Zaki put it this way: “Optimism is us telling our children, don’t worry honey everything will be alright First, we can’t guarantee that because we don’t know what the future holds. Second, it leaves our children on the sidelines, watching helplessly as they see things that may be difficult or harmful. In contrast, hope tells our children, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you it might matter.’
The connection between curiosity, hope and data
According to studies cited by Zaki, the majority of parents believe that teaching children that “the world is dangerous and competitive” will help them be more successful. But this worldview can be detrimental to children’s academic success. Zaki points to a study of over two hundred thousand people in thirty countries. Cynics “perform less well on tasks that measure cognitive ability, problem solving, and math skills.” However, he writes, “the stereotype of the happy-go-lucky fool and the wise-cracking misanthrope lives on, persistent enough that scholars have dubbed it the ‘cynical genius illusion.'”
Why would cynicism suppress cognitive insight? Perhaps part of the answer can be found in curiosity. Curiosity prepares children’s brains for learning. Curious kids want to know whyand this pushes them past simplistic or absolutist views of the world. Children have an impulse to explore and make sense of the world – but that also means they can take on the fears of the adults closest to them. “Children are sponges,” Zaki said, “and often we saturate these sponges with the dirty water of our own biases, but we don’t have to. Instead, we can let their curiosity guide them to more accurate and hopeful information.”
That means adults have jobs, Zaki said. Building hope often means “getting rid of a lot of bad information” we’ve received from culture, the media, and the “social media shredder.” Scary stories can feed our worst perceptions of what people are like and cause us to overestimate dangers. “Hope is not a matter of giving up and burying our heads in the sand,” Zaki said. “Hope is a matter of paying more attention and focusing more carefully on what the world has to offer. Hope is a response to data.
Take “unknown danger” for example. According to a 2023 Pew Research Survey28 percent of American parents say they are “extremely worried” that their children will be kidnapped, and another 31% say they are “somewhat worried” about it. Yet the real risk of a child being abducted by a stranger is incredibly low. According to researchers at the University of California, Irvine: “The actual risk of a teenager or child being abducted by a stranger and killed or not returned is estimated to be about 0.00007%, or one in 1.4 million per year—a risk so small that experts call it is de minimis, meaning effectively zero.” They continued:
The idea that unsupervised children are in constant danger is relatively new. Just a generation ago, children had much more freedom to explore their surroundings. In the early 1970s, psychologist Roger Hart spent two years making maps of the places that children in a New England country town were allowed to visit on their own. He found that 4- and 5-year-olds were allowed to travel around their neighborhoods on their own, and 10-year-olds were free to run around town. Forty years later, Hart returns to the same town and finds that, although the crime rate is exactly the same, most children are now forbidden to walk past their own yards.
Zaki explains that the data clearly shows that “people who think the world is dangerous do worse in terms of their mental health, their careers and their happiness. But because we have passed on (our fears) to our children, they are less trusting than us and have less freedom than us.”
Zaki recommends modeling a “fact check” of our cynical beliefs. “When I find myself distrusting someone I’ve just met for the first time, I say, ‘Wait a minute, Zacky, what data do you have to support that distrust?'” And often the answer is nothing. I have no data here. It’s just my instinct, and our instincts are negative compared to the real evidence. So I try to question my cynical instincts and I try to encourage my children to also question their cynicism, to be curious and skeptical instead of cynical.
Why we underestimate human kindness
Researchers have found that people generally tend to underestimate human kindness. This is another area where data can be both helpful and encouraging, Zaki said. Take this survey as example: a group of researchers “dropped” nearly 17,000 wallets in 40 countries over two years. Some wallets had no money, others had the equivalent of $13, and still others had the equivalent of $100. All wallets contained contact information for the “owner”. So how many people tried to contact the owner of the lost wallet? The researchers assume that the larger the amount of money in the wallet, the less will be returned. A poll of 279 “top-performing academic economists” agreed. But it turned out to be just the opposite. 46 percent empty wallets were reported, compared to 61 percent of $13 wallets and 72 percent of $100 wallets. The more money that was lost, the more people did everything they could to return the money to the owner. People wanted to help strangers they had never met.
Zaki wasn’t surprised by this because his research found that “most people value compassion over selfishness.” This is important information: if our children believe that the majority of people simply do not care about pressing issues, it is easy to feel hopeless. Look at climate change, Zaki said. “The average American thinks 40% or fewer Americans want aggressive climate policy, but the real number is more than two-thirds. There are many ways in which our children are probably part of a supermajority that they don’t know they are a part of. If you know that most people want, just like you, a more peaceful, equal and sustainable world, then suddenly fighting for it makes a lot more sense.
After years of working with students, Zaki believes that much of young people’s anxiety stems from “feeling that the world is struggling and I can’t do anything about it.” Thanks to the Internet, today’s teenagers are citizens of the world in a way that previous generations were not. The feeling of helplessness intensifies the suffering.
Richard Weisbord, director of Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project, notes that children and adults are “more anxious when we feel helpless and passive—and more comfortable when we take action.” Adults can help their children turn empathy into action by teaching them ways to “broaden their circle of concern,” reach out to others, and make a difference in the community.
How to practice social tasting
One practical strategy to promote hope is to enjoy or “notice the good things when they happen.” Noticing small moments of human kindness helps us correct the negative biases most of us are prone to. As Zaki explains, “Our minds are structured to pay a lot of attention to threats. And that’s good because it keeps us safe, but it’s also a bias that often makes us wrong about what the world is like and what people are like. So enjoying beautiful things and positive experiences in general is a great exercise in balancing our perspective.”
Start by helping your kids practice “tasting” in general—appreciating the taste of their favorite food, staying outside during a beautiful sunset, or pausing to see how good they feel during a special walk. This will help them to carry this enjoyment into social situations – to consciously notice the good in others. “I try to do this with my kids all the time,” Zaki said, “I share with them if I notice someone doing something really nice and ask them, ‘Tell me about a nice thing someone in your class did ?” These conversations can help change what we notice every day, because if we want to share these moments with our children, we must look for the good in the world. Social enjoyment “becomes a habit of mind” over time.
The Art of “Indecent Attention”
When Zaki thinks about hopeful parenting, one phrase that comes to mind is “not enough attention.”
He found the phrase in the writings of the late Emile Bruno, his close friend and fellow psychology professor—someone he described as “the unofficial ambassador of humanity’s better angels.” Bruno had a difficult childhood, and amid emotional pain and financial challenges, his father’s “unavailable attention” was his anchor of hope.
“Emil felt completely supported by his father,” explains Zaki. “He knew his dad was there when he needed him, but his dad wasn’t a micromanaging parent. He allowed Emil to explore and run through the forest, even from a very young age. They toured together and were partners in life. His father allowed him to build his own world and become his own person under his watchful eye, but not under his thumb.
This approach mirrors research on healthy attachment patterns, Zaki said. “The sign of a securely attached baby or toddler is that they feel they can explore the world in the presence of their parents. What we risk when we focus too much on protecting our children is draining them of their curiosity. Inattention can be a way of deliberately tempering our instincts to protect our children from all potential harm.
