Zaki put it like this, “The hope that we tell our children, don’t worry, honey, it’s going to be okay. 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 could be difficult or dangerous.” On the contrary, hope tells our children, ‘I don’t know what will happen, but you it can make a difference.’”
The Connection Between Curiosity, Hope and Data
According to Zaki’s survey, most 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 survey of over two hundred thousand people in thirty countries. The critics “scored less on tasks measuring cognitive ability, problem solving, and math ability.” Despite this, he writes, “the stereotype of happy, gullible, intelligent and cruel people in recovery persists, so stubborn that scientists have called it the ‘psychological delusion.'”
Why does cynicism dampen the ability to reason? Perhaps part of the answer can be found in curiosity. Curiosity starts children’s brains in learning. Curious children want to know whyand that pushes them past simplistic or absolute ideas about the world. Children are motivated 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,” said Zaki, “and we often wet those sponges with dirty water because of our bias, but we don’t have to.” We can let their curiosity guide them to more accurate and positive information than that.”
That means that adults have a job to do, Zaki said. Building hope often means “letting go of a lot of the bad wisdom” we’ve received from culture, media and various “social media”. Scary stories can feed our worst ideas about what people are like and make us overestimate risks. “Hope is not a matter of tuning in and burying our heads in the sand,” said Zaki. “Hope is a matter of looking closely and focusing more on what the world has to offer. Hope is a response to data. “
For example, take “unknown risk.” According to a 2023 Pew Research survey, 28 percent of American parents said they were “very worried” that their children would be kidnapped, and another 31% said 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 about 0.00007%, or one in 1.4 million every year—the very small risk experts call it. it de minimis, which means zero. They continue:
The idea that unsupervised children are always at risk is relatively new. Just one generation ago, children had more freedom to explore their surroundings. In the early 1970s, psychologist Roger Hart spent two years mapping the areas where children in rural New England were allowed to go alone. He discovered that children aged 4 and 5 years were allowed to walk in their neighborhoods alone, while 10-year-olds ran free in the city. 40 years later, Hart returned to the same town and found that although the crime rate was exactly the same, many children had been banned from roaming their grounds.
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 [our fears] our children, they don’t trust us like we do, and they have less freedom than us.”
Zaki recommends modeling to “reality check” our sarcastic beliefs. “When I find myself not trusting someone I’ve just met for the first time, I say, ‘Wait a minute, Zaki, what data do you have to support this distrust?’ And often the answer is nothing. I have no data here. It’s just my natural inclination, and our instincts pale against the real evidence. So I try to question my tendency to doubt, and I try to encourage my children to also question their doubts, to be curious and skeptical instead of critical.”
Why We Don’t Underestimate Human Beauty
Researchers have found that people generally tend to underestimate a person’s beauty. This is another area where data can be useful and promising, Zaki said. Take this study as an example: a group of researchers “dropped” about 17,000 bags in 40 countries during two years. Some bags were empty, some had $13 in cash and some had $100 in cash. All wallets contain the contact information of the “owner.” So how many people have tried to reach the owner of a lost wallet? The researchers hypothesized that the higher the amount of money in the fund, the less will be returned. A poll of 279 “high performing academic economists” agreed. But the exact opposite was true. 46 percent of empty wallets were reported, compared to 61% of $13 wallets and 72% of $100 wallets. When more money was lost, more people tried to return the money to the owner. People wanted to help strangers they had never met.
Zaki was not surprised by this because his research has found that “many people value compassion more than selfishness.” This is important information: if our children believe that most people do not care about pressing problems, it is easy to feel hopeless. Look at climate change, Zaki said. “The average American thinks that 40% or less of Americans want aggressive climate protection policy, but the real number is more than two-thirds. There are many ways that our children may be part of a large group that they don’t know they’re a part of. If you know that a lot of people want, like you, a world that is peaceful, equal, and sustainable, then fighting for it makes more sense.”
After years of working with college students, Zaki believes that much of youth anxiety stems from “the idea that the world is struggling and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Thanks to the Internet, today’s youth are global citizens in ways that previous generations were not. Feelings of helplessness increase stress.
Richard Weissbourd, director of Harvard’s Making Caring Common program, notes that children and adults are “more depressed when we feel powerless and passive—and more comfortable when we take action.” Adults can help their children turn empathy into action, teach them ways to “broadcast their worries,” reach out to others, and make a difference in society.
How to Get used to Social Entertainment
Another effective strategy for increasing optimism is to entertain, or “notice good things as they happen.” Recognizing the small moments of human goodness helps us to correct the negative biases that most of us are prone to. As Zaki explains, “Our minds are programmed to pay more attention to threats. And that’s good because it keeps us safe, but it’s also a bias that often gets us wrong about what the world is like and what people are like. So enjoying good things and good experiences is a good job in general in terms of balancing our perspective.”
Start by helping your children practice “taste” in general – enjoying the taste of their favorite foods, sitting outside during a beautiful sunset, or pausing to notice how good they feel during a special trip. That will help them to translate this pleasure into social situations – to be more aware of the good in others. “I try to do this with my children all the time,” said Zaki, “I share with them when I see someone doing something really good, and I ask myself, ‘Tell me about something kind that someone in your class did?’ ” These discussions can help change what we see each day, because if we want to share these moments with our children, we must look for the beauty in the world. Social entertainment, over time, “becomes a habit of mind.”
The Art of ‘Attention’
When Zaki thinks about being a positive parent, another phrase that comes to mind is “listen carefully.”
He found the quote in the writings of the late Emile Bruneau, a close friend and psychology professor he worked with – someone he described as “the unofficial ambassador of humanity’s better angels.” Bruneau had a difficult childhood, and in the midst of emotional pain and financial challenges, his father’s “observance” became his anchor of hope.
“Emile felt completely supported by his father,” explained Zaki. “He knew that his father was there when he needed him, but his father was not a parent who took care of small things. He allowed Emile to explore and run in the forest, from a very young age. They met together and were partners in life. His father allowed him to build a world for himself and be 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 child or toddler is that they feel they can explore the world when their parents are with them. What we risk when we focus too much on protecting our children is killing their curiosity.” Listening carefully can be a way of deliberately lowering our instincts to protect our children from all possible dangers.
