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Beck Hopelessness Inventory

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonym

BHS

Definition

Hopelessness is conceptualized as negative beliefs and expectations about the future. Hopelessness is comprised of two core elements: (1) negative expectations about outcomes, and (2) expectations of helplessness in relation to changing such outcomes (Zhou et al. 2013), and can be measured with the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS). The BHS is a 20-item, paper and pencil format, self-report inventory for adults. Respondents answer questions in a true or false fashion, and it takes approximately 5–10 min to complete in its entirety.

Introduction

Prior to the development of the BHS, many clinical investigators believed hopelessness was a diffuse feeling state that was too vague and fluid to define; however, Stotland (1969) disagreed with this conviction and proposed that hopelessness involved negative expectancies concerning the self and the future. Therefore, in the development of the BHS, a 20-item scale, nine items were chosen from a test of attitudes about the...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Resiliency in Psychological and Physical Health, Department of Psychology, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, 37614, USA

    Jessica Kelliher Rabon & Jameson K. Hirsch

Authors
  1. Jessica Kelliher Rabon
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  2. Jameson K. Hirsch
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Correspondence to Jessica Kelliher Rabon .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Brendan Clark

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Rabon, J.K., Hirsch, J.K. (2017). Beck Hopelessness Inventory. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_7-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_7-1

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