Zaki put it this way: “Optimism is telling our children: Don’t worry, darling, everything will be fine. First, we cannot guarantee it because we do not know what the future holds. Second, it leaves our children on the sidelines watching helplessly as they see things that could be difficult or harmful.” Instead, the hope is to tell our children, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you can make a difference.’”
The connection between curiosity, hope and data
According to surveys cited by Zaki, most parents believe that teaching their 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 research study of more than two hundred thousand people in thirty countries. Cynics “scored worse on tasks measuring cognitive ability, problem solving, and mathematical ability.” Despite this, he writes, “the stereotype of the happy, gullible simpleton and the wise and bitter misanthrope lives on, so stubborn that scientists have called it ‘the illusion of cynical genius’.”
Why would cynicism affect cognitive insight? Perhaps part of the answer can be found in curiosity. Curiosity prepares children’s brains for learning. Curious children want to know becauseand that pushes them to overcome simplistic or absolutist notions about the world. Children have the urge to explore and make sense of the world, but that also means they can absorb the fears of the adults closest to them. “Children are sponges,” Zaki said, “and we often saturate those sponges with the dirty water of our own prejudices, but we don’t have to. “Instead, we can allow their curiosity to direct them toward more accurate and hopeful information.”
That means adults have work to do, Zaki said. Building hope often means “unlearning a lot of misinformation” 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 disconnecting and burying our heads in the sand,” Zaki said. “Hope is a matter of paying more attention and focusing more intensely on what the world has to offer. “Hope is a response to data.”
Take, for example, “stranger danger.” According to a 2023 Pew Research survey, 28 percent of American parents say they are “extremely worried” about their children being kidnapped, and another 31 percent say they were “somewhat worried” about it. And yet, the actual 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 de minimis, that is, effectively zero.” They continue:
The idea that unsupervised children are in constant danger is relatively new. Just a generation ago, children had much more freedom to explore their environment. In the early 1970s, psychologist Roger Hart spent two years mapping where children in a rural New England town were allowed to go alone. He found that 4- and 5-year-olds were allowed to travel alone in their neighborhoods, and that 10-year-olds were free to move around the city. Forty years later, Hart returned to the same city and discovered that, although the crime rate was exactly the same, most children were now prohibited from wandering into their own backyards.
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 transmitted (our fears) to our children, they are less trusting than us and have less freedom than us.”
Zaki recommends modeling “fact-checking” our cynical beliefs. “When I distrust someone I just met for the first time, I say, ‘Wait a minute, Zaki, what data do you have to back up this distrust?’ And many times the answer is nothing. I have no data here. They are just my instincts, 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 question their cynicism too, to be curious and skeptical rather than cynical.”
Why we underestimate human kindness
Researchers have found that humans generally tend to underestimate human kindness. This is another area where data can be useful and hopeful, Zaki said. Take this study, for example: a group of researchers “dropped” nearly 17,000 wallets in 40 countries over the course of two years. Some wallets had no money, some had the equivalent of $13, and some 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 hypothesized that the larger the amount of money in the wallet, the less would be returned. A survey of 279 “high-performing academic economists” agreed. But it turned out to be exactly the opposite. Forty-six percent of empty wallets were reported, compared to 61% for $13 wallets and 72% for $100 wallets. The more money was lost, the more people struggled to return it 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 more than selfishness.” This is important information: If our children believe that most people simply don’t care about pressing problems, it’s easy to feel hopeless. Look at climate change, Zaki said. “The average American thinks that 40% or less of Americans want an aggressive policy to protect the climate, but the real number is more than two-thirds. There are many ways that our children are probably part of a supermajority that they don’t know they are a part of. If you know that the majority of 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 college students, Zaki believes that much of young people’s anxiety stems from “the perception that the world is struggling and I can’t do anything about it.” Thanks to the Internet, today’s teenagers are global citizens that previous generations were not. Feelings of helplessness accentuate anguish.
Richard Weissbourd, director of Harvard’s Making Caring Common project, notes that children and adults are “more distressed when we feel helpless and passive, and more comfortable when we take action.” Adults can help their children turn empathy into activity, teaching them ways to “broaden their circle of concerns,” reach out to others, and make a difference in the community.
How to practice social savoring
A practical strategy for fostering hope is to savor or “notice good things as they happen.” Noticing small moments of human kindness helps us correct the negativity bias that most of us are prone to. As Zaki explains: “Our minds are structured to pay close 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 savoring beautiful things and positive experiences is a great exercise in general in terms of balancing our perspective.”
Start by helping your kids practice “savoring” in general: appreciating the taste of their favorite food, staying outside during a beautiful sunset, or pausing to notice how good they feel during a special outing. This will help them transfer this savoring to 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 kind and ask them, ‘Tell me about the kind thing someone in your class did?’ “These conversations can help change what we notice on a daily basis, because if we want to share these moments with our children, we have to look for goodness in the world. Social taste, over time, “becomes a mental habit.”
The art of ‘moderate attention’
When Zaki thinks about hopeful fatherhood, a phrase that comes to mind is “submissive attention.”
He found this phrase in the writings of the late Emile Bruneau, a close friend and fellow psychology professor, someone he describes as “an unofficial ambassador of the better angels of humanity.” Bruneau had a difficult childhood, and in the midst of emotional pain and financial challenges, his father’s “submissive attention” was his anchor of hope.
“Emile felt totally supported by his father,” explains Zaki. “He knew his father was there when he needed him, but his father was not a micromanaging father. He let Emile explore and run through the forest, even from a very young age. They lived 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 reflects research on healthy attachment patterns, Zaki said. “The sign of a securely attached baby or toddler is that they feel like they can explore the world in the presence of their parents. What we risk when we focus too much on protecting our children is taking away their curiosity.” Moderate mindfulness can be a way to intentionally temper our instincts to protect our children from potential harm.
