The Benefits of Raising Hopeful Kids in Cynical Times

Zaki put it this way, “Optimism is us telling our kids, don’t worry, honey, it’s going to be fine. First, we can’t guarantee that because we don’t know what the future holds. Second, it leaves our kids on the sidelines observing helplessly as they see things that might be difficult or harmful.” In contrast, hope is telling our kids, ‘“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, the majority of parents believe that teaching kids that “the world is dangerous and competitive” will help them be more successful. But this world-view can be detrimental to children’s academic success. Zaki points to a research study of over two hundred thousand people in thirty countries. Cynics “scored less well on tasks that measure cognitive ability, problem-solving, and mathematical skill.” Despite this, he writes, “the stereotype of the happy, gullible simpleton and the wise, bitter misanthrope lives on, stubborn enough that scientists have named it ‘the cynical genius illusion.’”

Why would cynicism dampen cognitive acumen? Perhaps part of the answer can be found in curiosity. Curiosity primes children’s brains for learning. Curious kids want to know why, and that pushes them past simplistic or absolutist notions about the world. Children have an impulse to explore and make sense of the world – but that also means that they can absorb the fears of the adults closest to them. “Kids are sponges,” said Zaki, “and often we’re saturating those sponges with the dirty water of our own biases, but we don’t have to. We can allow their curiosity to direct them to more accurate and hopeful information instead.”

That means adults have work to do, Zaki said. Building hope often means “unlearning a lot of bad intel” that we’ve received from culture, media, and the “shredder of social media.” Scary stories can feed our worst perceptions about what people are like and cause us to overestimate dangers. “Hope isn’t a matter of tuning out and burying our heads in the sand,” said Zaki. “Hope is a matter of paying closer attention and focusing more intently 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” that their children will be abducted, with another 31% saying they were “somewhat worried” about it. And yet the actual risk of a child being kidnapped by a stranger is incredibly low. According to researchers for the University of California Irvine: “The actual risk of a teen or child being abducted by a stranger and killed or not returned is estimated at around 0.00007%, or one in 1.4 million annually—a risk so small that experts call it de minimis, meaning effectively zero.” They continue:

The idea that unsupervised children are in constant danger is relatively new. Just one 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 rural New England town were allowed to go by themselves. He found that 4- and 5-year-olds were allowed to travel throughout their neighborhoods alone, and 10-year-olds had free run of the town. Forty years later, Hart returned to the same town and found that although the crime rate was exactly the same, most children were now forbidden from roaming past their own backyards.

Zaki explains that 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’ve passed [our fears] on to our kids, they are less trusting than we were, and they have less freedom than we did.”

Zaki recommends modeling “fact-checking” our cynical beliefs. “When I find myself mistrusting somebody I’ve just met for the first time, I say, ‘Wait a minute, Zaki, what data do you have to back up this mistrust?’ And oftentimes the answer is nothing. I have no data here. It’s just my instincts, and our instincts skew negative compared to real evidence. So I try to question my cynical instincts, and I try to encourage my kids to question their cynicism as well, to be curious and skeptical instead of cynical.”

Why We Underestimate Human Goodness

Researchers have found that humans generally tend to underestimate human goodness. This is another area where data can be both helpful and hopeful, said Zaki. Take this study as an 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. The wallets all contained contact information for the “owner.” So how many people attempted to reach the owner of the lost wallet? Researchers assumed that the higher the amount of money in the wallet, the fewer would be returned. A poll of 279 “top-performing academic economists” agreed. But the exact opposite turned out to be true. Forty-six percent of empty wallets were reported, as compared with 61% of the $13 wallets and 72% of $100 wallets. The more money lost, the more people went out of their way to return the money to the owner. People wanted to help out strangers they had never met.

Zaki was not surprised by this because his research has found that “most people value compassion over selfishness.” This is important information: if our kids believe that the majority of people simply don’t care about pressing issues, it’s easy to feel hopeless. Look at climate change, said Zaki. “The average American thinks that 40% or fewer Americans want aggressive policy to protect the climate, but the actual number is more than two-thirds. There are many ways that our kids are probably part of a supermajority that they don’t know they’re part of. If you know that most people want, just like you do, a more peaceful, egalitarian, 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 the young people’s anxiety stems from “the perception that the world is struggling and I can’t do anything about it.” Because of the internet, today’s adolescents are global citizens in ways previous generations were not. Feelings of helplessness accentuate distress.

Richard Weissbourd, director of Harvard’s Making Caring Common project, notes that kids and adults are “more distressed when we feel helpless and passive — and more comfortable when we are taking action.” Adults can help their children turn empathy into activity, teaching them ways to “expand their circle of concern,” reach out to others, and make a difference in the community.

How to Practice Social Savoring

One practical strategy for fostering hope is savoring, or “noticing the good stuff as it happens.” Noticing small moments of human goodness helps us correct the negativity bias that most of us are prone to. As Zaki explains,“Our minds are structured to pay lots 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 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 – to appreciate the taste of their favorite food, to linger outside during a beautiful sunset, or to pause to notice how good they are feeling during a special outing. That will help them translate this savoring to social situations – to mindfully notice the good in others. “I try do this with my kids all the time,” said Zaki, “I share with them if I notice somebody doing something really kind, and I ask them, ‘Tell me about the kind thing that somebody in your class did?’” These conversations can help change what we notice day-to-day, because if we want to share these moments with our kids, we have to look for goodness out in the world. Social savoring, over time, “becomes a habit of mind.”

The Art of ‘Underbearing Attentiveness’

When Zaki thinks of hopeful parenting, one phrase that comes to mind is “underbearing attentiveness.”

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 for humanity’s better angels.” Bruneau had a difficult childhood, and amidst emotional pain and financial challenges, his dad’s “underbearing attentiveness” was his anchor of hope.

“Emile felt utterly supported by his dad,” Zaki explains. “He knew that his dad was there when he needed him, but his dad was not a micromanaging parent. He let Emile explore and run through the forest, even from a very young age. They traipsed around 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 the research on healthy attachment patterns, said Zaki. “The sign of a securely attached baby or toddler is that they feel that they can explore the world in their parents’ presence. What we risk when we focus too much on protecting our children is draining them of their curiosity.” Underbearing attentiveness can be a way to intentionally temper our instincts to shield our children from all potential harm.