Journal of Counseling & Development ■ January 2014 ■ Volume 92 67© 2014 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved.

Received 03/22/12Revised 09/28/12

Accepted 10/17/12DOI: 10.1002/j.1556-6676.2014.00131.x

There is evidence of a growing interest in the topic of social justice among psychologists and counselors (e.g., Constan-tine, Hage, Kindaichi, & Bryant, 2007; Fouad, Gerstein, & Toporek, 2006; Miller & Sendrowitz, 2011), and social justice has even been described as the contemporary “fifth force” (Ratts, 2009, p. 160) in the history of counseling and psychotherapy. This fifth force represents a paradigm shift in the ultimate goal of the helping professions in contrast to the previous series of four prior paradigms, or forces, that have shaped the vision of counseling practice: psycho-dynamic, cognitive behavioral, existential-humanistic, and multicultural. The first three paradigms focused primarily on the individual client (Ratts, 2009), and with the shift to a paradigm of multiculturalism came greater “appreciation of racial and cultural variables” (Pieterse, Evans, Risner-Butner, Collins, & Mason, 2009, pp. 93–94) as counselors began to view their clients in racial and sociocultural contexts. Vera and Speight (2003) argued that a mature multicultural com-petence cannot be obtained without a commitment to social justice on multiple systemic levels, and yet empirical research on social justice commitment has barely started. The present study tested a theoretical model of social justice commitment in a sample of graduate students in the helping professions in an effort to identify potential targets for training intervention.

Goodman et al. (2004) offered a definition of social justice for mental health professionals as “scholarship and profes-sional action designed to change societal values, structures, policies, and practices, such that disadvantaged or marginal-ized groups gain access to these tools of self-determination” (p. 795). They also identified six principles that they believed are helpful in embarking on social justice work: (a) continu-ally self-examining biases and positions of power, (b) sharing power through collaborative decision making, (c) giving voice to oppressed groups, (d) facilitating consciousness-raising around systemic forces contributing to oppression, (e) build-ing on strengths of clients, and (f) leaving clients with the tools for social change. Clearly, there are many dimensions

Steven J. Sandage, Sarah Crabtree, and Maria Schweer, Department of Marriage and Family Studies, Bethel University. Steven J. Sandage is now at the Danielsen Institute and the School of Theology, Boston University. Maria Schweer is now at Family Inno-vations, St. Paul, Minnesota. This project was supported by Grant 2266 from the Fetzer Institute. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Steven J. Sandage, Danielsen Institute, Boston University, 185 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215 (e-mail: ssandage@bu.edu).

Differentiation of Self and Social Justice Commitment Mediated by HopeSteven J. Sandage, Sarah Crabtree, and Maria Schweer

This study tested a theoretical model of hope mediating the relationship between differentiation of self and social justice commitment among graduate students (N = 202) in the helping professions. The theory was based primarily on the social justice philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr., Cornel West, and Paulo Freire using a cultural psychology approach. Results generally supported the theoretical model. Implications are considered for both training and future research on social justice.

Keywords: social justice, hope, differentiation of self, training, cultural psychology

to social justice, including aspects of selfhood, social power, values, and relational style. However, an active concern and commitment to social justice and engaging in work to promote it is a central dimension repeatedly mentioned among those advocating for increased social justice work in the helping professions (Fouad et al., 2006; Goodman et al., 2004; Ivey & Collins, 2003; Miller & Sendrowitz, 2011; Singh et al., 2010; Toporek, Gerstein, Fouad, Roysicar, & Israel, 2006). In the present study, we used the framework of social justice as outlined by Goodman et al. and defined social justice commitment as active concerns and commitments related to social justice advocacy. We chose to investigate an active commitment to social justice because, theoretically, commit-ment is likely to be a more robust predictor of involvement in systemic change than a variable such as interest.

