Comments on: Psychological Capital — PsyCap

By: Valuing Psychological Capital « Graeme Nicholas

Valuing Psychological Capital « Graeme Nicholas — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:20:48 +0000

[…] Positive Psychology News Daily has an interesting review article on “Psychological Capital” (Psycap): Psychological Capital (Oxford University Press, 2007), by Fred Luthans, Carolyn M. Youssef, and Bruce J. Avolio, introduces both a significant stream of research and an important framework for the application of positive psychology to organizations. The stream of research involves a construct they call “PsyCap” — a composite construct made up of self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resiliency. […]

By: Jeff Dustin

Jeff Dustin — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:32:59 +0000

I suspected the same. Morale might be thought of as the folk wisdom response to PsyCap. I am curious if there are folk interventions that have great value in raising PsyCap. That interests me…along the lines of Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis…that modern ideas often have ancient roots. What would really be cool is if there was a computer program that tracked your psycap via several validated measures and spit out a nice readout for you to see graphically.

Let’s say for a personal example, that I am planning to fix up an old house…how many more dollars can I expect with high PsyCap than a low PsyCap score, all else equal?

I am sincerely glad that you wrote this piece on PsyCap. It really is exciting stuff and I hope you do follow-ups about this research.

By: Dave Shearon

Dave Shearon — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:59:21 +0000

PsyCap is a higher-order construct built on the theory-based and empirically-validated constructs of self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resiliency. It might be thought of as the answer to “What is morale, really, how can we measure it, and what guidance is there for how to change it?”

By: Jeff Dustin

Jeff Dustin — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 12:22:07 +0000

Dave,

What is difference between PsyCap and the older term, morale?

By: Dave Shearon

Dave Shearon — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:52:10 +0000

Hi,Jeff!

I did the questionnaire thinking about my current job which I’ve been doing for 20 years, and my score was very high. I then took on the mindset of attempting a new career and took it again, and my score would have been significantly lower. This fits with the context-specific nature of the state-like aspects of the underlying PsyCap constructs.

By: jeffdustin

jeffdustin — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 07:21:11 +0000

Dave,

Psycap is a powerful term that adds to the ability to talk about the blending of optimism, hope, resiliency, and self-efficacy. I really get a kick out of knowing that there is a balanced research review of the different constructs. The very best section of your article is definitely the return on investment analysis. Which micro-interventions can reasonably drive approximately how much positive change? These kinds of questions to me are always sticky and fraught with methodological dangers.

A second point is the optimism is more about future expectancies and not about explanatory style. I think of the future when I hear the word optimism and that is, in my mind, the more popular usage of the term.

So, Dave, how do you score in PsyCap?