Psychological Capital Scale

Psychological capital (PsyCap) is a higher-order positive psychological resource in the positive-organizational-behavior tradition, composed of four state-like capacities: hope, efficacy (self-confidence), resilience, and optimism — together the 'HERO' constructs. Fred Luthans and colleagues argued that these four share a common underlying mechanism — a positive appraisal of circumstances and probability of success based on motivated effort and perseverance — so that their combination predicts outcomes better than any one alone. The Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ) operationalizes the four capacities with validated subscales, and Luthans, Avolio, Avey, and Norman's 2007 Personnel Psychology paper established the measure and showed that the composite relates to performance and satisfaction. A central claim, developed in Luthans, Youssef, and Avolio's 2007 book, is that PsyCap is state-like and therefore developable, distinguishing it from fixed traits.