Decisions made during the transitional age of 18-30, may influence the health and well being of individuals for many years to come. Perhaps more than any earlier life stages, emerging adults have the potential to explore new opportunities, develop their own autonomy, and play a more conscious role in shaping their own development, while overcoming difficulties that may have contributed to their vulnerability in an earlier period of life or the present. To date, few studies have focused on the positive or health promoting, psychosocial factors that contribute to future orientation, particularly among emerging adults. Guided by the Theory of Possible Selves and Social Capital Theory, this quantitative study explored the contribution of perceived discrimination, hope, and social connectedness to future orientation, using a web-based survey. The present study found that perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and social connectedness were significantly and hope was marginally related to the future orientation of 151 emerging adults who were current or former members of the AmeriCorps program in the state of New Mexico. The findings remained significant after controlling for race/ethnicity. Social connectedness served as a resource factor in its association between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and the outcome of future orientation. Social connectedness also served a protective function, thereby moderating the association between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and future orientation. Findings suggest that further examination of the potential buffering effects that may offset the negative effects of a risk, such as perceived racial/ethnic discrimination, is warranted. Attention should be given to other potential moderating and/or mediating effects in the relationship between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and future orientation in subsequent studies. Given the uniqueness of the sample in this study, future researchers should continue to examine populations participating in programs such as AmeriCorps. Results from the current study may have important implications for the value of programs that aim to build civic engagement, social connectedness, and leadership among its members and the communities that are served. / text

OBJECTIVE: This study explores psychological experiences that may influence service members’ self-concepts and future orientations. As stable, optimistic, future orientations have been associated with resilience to psychological distress and suicidality (Johnson, et al., 2011), it is worthwhile to explore how service members’ attitudes toward the future might be shaped in the context of intrapersonal and interpersonal experiences. METHOD: Data were collected from service members of the Virginia National Guard (N = 192) and included a Transportation unit, an Engineer unit, an Infantry unit and a group with no specific unit affiliation or substantive military experience. The study is a cross-sectional design that seeks support for the hypothesis that interpersonal and intrapersonal psychological needs differentially influence one’s future orienation. RESULTS: Analysis demonstrated that autonomy, competence and relatedness each play partial mediating roles with respect to the identity style-identity commitment relationship. Further analysis demonstrated that all three psychological needs also significantly predict identity commitment, but that the intrapersonal needs of autonomy and competence are stronger predictors than the interpersonal need, relatedness. The competing hypothesis that psychological needs balance would outperform the psychological needs variables as predictors of identity commitment was not confirmed. CONCLUSIONS: The data indicate that all three psychological needs variables are significantly influential (by degree and category) with regard to protective factors that involve identity-based processes and identity-based beliefs. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.

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Background: Gratitude is an orientation towards the positive in life that increasingly is shown to have relevance for physical health. Less is known about how gratitude relates to health behaviours. The self-regulation resource model (SRRM) posits that future-orientation is a resource that promotes selfregulation of health behaviours. Accordingly, we meta-analytically tested whether gratitude was associated with the practice of health-promoting behaviours, and if future-orientation explained the association. Methods: Data from 14 samples (N = 4,111) from our labs were included in the meta-analysis as there was no published data. All samples completed measures of state or trait gratitude, and a measure of health behaviour frequency; six samples completed a measure of future orientation/self-continuity. Random effects metaanalysis was conducted on the correlations of gratitude with health behaviours, with subgroup analyses. Indirect effects through FO were tested and meta-analysed. Findings: Across all 14 samples, gratitude was significantly associated with more frequent health behaviours, avg. r = .261, [.22, .31]. The effects did not vary significantly across sample type (student/community), or gratitude measure (state/trait). Mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects of gratitude on health behaviours through future-orientation in the six samples tested (N = 2,828), with an average index of mediation of beta = .068 [.05, .08]. The direct effects remained significant. Discussion: Findings are consistent with the SRRM and demonstrate that gratitude is associated with the practice of health-promoting behaviours, due in part to future-orientation. Further research is warranted to more fully investigate the potential of gratitude for promoting health behaviours.