Social Justice Commitment and Graduate Training

In an effort to better understand students’ understanding of social justice, Singh et al. (2010) conducted a qualitative survey of doctoral students in counseling psychology to learn of their perceptions of social justice in their doctoral programs. Respondents were asked to offer their definitions of social justice, discuss how they practiced social justice both professionally and personally, and talk about the ways they imagined weaving social justice into training programs. Although the respondents could provide examples for their own practice of social justice and found incorporating it into training programs important, the varied definitions of social justice suggested that the concept to which they demon-strated loyalty was neither consensually nor easily defined. However difficult it was to define, most respondents were adamant about and committed to actively pursuing social justice activity in their personal and professional lives. Yet the factors that might account for social justice commitment remained ambiguous.

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Miller et al. (2009) investigated the psychological influ-ences affecting interest in and commitment to social justice among undergraduate students through a social-cognitive career theory (SCCT) framework. Their resulting social-cognitive model found evidence that both self-efficacy and outcome expectations were direct predictors of social justice interest, and social justice interest was a predictor of social justice commitment. Miller and Sendrowitz (2011) added to these findings by applying the same model to doctoral students in a counseling psychology program, while also accounting for the training environment and a new variable—personal moral imperative. As in the case of the Miller et al. study, self-efficacy directly and indirectly predicted social justice interest, which, in turn, predicted social justice commit-ment. Miller and Sendrowitz also found that the training environment was a predictor of social justice commitment as mediated by self-efficacy beliefs. Moreover, personal moral imperative directly and indirectly increased social justice commitment through self-efficacy and outcome expectations. Similarly, Beer, Spanierman, Greene, and Todd (2011) found that the social justice commitment of doctoral students in counseling psychology was predicted by their perceptions of the training environment, a spiritually optimistic outlook, and a general activist orientation. These combined results suggest that several differing dimensions, including selfhood, moral or spiritual orientations, and perceptions of context, can be associated with the social justice commitment of students.

Differentiation of Self (DoS) and Social Justice

Several scholars have pointed to the importance of healthy and mature selfhood for sustaining a commitment to social justice, including capacities for self-awareness (Constantine et al., 2007), ongoing self-examination and self-regulation of emotions (Goodman et al., 2004), self-education on social justice (Singh et al., 2010), self-efficacy (Miller & Sendrowitz, 2011), and DoS (Jordan, 2010). Given the systemic nature of social justice dynamics, we chose to investigate DoS as a systems-oriented and relational measure of selfhood and as a predictor of graduate trainees’ social justice commitment. DoS is a developmental construct that has also been positively as-sociated with numerous indices of psychological and relational well-being and includes intrapersonal and interpersonal dimen-sions (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003). The intrapersonal dimension involves the ability to manage one’s emotional reactivity and, therefore, to relate to self and others in intentional and flexible ways. The interpersonal dimension consists of the ability to maintain one’s own sense of self-identity while connecting with others, initiate and receive intimacy voluntarily, establish clear but permeable boundaries for oneself within relationships, and perceive others in relatively nuanced (or differentiated) ways. The intrapersonal dimension has most clearly been associated with the construct of self-regulation (Skowron, 2004), which is

necessary for managing the stressful challenges and emotional process of social justice work (Goodman et al., 2004), as well as the initiative necessary for self-education and sustained commitment. The interpersonal dimension of DoS is relevant to the courage and assertiveness described by students in the Singh et al. (2010) study whose growing commitment to social justice often put them at odds with family members and other prior relationships. Those with high levels of DoS tend to have the capacity to maintain their own self-identity and values even when meeting resistance from others.

DoS is a construct that holds some similarities to the self-efficacy construct in the previously cited Miller and colleagues studies (Miller et al., 2009; Miller & Sendrowitz, 2011). In those studies, self-efficacy showed a direct effect on social justice commitment and an indirect effect on social justice commitment through a measure of personal moral imperative. Self-efficacy and DoS are similar as constructs related to self-hood in that both indicate capacities for agency or confidence in one’s own ability to be effective and have a positive impact on one’s environment. DoS differs from self-efficacy in that it includes not only an intrapersonal dimension but also an inter-personal dimension. Those with high levels of DoS are capable of adopting the perspectives of others and balancing emotional closeness and distance in relationships (Skowron, 2004).

