties through their efforts to solve them.<\/p>\n Optimistic people perceive situations in which they fail personally, and even in situations that result in failure, they do not give up their positive outlook (Fellman, 2000; Marden, 2001). The positive outlook that optimistic people have stems not from an empty expectation but from their perceived self-efficacy belief (Gillham & Reivich, 2004). b) Psychological Resilience<\/strong> The concept of psychological resilience is considered synonymous with concepts such as psychological resilience, strength and resilience in the literature and is used to express the coping power and capacity of each person in the face of very challenging events such as violence, natural disasters, economic crisis, war, accidents, loss of a loved one, which each person has been exposed or is likely to be exposed to at least once in his\/her life (Bas\u0131m & \u00c7etin, 2011). In our country, the concept of \u2018resilience\u2019 is widely preferred instead of resilience or resilience because it better expresses the power to resist in the face of difficulties and developmental crises.<\/p>\n In the literature, Ryff & Singer (2003) argue that psychologically resilient people generally have good physical and mental health and can recover more quickly from stress-producing situations. Fredrickson (2001) also states that there is effective evidence that psychological resilience has an effect on psychological well-being.<\/p>\n Since psychological resilience can reduce the negative impact of past traumatic experiences on adult functioning, it would be appropriate to prepare long-term psychological resilience training programs for people exposed to psychological trauma in childhood. In their study, Wingo et al. (2010) found that strengthening psychological resilience weakened the relationship between adult depression and childhood traumas, and Roy et al. (2011) found that psychological resilience reduced depression and self-destruction attempts \u00dcst\u00fcnda\u011f K\u00f6ksal, 2022).<\/p>\n c) Self-efficacy<\/strong> According to Senemo\u011flu (2015), self-efficacy is a person's belief in and judgment of himself\/herself about whether he\/she can overcome the difficulties he\/she may encounter in life (Senemo\u011flu, 2015: 234).<\/p>\n Self-efficacy, which is a product of belief judgments about what one can do using one's skills, is not a function of one's skills, but a judgment formed by one's own perception of oneself. According to Bandura (1982), self-efficacy judgments are fed by four basic sources.<\/p>\n These are as follows: According to Lopez et al. (2000), the hope dimension of positive psychological capital refers to the ability to find new ways to achieve the goals set by the person and to be motivated to use these ways. The importance of hope stems from its effectiveness in terms of positive well-being, that is, mental health. Hope is an emotional state that strengthens the positive psychological capital that connects and strengthens the person to life.<\/p>\n Hope is the primary act of a person's attempt to change the situation they are uncomfortable with. Nothing is impossible for the hopeful person and society. The hopeful person is always in an active expectation. In the historical process, people affected by situations and crises that cause pain, grief, sorrow and sadness have taken action or migrated to change the bad situation they are in (Da\u011fl\u0131 & Aypek Aslan, 2020).<\/p>\n Hope is a positive emotion that enables one to look to the future with optimism and confidence. It is the belief that things can get better even in the face of difficulties. This belief binds the person to life.<\/p>\n The common characteristics of hopeful people are that they experience less stress and anxiety, are physically healthy, do not give up in the face of difficulties, are resilient, and have no difficulty in finding meaning in life. People who lose hope, on the other hand, are characterized by depression, anxiety and other mental problems, have difficulty finding meaning in life and have a weak commitment to life.<\/p>\n Although they are conceptually independent constructs, it is argued that the effect of positive psychological capital, which is the parent construct that connects the constructs and consists of their combination, is much more than the sum of the effects of each component above. In other words, psychological capital will create more motivation in relation to work and communication performance at work, school and social life. In this regard, Luthans argues that an employee with high levels of both self-efficacy and hope will not only strive to accept the challenging tasks that come his\/her way, but will also identify the sub-goals that will bring him\/her to the goal, anticipate opportunities and try many ways to overcome obstacles. In this way, he\/she will be able to perform more and get more satisfaction. A similar situation is valid for optimism and psychological resilience, and it is stated that if these are combined with self-efficacy and hope, self-confidence will be high and better alternative ways will be sought and found by making the necessary effort (Luthans, 2002, 61).<\/p>\n An important feature of positive psychological capital is that each of the components of optimism, self-efficacy, psychological resilience and hope are both measurable and can be gained and developed through trainings. In the light of this information, managers who expect the highest productivity from their employees by creating a positive climate in their organizations have to understand the positive and negative behavioral variables, strengths and weaknesses of their employees depending on their personalities, evaluate what can be done to collect more data by determining their impact on their work, in short, they have to invest in their \u201cpsychological capital\u201d.<\/p>\n Consideration of positive psychological capital in staff recruitment is thought to increase the efficiency of organizations and the possibility of conflict between employees. It is important for employees to have this capital, especially in high-stress environments and tasks. In addition, it would be useful to organize training programs for employees to increase positive psychological capital.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The common characteristics of hopeful people are that they experience less stress and anxiety, are physically healthy, do not give up in the face of adversity, are resilient, and have no difficulty in finding meaning in life.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":282372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-yazarlar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282373,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282371\/revisions\/282373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAccording to Schneider (2001), optimism, which constitutes a dimension of positive psychological capital, refers to a person's positive attributions about being successful in present and future life. M. Seligman (1998), the first positive psychologist to examine the concept of optimism, which means a positive outlook on life, argued that optimism is as important as ability and motivation. The positive thinking skills of optimistic people are considered as an empowering structure and it is stated that optimism has an important role in overcoming the negative effects of challenging experiences (Peterson, 2000).<\/p>\n
\nThanks to these characteristics, optimistic people prevent their thoughts from shifting to negative directions, feel peaceful and comfortable, and cope with stress more easily (Kasatura, 1998; Parmaks\u0131z, 2011). Optimism as a character trait can be learned by being influenced by the modeling attitudes and behaviors of parents in the family and teachers in schools. Adults should be the right models for children in this regard.<\/p>\n
\nPsychological resilience, another dimension of positive psychological capital, is \u201cthe positive psychological capacity that enables people to successfully overcome change, challenge and risk situations, this capacity can change over the years and can be developed under the influence of individual and environmental factors\u201d (Stewart et al., 1997). Silliman (1994) defined psychological resilience as the capacity to develop one's strengths to cope with difficulties in life.<\/p>\n
\nAccording to Bandura (1997), self-efficacy can be explained as making the necessary effort in line with the belief in one's own abilities. This concept, which is also used as self-efficacy perception in the literature, in other words, self-efficacy is the confidence in the ability to organize and implement certain actions that will be required to solve a problem or complete a task.<\/p>\n
\na) Direct experiences: Knowledge gained as a result of past experiences that one has experienced on one's own; past experiences in which one has succeeded or failed,
\nb) Knowledge acquired through indirect experiences; the judgment developed by looking at the success of other people similar to oneself in the activities they perform,
\nc) Verbal persuasion; the person listens to what people around him\/her say about his\/her abilities and therefore receives advice, support, recommendations about what he\/she can or cannot achieve,
\nd) Psychological state; one's expectations and feedback from the body; feedback from the body to evaluate one's strength, ability and vulnerability also affect self-efficacy judgment (Senemo\u011flu, 2015: 234).
\nd) Hope<\/p>\n