False Hope Syndrome: Let go of unrealistic goals and expectations
The dark side of unfounded optimism and ‘false hope’.
What drives you to persevere in chasing your goals, even when they have failed before?
Individuals with high-hope instead of low-hope tend to set multiple goals, and have better ability in setting a route, and alternatives ones, for achieving said goal.
In this article…
- You will get an understanding of the concept behind the false hope syndrome, from a psychological perspective.
- You will find advice on how to break the negative cycle of setting unrealistic goals and expectations for self-change and improvement.
From the moment we are born, our environment requires us to keep growing physically, mentally and psychologically. We continuously engage in self-change behaviours, with expectations and in hope of being rewarded accordingly — do well academically, professionally, or socially. Being hopeful and optimistic plays a huge role in achieving self-change; American psychologist Charles Richard Snyder created the theory of hope, suggesting that individuals with high-hope instead of low-hope tend to set multiple goals, and have better ability in setting a route, and alternatives ones, for achieving said goal [1], [2]. Additionally, he suggested that individuals with high-hope tend to be more motivated to persevere, learn from failed tasks, and re-direct their attention to another goal rather than let failure discourage them.
According to the theory of hope, high-hope is related to the concepts of learned and dispositional optimism, which suggest that optimism may depend on genetics; alternatively, it may be learned throughout our life by paying attention to how we respond to, and evaluate, a variety of life situations [3]–[5].
For instance, let’s say you took art lessons for the first time, expecting to become a professional portrait artist in a month, but failed. If you had cultivated high-hope based on evaluating your current situation, you might have tried again by adjusting your expectations to more reasonable ones, instead of internalising the cause of your failure, and either giving up, or giving way to ‘false hope’ by re-attempting an unrealistic cycle.
What happens when in fact such high-hope is unfounded? Is it possible that such optimism could backfire and have a negative effect?
If you are affected by ‘false hope’, you tend to set unrealistic goals, e.g. over-promising to your boss, setting unrealistic New Year’s resolutions, miscalculating the time and effort needed to quit smoking or improve your drawing skills.
Consequently, misunderstanding the cause of your failure, could lead to re-attempting your unrealistic goal and continue with this damaging cycle.
The reasons behind goal failure in an individual’s attempt to change were explored, and how this may lead to uncompromising persistence in terms of constantly attempting the same task, even though it does not work. The ‘false hope syndrome’ (FHS) model was developed, suggesting that an individual affected by ‘false hope’ tends to set unrealistic goals. Initially, the act of setting goals and planning for one’s achievement may provide such an individual with a sense of control over their life [6]. Then, by making some positive progress towards one’s goal at the beginning, they get a false sense of hope that they can reach their target as planned. However, as they continue, their struggles increase, and their progress is minimised, until they realise they are unable to achieve their goal and give up. The contrast between one’s feelings of disappointment from failure and the initial optimism due to their short, early success, may lead them to misunderstand the cause of their failure. This in turn, leads to re-attempting their unrealistic goal and continue with this damaging cycle [6].
A way to tackle FHS would be for you to learn not to be over-confident and over-optimistic when evaluating and planning your goals, but rather to be more realistic.
Many studies were conducted on self-change to support the FHS model, using self-reporting tools, such as questionnaires. One of those studies, conducted by researchers Polivy and Herman, addressed dieting, in a group of chronic dieters and another group of inexperienced dieters. Inexperienced dieters scored higher on initial excitement regarding their resolution, displaying false hope, but eventually gave up, or deviated from their initial goal. Chronic dieters, even though they scored lower in mood and self-esteem, displayed false hope in thinking that this time they could do better; even though they eventually did better than the other group, they still experienced a higher sense of failure [7]. Polivy and Herman concluded that participants, at least from a psychological or mood point of view, would have been better off not having attempted to change.
However, researchers Snyder and Rand, criticised this conclusion as inappropriate, particularly for individuals suffering from addiction and wanting to quit (e.g. smokers, alcoholics) [8]. This led Polivy and Herman to build on their initial comments by offering suggestions on how to actually tackle FHS. They suggested that a way to tackle FHS would be for individuals to learn not to be over-confident and over-optimistic when evaluating and planning their goals, but rather to be more realistic [2], [7].
Snyder and Rand also criticised the FHS model as not being very scientific; they pointed out that it lacked, firstly, a clear definition of false hope and other aspects surrounding the model, and secondly, a scientific comparison with other existing models in the field [8]. Furthermore, they argued that Polivy and Herman’s studies had failed to take into account high and low hope individuals along with other ‘individual differences’ combinations, saying that their model did not accurately reflect high hope individuals.
Adding to that criticism, Seligman and Musschenga argued that the concept of hope is more complex than its simplistic depiction as a desire and goal-success predictor by the FHS model [9]. Musschenga went on to suggest that false hope is related to ignorance, rather than hope which is based on sensible and assessed judgement. Lastly, another reason for concern is that, by their nature, self-reporting tools (i.e. questionnaires) may suffer from uncertainty that needs to be taken into consideration (e.g. in terms of validity, or trustworthiness of the answers given).
My two cents on the concept of ‘false hope’
To conclude, the false hope syndrome may be a useful concept, complementing the literature on hope, however, current false hope theories are rather simplistic and have come under reasonable criticism. Perhaps a more useful approach would be to design longitudinal studies, following people up and observing how their levels of hope change or relate to their sense of achievement. However, such studies are much more difficult to perform, and it could be a long time before this could be tested effectively.
Note from the author…
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