Although DoS is sometimes conflated with individuation or misunderstood as excessive individualism, it is actually a dialectical form of relational selfhood that involves balanc-ing autonomy and connection and tolerating suffering that is necessary for integrity and growth. Members of nondominant groups who have high levels of DoS can self-define their own multifaceted identities to mitigate internalizing injustice and oppression. Members of dominant groups with high levels of DoS can also self-define with appropriate self-confrontation of privilege and without debilitating shame. For all persons, DoS is consistent with (a) concern for the well-being of others and (b) self-awareness that their own perspective on social justice might not match the needs and values of others. Social justice work can often be invalidating given that efforts at change can activate defensiveness and hostility within systems that are resistant to change. In some cases, those working toward social justice will not see immediate positive results or receive signs of appreciation. Those with high levels of DoS have resilient capacities to self-validate rather than rely on validation from others (Sandage & Harden, 2011). Skowron (2004) also supported the cross-cultural validity of DoS in finding that it was positively associated with problem solving, psychosocial adjustment, and ethnic group belonging among a sample of persons of color. Sandage and Harden (2011) found a positive correlation between intercultural competence and DoS in a sample of graduate students in the helping profes-sions. Theoretically, then, we suggest that DoS is consistent with a healthy and resilient sense of relational selfhood necessary for working toward social justice outcomes and for sustaining social justice commitment.

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Hope and Social JusticeLike Miller and Sendrowitz (2011), we expected factors such as selfhood, moral imperatives, and outcome expecta-tions to predict social justice commitment in graduate stu-dents. Whereas Miller and Sendrowitz used an established theoretical framework in the career development literature (i.e., SCCT), we decided to take the cultural psychology ap-proach (Kim, Yang, & Hwang, 2006) of starting with social philosophers of color who offer scholar–activist traditions for understanding social justice commitment. There are rich theoretical resources available among several key social phi-losophers and educational theorists who have suggested that hope, particularly complex forms of hope, can be an important moral imperative and outcome expectation factor associated with mature selfhood and social justice commitment.

For example, throughout his writings, Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that hope and a “deep faith in the future” (1958/1986a, p. 88) are necessary for a sustained commitment to social justice. King’s own leadership and participation in the civil rights movement, including suffering repeated ar-rests and physical assaults, kept him profoundly aware of the physical, psychological, and even existential stress and trauma that can be involved in working toward social justice. He recognized that without a mature or complex form of hope that went beyond naive optimism, it would not be possible to maintain the courage, resilience, and dignity of selfhood necessary to work toward social justice in the face of the resistance generated by deeply entrenched systemic racism. King (1961/1986b) explained,

Then something caused me to see at that moment the real meaning of the movement. That students had faith in the future. That the movement was based on hope, that this movement had something within it that says somehow even though the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice. (p. 52)

Similar to King, Cornel West (2004) advocated for a “hard-won tragicomic hope” or “mature hope” that not only is realistic about suffering and injustice in social systems but also provides “a courage to hope for betterment against the odds without a sense of revenge or resentment” (p. 216). West and King both described ways in which this type of mature hope is subversive or challenging to the social status quo, and they expected such hopefulness to be integrated with an awareness that suffering coincides with a commitment to social justice. Paulo Freire (1998) also spoke of a “critical hope” that includes an ability to be “upset about injustice” while continuing to struggle for positive change without “cynical and immobilizing fatalism” (p. 70). Psychologically speaking, the virtue of hope these social philosophers are describing is a postcritical form of hope that is not rooted in primitive defense mechanisms such as denial or repression,

but rather is reflective of mature developmental capacities to tolerate ambiguity, manage emotional tension, differenti-ate one’s selfhood from oppressive social forces, and make meaning out of a struggle while expecting eventual positive outcomes. This mature hope is important for social justice activism because such work obviously includes exposure to oppression and can generate psychological risks for depres-sion, vicarious trauma, negative self-image, cynicism, and fatalism. Several educational researchers have also theorized about connections between complex forms of hope and social justice through drawing on the philosophies of King, West, and Freire (e.g., Cahill, Cerecer, & Bradley, 2010; Hughes, 2011); however, none have provided specific empirical tests of the relationship between hope and social justice.