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This study examined loneliness and future orientation as predictors of suicidal risk, namely, depressive symptoms and suicide ideation, in a sample of 228 college students (54 males and 174 females). Results of regression analyses indicated that loneliness was a significant predictor of both indices of suicidal risk. The inclusion of future orientation was found to significantly augment the prediction model of both depressive symptoms and suicide ideation, even after accounting for loneliness. Noteworthy, beyond loneliness and future orientation, the Loneliness × Future Orientation interaction term was found to further augment both prediction models of suicidal risk. Consistent with the notion that future orientation is an important buffer of suicidal risk, among lonely students, those with high future orientation, compared to low future orientation, were found to report significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and suicide ideation. Some implications of the present findings for studying both risk and protective factors associated with suicidal risk in young adults are discussed.

We examined the role of basic psychological needs as a mediator of the association between future orientation and depressive symptoms in a sample of 202 (159 female and 43 male) multiethnoracial adults. Multiple mediation analysis with 10,000 bootstraps was conducted to test for mediation. The association between future orientation and depressive symptoms was found to be accounted for by dimensions of basic psychological needs. Specifically, future orientation was negatively related to depressive symptoms through positive associations involving autonomy and competence, but not relatedness. The present findings are the first to not only point to the importance of examining future orientation in understanding depressive symptoms in multiethnoracial adults, but they are also the first to suggest possible mechanisms by which believing in a changeable future might foster stronger satisfaction of basic psychological needs, especially autonomy and competence, that might help multiethnoracials garner greater protection when encountering stressful situations in their lives.

Forgiveness, a cognitive-emotional and behavioral reduction of negative responses to offenses, is directly related to less suicide risk, but may be indirectly related via its relation with future orientation, the ability to envision a positive future. In 100 rural primary care patients, we examined the association between self-forgiveness, other-forgiveness, and forgiveness by God and suicidal behavior, with future orientation as a mediator. Forgiveness was related to greater future orientation and, in turn, to, less suicidal behavior. Addressing the past may promote adaptive views of the future and reduce suicide risk, results suggesting potential temporal and forgiveness-based points for suicide prevention.

The purpose of the current study is determine if the presence of a natural mentor, and/or the quality of relationship within protégé-mentor relationships, predicts the development of Future Orientation (FO) among African American girls living in conditions of risk. A sample of 160 girls of African descent was recruited from 6 elementary and middle schools. An exploratory factor analysis of 19 FO items suggested a 2-factor model consisting of (1) motivation and (2) planning. The model did not support the third expected factor, evaluation. The presence of natural mentors failed to predict concurrent levels of FO. Relationship quality did significantly predict concurrent levels of FO. Post-hoc analyses indicated that the consistent presence of a natural mentor predicted the development of FO. Post-hoc analyses also indicated the relationship quality with one’s, significantly predicted the development of FO among consistently mentored girls. Methodological limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

ADHD research has mainly focused on objective performance measures. Performance, however, is only one aspect of functioning. Other aspects of how individuals function are their personal experiences and their evaluations of those experiences. The aim of this thesis is to expand knowledge on the topic of ADHD by presenting studies that investigate objective performance and subject perspective, simultaneously. The empirical work presented here has a dimensional approach to ADHD, which is reflected in the use of samples selected to represent a wide variation in ADHD symptoms. Herein, both objective performance and subject perspective are conceptualized in various ways, to address unanswered questions and to question previous research. ADHD is related to underperformance within the academic realm and within the social realm. By introducing novel subject perspective measures, and including objective performance measures in new ways, a more nuanced understanding of these underperformance areas was gained. More specifically, we obtained an overview of the influence of ADHD symptoms in late childhood and adolescence in relation to academic performance by studying a longitudinal framework of concomitant factors. Furthermore, we disentangled the interplay of ADHD and ODD symptoms and cognitive performance in predicting social acceptance and the "positive illusory bias". Additionally, we questioned the link between disorganized attachment representations and ADHD symptoms by investigating the potential relationship between attachment representations and ADHD symptoms, whilst considering concurrent conduct problems, cognitive performance and narrative responses to non-attachment related story stems. Main results indicate that academic performance is influenced by ADHD symptoms and previous academic performance; adolescent self-perceptions of academic competence are negligible in this context. Moreover, ADHD symptoms in adolescence have a negative influence on views of the future, beyond academic performance and parental education. Further, results indicate that positive illusory bias relates more to ODD behaviors. Finally, results also indicate that children with high levels of ADHD symptoms could falsely appear to be disorganized due to a propensity to include negative content in narratives. In conclusion, when studied together, objective performance and subject perspective give new insight into ADHD. The findings presented motivate the simultaneous inclusion of different perspectives of functioning in ADHD research.