IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0135477.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When Aspirations Exceed Expectations: Quixotic Hope Increases Depression among Students

Author

Listed:
  • Katharine H Greenaway
  • Margaret Frye
  • Tegan Cruwys

Abstract

A paradox exists in modern schooling: students are simultaneously more positive about the future and more depressed than ever. We suggest that these two phenomena may be linked. Two studies demonstrated that students are more likely to be depressed when educational aspirations exceed expectations. In Study 1 (N = 85) aspiring to a thesis grade higher than one expected predicted greater depression at the beginning and end of the academic year. In Study 2 (N = 2820) aspiring to a level of education (e.g., attending college) higher than one expected to achieve predicted greater depression cross-sectionally and five years later. In both cases the negative effects of aspiring high while expecting low persisted even after controlling for whether or not students achieved their educational aspirations. These findings highlight the danger of teaching students to aspire higher without also investing time and money to ensure that students can reasonably expect to achieve their educational goals.

Suggested Citation

  • Katharine H Greenaway & Margaret Frye & Tegan Cruwys, 2015. "When Aspirations Exceed Expectations: Quixotic Hope Increases Depression among Students," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-17, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0135477
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0135477
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135477
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135477&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0135477?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xiaodi Chen & Therese Hesketh, 2021. "Educational Aspirations and Expectations of Adolescents in Rural China: Determinants, Mental Health, and Academic Outcomes," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(21), pages 1-14, November.
    2. Lv, Bo & Zhou, Huan & Liu, Chunhui & Guo, Xiaolin & Zhang, Caiyun & Liu, Zhaomin & Luo, Liang, 2018. "The relationship between mother–child discrepancies in educational aspirations and children's academic achievement: The mediating role of children's academic self-efficacy," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 296-301.
    3. Emma Pleeging & Martijn Burger & Job Exel, 2021. "Hope Mediates the Relation between Income and Subjective Well-Being," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 2075-2102, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0135477. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.