Research paper · RP29

Psychological Capital, Trained

Psychological-capital (PsyCap) programmes train four state-like resources — hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism — in employed adults. A pooled estimate for business outcomes is not yet possible: fewer than five eligible controlled trials report extractable, comparable effects on the same outcome, so this paper is a systematic review with narrative synthesis rather than a new meta-analytic pool. Prior reviews found small-to-medium effects on the PsyCap construct itself (Lupșa and colleagues, 2020: d = 0.34 across 41 trials, N = 3,911; Loghman and colleagues, 2025: post-intervention d = 0.46 across 40 studies, N = 4,207). Those reviews pooled wellbeing and the construct. They did not settle performance, absenteeism or turnover. This review asked a narrower question for working adults: do PsyCap programmes move business outcomes, not only the construct and wellbeing? Searches covered 2006–2026 across PubMed, PsycINFO-style records, Scopus-indexed sources, Web of Science-indexed sources, Google Scholar, CTRI, ClinicalTrials.gov and OSF, plus citation chasing of the two prior reviews. Eligible designs were randomised or controlled trials in employed adults. Primary outcomes were performance (self-rated separately from other-rated or objective), absenteeism, turnover or turnover intention, and PsyCap. Findings are uneven. PsyCap itself moves. That claim is supported by two independent meta-analyses and by later trials in China, the United States, Spain, Bulgaria and India. Self-rated performance rose in one Chinese controlled reading-materials programme (Zhang and colleagues, 2014; ANCOVA partial η² = 0.20) and in uncontrolled pre–post manager samples. Other-rated and objective performance evidence is thin and mixed. Turnover-intention evidence rests on two Chinese trials: one fragile (Da and colleagues, 2020) and one large but single-site and unblinded (Sun, Gong and Yuan, 2026). Actual turnover was not found as an outcome. Absenteeism was not found as an outcome in any eligible PsyCap-intervention trial. One Indian PCI trial exists; it measured stress and job insecurity, not performance, absenteeism or turnover. Certainty is moderate for the construct, low for self-rated performance and turnover intention, and very low or empty for other-rated performance, actual turnover and absenteeism. Indian workplaces should treat PsyCap practice as a trainable personal resource with a plausible, still unproven, path to business metrics. The India gap is explicit: no verified Indian randomised trial of a PsyCap programme has yet reported performance, absenteeism or turnover.