Hope has been a construct of considerable empirical re-search interest in psychology for more than 2 decades and has consistently been found to correlate positively with a variety of measures of well-being, goal achievement, self-regulation, and positive psychological functioning while also correlating negatively with a variety of measures of distress (Scioli, Ricci, Nyugen, & Scioli, 2011). Hope has been positively associated with both DoS and healthy moral emotions and negatively correlated with shame proneness among undergraduates (Wil-liamson, Sandage, & Lee, 2007). Snyder’s (2003) program of research on hope has been the most generative, and he defined hope as composed of two main cognitive compo-nents: (a) agency cognitions, or the belief that one can reach desired goals, and (b) pathways cognitions, or the perceived capacity to flexibly generate workable routes toward those goals. Agency is particularly important for activating hopeful motivation and determination in achieving goals, including social justice goals (Singh et al., 2010). Pathways cognitions are helpful in sustaining hope when stressful barriers seem to block initial goal pursuits. Snyder’s (1995) actual scale has been labeled the Future Scale and offers some theoretical resonance with King’s (1958/1986a) view of hope as a “deep faith in the future” (p. 88), Miller and Sendrowitz’s (2011) findings on outcome expectations, Beer et al.’s (2011) finding on a spiritually optimistic outlook in relation to social justice commitment, and Goodman et al.’s (2004) strengths-based principle of social justice.

The Present StudyDespite the theoretical associations between hope and social justice mentioned previously, we could not find any empiri-cal studies of the two constructs. Ciarrocchi, Dy-Liacco, and Deneke (2008) found that Snyder’s (1995, 2003) measure of hope was positively associated with a measure of hori-zontal faith maturity (Benson, Donahue, & Erickson, 1993) broadly oriented toward spiritual altruism and service in an adult sample, although they did not focus their analyses on specific items related to social justice. The present study was intended to test our theoretical model of DoS predicting social

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justice commitment mediated by hope in a sample of graduate students in the helping professions at a Protestant-affiliated university. Social justice commitment has been investigated in undergraduates and graduate students in counseling psy-chology (Beer et al., 2011; Miller & Sendrowitz, 2011), yet we could not find a previous study focused on social justice commitment in a broader set of helping professions. Our sample included master’s-level students in marriage and fam-ily therapy, counseling psychology, and divinity programs, which require counseling skills training and state a concern for social justice as a desired student outcome. Clergy often spend a substantial percentage of their time in counseling, and the National Comorbidity Survey found clergy to be among the most commonly accessed helping professionals for mental health problems in the United States (23.1% of cases), ranking ahead of psychiatrists and physicians (Wang, Berglund, & Kessler, 2003; Weaver, Flannelly, Flannelly, & Oppenheimer, 2003). Our adult sample also proved to be ap-proximately 6 years older on average than the graduate student samples in the Beer et al. (2011) and Miller and Sendrowitz (2011) studies, with more than twice the percentage of male participants. The present study fulfills their calls for social justice research by investigating (a) different types of train-ing programs, (b) practice-oriented training environments, (c) personality dispositions, and (d) more nuanced measures of moral imperative. On the basis of the theoretical and philosophical sources cited earlier, including King, West, and Freire, we hypothesized a mediator effect for hope in accounting for the positive relationship between DoS and social justice commitment.

MethodParticipants

Participants were 202 master’s-level students from a Prot-estant-affiliated university in the midwestern United States, ranging in age from 21 to 60 years, with a mean age of 33.60 years (SD = 10.23). The sample was 56.9% female and 43.1% male. Participants identified as European American (92.1%), Asian or Asian American (3.0%), African American (3.0%), Latina/o (1.0%), Native American (0.5%), and multiracial (0.5%). (Percentages do not total 100 because of round-ing.) Participants were from one of three master’s programs: divinity (55.4%), marriage and family therapy (33.7%), or counseling psychology (10.9%).

