At the end of Italian football championships, Rudi Garcia, Roma coach, continues to have the hope that, also if Juventus has 8 points more than his team, something could happen changing this ranking in favor of Roma. At this regard, which are the psychological basis of the hope thinking?
“Snyder, Irving & Anderson (1991, as cited in Snyder, 2000, p.8) define hope as “a positive motivational state that is based on an interactively derived sense of successful (a) agency (goal-directed energy) and (b) pathways (planning to meet goals)” .
Hope theory can be subdivided into four categories: goals, pathway thoughts, agency thoughts and barriers. Goals that are valuable and uncertain are described by Snyder (1994, as cited in Snyder, 2000, p.9) as the anchors of hope theory as they provide direction and an endpoint for hopeful thinking. Pathway thoughts refer to the routes we take to achieve our desired goals and the individual’s perceived ability to produce these routes (Snyder, 2000). Agency thoughts refer to the motivation we have to undertake the routes towards our goals. Barriers block the attainment of our goals and in the event of a barrier we can either give up or we can use our pathway thoughts to create new routes.” (From http://www.positivepsychology.org.uk/pp-theory/hope/100-what-is-hope-and-how-can-we-measure-it.html)
This definition fits well with Roma, because the team build is confidence through the winning results and its cohesion, directing in this direction its energy and during all the season showed the road it took to reach these results greatly.
