I think if hope in the way the psychologist Snyder defined hope, as either a state or trait quality of looking favorably toward future goals. It is more active and operational than the conventional optimism normally attributed to hope. Being hopeful in this sense can be measured in a person in or out of crises. In fact it can be a way of reducing feelings of despair even in the face of hardship. If someone has hope, they can believe things may get better even in current gloomy circumstances.

I think a very important link in the chain of hope is self-efficacy, defined by the psychologist Bandura. Someone can have a hopeful outlook that their future may improve, but self-efficacy is a sense of competence and confidence that you can take the steps to achieve your goals. It’s a sense of agency associated I think with levels of esteem and self-assuredness that are in the same family of concepts we associate with human thriving, and mechanisms for people to move forward through and out of crises.