Measures

DoS. The Differentiation of Self Inventory–Revised (DSI-R; Skowron & Schmitt, 2003) is a 46-item self-report measure designed to assess Kerr and Bowen’s (1988) systemic concept of differentiation. The DSI-R has generated an internal con-sistency score of .92 on the full scale (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003), and the various subscales have obtained internal consistencies ranging from .81 to .89 and have correlated

with several measures of psychosocial adjustment, relational well-being, and attachment security in adult samples (Skow-ron & Schmitt, 2003). Two of the subscales, “I” Position and Emotional Reactivity, assess the intrapersonal aspects of differentiation (Skowron et al., 2003). The other two subscales, Fusion With Others and Emotional Cutoff, assess the interpersonal dimension. Higher scores on the subscales reflect greater differentiation. Participants were asked to rate how generally true the items were about them on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all true of me) to 6 (very true of me). The DSI-R had an internal consistency in this study of Cronbach’s alpha = .91.

Hope. The Hope Scale (HS; Snyder, 1995) is a 12-item self-report measure designed to assess individuals’ goal-oriented thinking or hope. Snyder (1995) defined hope as “the cognitive energy and pathways for goals” (p. 355). The two dimensions of energy or agency and means for achiev-ing goals are thought to compose hope. Participants rated the extent to which the items best described them on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (definitely false) to 4 (definitely true). The HS has predicted coping and well-being beyond the effects of related constructs, such as optimism and positive affect, in late-adolescent and adult samples (Snyder, 1995). The Cronbach’s alpha for the total scale in this study was .78.

Social justice commitment. Social justice commitment was measured by extracting a three-item subscale from the Horizontal scale of the Faith Maturity Scale (FMS-H; Benson et al., 1993). The FMS-H was developed by a panel of experts to measure a mature spiritual orientation as evidenced by commitments to altruism, justice, and helping others and was initially normed among Protestant samples in the United States. Although Dy-Liacco, Piedmont, Murray-Swank, Rodgerson, and Sher-man (2009) found evidence for the cross-cultural validity of the FMS-H among a largely Catholic sample of Filipinos and also found construct validity evidence of positive associations between self-report scores and observer ratings, it is not known how this extends to using the subscale out of the context of the whole instrument. In the present study, we did not use the full FMS-H but rather three items, which focused on social justice commitment with language that was not explicitly spiritual: (a) “I am active in efforts to promote social justice,” (b) “I speak out for equality for women and persons of color,” and (c) “I care a great deal about reducing poverty in the USA and throughout the world.” Participants rated each item on a Likert-type scale rang-ing from 1 (I strongly disagree) to 9 (I strongly agree). Combined scores for the three-item subscale in this study ranged from 3 to 27. The three items had an internal consistency in this study of Cronbach’s alpha = .71 (see Table 1).

Procedure

After obtaining institutional review board approval, the first author sought permission from appropriate staff for oppor-tunities to recruit participants from classes and orientation sessions. A $10 gift certificate to a bookstore was offered as

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an incentive for participating in the study. Students who took part in the study completed a packet of questionnaires, which included a written explanation of informed consent.

ResultsTo investigate whether hope mediated the linear relationship between DoS and social justice commitment, we followed procedures outlined by Frazier, Tix, and Barron (2004) for testing mediator effects. To test Condition 1 for mediation, we regressed hope (proposed mediator) on DoS. Results indicated that DoS was significantly associated with higher levels of hope (R2 = .16, B = .04, p < .0001). To test Condition 2 for mediation, we regressed social justice commitment on DoS. Results indicated that DoS was significantly associated with higher levels of social justice commitment (R2 = .08, B = .05, p < .0001). To test Condition 3 for mediation, we performed a regression analysis in which social justice commitment was regressed on the proposed mediator of hope. Results showed that hope was positively associated with social justice commitment (R2 = .06, B = .41, p = .001). A final hierarchi-cal regression analysis was performed to test whether hope significantly reduced the relationship between DoS and social justice commitment (see Table 2). Social justice commitment

was regressed on DoS (Step 1) and hope (Step 2). As shown in Table 2, the B representing the relationship between DoS and social justice commitment was reduced (from B = .05 to B = .04; from b = .28 to b = .22) when hope (B = .26, b = .15, p = .048) was entered into the regression equation (R2 = .10, ∆R2 = .02). The Sobel test revealed a significant indirect effect of partial mediation (ab = .16, z = 3.40, p = .0003).

DiscussionThe results of the present study with graduate students in the helping professions generally supported the theoreti-cal model, with DoS predicting social justice commitment partially mediated by hope. These findings contribute to the limited but emerging empirical literature on social justice commitment and, to our knowledge, offer the first empirical test of associations between DoS, hope, and social justice commitment. The results also provide scientific support for the theoretical works of King, West, and Freire and illustrate the potential methodological benefit of a cultural psychol-ogy approach that starts with theory building based on the philosophical and cultural traditions of nondominant groups prior to empirical testing.

Before further discussion of the results, we want to note the limitations of these cross-sectional findings, which were obtained in an incentivized sample of predominantly Euro-pean American graduate students in the context of a single Protestant-affiliated university in the midwestern United States. Many of these students were pursuing ministry voca-tions, and the results may not generalize to a sample composed of only professional therapy students or to secular contexts. Further research is also needed on these variables with more ethnically diverse samples in other spiritual and religious contexts. The use of longitudinal designs is also needed, particularly to investigate causal effects, such as whether changes in DoS or hope over time would predict changes in social justice commitment. The overall percentage of vari-ance in social justice commitment accounted for by DoS and hope in this study was modest (10%), suggesting that there are other influential variables (e.g., training environment; Beer et al., 2011; Miller & Sendrowitz, 2011) that need to be further investigated.

DoS was positively associated with social justice com-mitment, and this association (which appears to have been empirically tested for the first time) remained significant when hope was added to the regression equation. This find-ing adds to prior theoretical and empirical literature sug-gesting that healthy and mature forms of selfhood can be conducive to social justice commitment, including capacities for self-awareness (Constantine et al., 2007), ongoing self-examination and self-regulation of emotions (Goodman et al., 2004), self-education on social justice (Singh et al., 2010), self-efficacy (Miller & Sendrowitz, 2011), and DoS (Jordan, 2010). DoS is a construct rooted in a collaborative and sys-

TaBLE 1

Bivariate Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations for Hope, Differentiation of Self (DoS),

and Social Justice Commitment (SJC) Variable

1. Hope2. DoS3. SJC

1

— .40**** .24***

2

— .28****

Note. N = 202. Hope was measured with the Hope Scale (Snyder, 1995), DoS with the Differentiation of Self Inventory–Revised (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003), and SJC with a three-item subscale extracted from the Horizontal scale of the Faith Maturity Scale (Benson et al., 1993). ***p < .001. ****p < .0001.

M

3.30 4.21 6.25

SD

0.36 0.60 1.65

3

—

TaBLE 2

Hierarchical regression Model of Social Justice Commitment on Differentiation of Self (DoS) and Hope

Step and Variable

Step 1 DoS

Step 2 DoS Hope

adj. R2

.07

.09

∆R2

.02*

R2

.08****

.10****

Note. N = 202. Hope was measured with the Hope Scale (Snyder, 1995), DoS with the Differentiation of Self Inventory—Revised (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003), and social justice commitment with a three-item subscale extracted from the Horizontal scale of Faith Maturity Scale (Benson et al., 1993). Adj. R2 = adjusted R2; 95% CI = 95% confidence interval for B.*p < .05. **p < .01. ****p < .0001.

Low

.03

.01

.00

High

.07

.07

.51

B

.05*

.04** .26*

95% CiSE B b p

.28

.22

.15

.0001

.0001.003.048

.01

.01 .13

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temic view of selfhood. The capacity to understand and care about systemic injustice and be active in efforts to actualize social justice may be facilitated by a well-differentiated sense of relational selfhood (Jordan, 2010; Toporek et al., 2006). Those who have low levels of DoS tend to have trouble self-regulating anxiety, leading to either fusion or emotional cutoff, each of which would be problematic for social justice efforts. Fusion can lead to overfunctioning or rescue efforts, which are not consistent with healthy social justice advocacy. Goodman et al. (2004) articulated the theoretical importance of giving voice to clients, but without a well-differentiated understanding of self and other, there is a greater chance of negative or ineffective interpersonal encounters. Emotional cutoff can lead to low empathy and interpersonal distancing, which could also hinder social justice efforts. Students with low levels of DoS may be at risk of early burnout in social justice efforts and may struggle with managing the stress and invalidation that are inevitable in social justice work. Con-versely, those with high levels of DoS may be more capable of speaking out and making a commitment to social justice in the face of resistance from family and friends compared with those with low levels of DoS, and managing such resistance has been mentioned in prior studies with graduate students (Beer et al., 2011; Singh et al., 2010). It is also possible that social justice commitment facilitates growth in DoS and hope.

Hope partially mediated the relationship between DoS and social justice commitment in this study, providing em-pirical support for the social justice theories of King, West, and Freire and contemporary educational theorists (Cahill et al., 2010; Hughes, 2011). The agency and pathways dimen-sions of the measure of the HS are likely conducive to social justice commitment. The need for a strong sense of agency has been mentioned in the social justice literature (Goodman et al., 2004), and the pathways dimension of hope involves a flexible cognitive style, which may be necessary for navigat-ing the systemic nature of social injustice. Hope involves an ability to envision and work toward a better future and might serve to integrate the moral imperative and outcome expectation factors that were associated with social justice commitment in Miller and Sendrowitz’s (2011) study. This study is the second study showing a positive association between DoS and hope (Williamson et al., 2007), and this may be due to reciprocal influences on self-regulation. That is, hope may help facilitate the self-regulation of difficult emotions by reframing stress in light of future goals, and this could help individuals differentiate their self-identity from present negative experiences. High levels of DoS are also consistent with effective problem solving and well-nuanced goals (Skowron, 2004), and this could be important for hopefulness about social justice work because progress is often incremental, at best. Those with low levels of DoS might be prone to more global views of outcomes, which could result in significant reductions in hope when social justice progress is not immediate. Future research on social

justice might also explore spirituality because both DoS and hope have been correlated with measures of spirituality (Sandage & Harden, 2011; Scioli et al., 2011), and Beer et al. (2011) suggested that spirituality was positively associ-ated with social justice commitment by providing internal motivation and optimism.

Measurement is also an important area for future research on social justice commitment. Miller and Sendrowitz (2011) used a measure with more general language about social jus-tice, whereas we chose a scale in which some items explicitly mention advocacy related to particular social justice issues (i.e., women, persons of color, and poverty). There are advan-tages to each approach, particularly because there is evidence students may struggle to define the more abstract term social justice (Singh et al., 2010). Future studies might follow Beer et al. (2011) by including both general and specific measures of social justice activist behavior.

Our results point to several potential training implica-tions related to social justice commitment among students in the helping professions. First, the mediator role of hope suggests that it may be important to help students identify sources of complex or robust hopefulness related to social justice, while also raising their consciousness about systemic oppression. In other words, it could be helpful to seek to balance deconstruction and hopeful reconstruction related to social justice in the educational process. This point can parallel the psychotherapy research that shows that hope is a common factor promoting therapeutic change. Second, it may be important to help students develop practical skills in social justice advocacy in order to foster or sustain hope, particularly the pathways dimension of hope. The Pieterse et al. (2009) study examining syllabi in accredited gradu-ate counseling programs found that the content of classes concerning multiculturalism and social justice was more consistently associated with raising awareness of attitudes and developing knowledge about multicultural issues than with teaching social justice skills that would prepare students for advocacy and intervention. There is some danger that raising awareness about injustice without skill development will make it challenging for students to sustain hope about making progress toward advocacy goals. Hope involves both agency and pathways dimensions, with the latter necessitat-ing flexible skills for navigating obstacles to goals. Third, the present findings suggest that students who struggle with DoS, who lack coping strategies for self-regulation, or who develop depression may be at risk for reduced social justice commitment. Because graduate study is often highly stressful, counseling and other psychosocial supports may be important for helping students not only manage their own personal and relational well-being but also maintain a capacity to challenge themselves to grow in social justice commitment. This fits with the suggestion by Toporek et al. (2006) that personal development and self-care are essential elements of social justice work.

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