On Explain It Me, we try to give you useful information to help you navigate and understand the world around you. But lately there’s been an elephant in the room: Life feels kind of…bad.
Polling suggests that Americans are unsatisfied with their lives now, and with prospects for the future. It’s understandable why: We’re on the cusp of a technological revolution, but it could come for all our jobs; the country is at war; and the global economy can feel unstable at best.
All this uncertainty and we’re still expected to do things like declutter our homes, work out, and stay on top of our reading. So how do you face all that crushing negativity? Some make the case for optimism. Jamil Zaki, psychology professor and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, makes the case for hope. “Optimism is the belief that the future will turn out well, and optimistic people tend to be pretty happy and healthy, but they can also be a bit complacent,” he told Vox.
By contract, Zaki says, hope is “the idea that the future could turn out well, but that we don’t know what the future holds. In fact, being hopeful acknowledges and embraces that things are difficult and asks, ‘Where can we go from here?’”
So how do you find hope in times of darkness? And why are some of us more predisposed to seeing the bright side of things than others? We answer those questions and more on this week’s episode of Explain It to Me.
Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
I’ve seen the phrase “toxic optimism” used to suggest that, at times, we tell people everything is going to be okay when it’s not. Are there times when we’re trying to get people to gaslight themselves into thinking things are better than they actually are?
A lot of the time there’s actually pressure to be negative about the future because there’s the view that if you’re positive, you must be a Pollyanna, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. If you think about it, yes, being a Pollyanna might encourage you to do nothing. An optimist might not feel like they have to fight for anything because everything’s going to turn out well, but a pessimist might not fight for very much either.
There’s a bunch of research that finds that people who are hopeless and cynical are less likely to vote or take part in social movements. Authoritarian regimes actually benefit a lot when people are hopeless. In fact, I think that a lot of propaganda is meant to make people hopeless because that negativity keeps people frozen in place, and that’s exactly what those authoritarian powers often want.
I think people assume there’s naivety if you’re not cynical or if you’re not pessimistic.
There’s an old quote: “Always predict the worst, and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.” I do think that there is an inherent sense that negativity and wisdom are the same thing. And you see this everywhere.
There’s evidence from psychology that bears this out. Research finds that 70 percent of people believe that cynical folks who have a negative outlook on humanity are smarter than non-cynical individuals, and 85 percent of people think that cynics are socially smarter — that they’re better able to tell who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.
That’s a stereotype in our culture, but it’s also one that’s wrong. The data actually find that cynical people are not any smarter than non-cynics, and they’re actually worse at knowing who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.
What do we know about people who are able to maintain hope in dark times? What makes them able to do that?
When I think about hopeful people, I think about activists. Was Nelson Mandela optimistic and thinking that everything was going to turn out great when he was in his jail cell? Hope is a stubborn, active sense of the world. It’s an acknowledgement that things are not what we want now, but a sense that they could improve and that we have something to do about it.
Hopeful people, as the science bears out, have the ability to envision that better future. They also have a will to pursue it. They have that grit and that passion to actually continue going for a goal, even if it’s difficult. And they have something known as waypower, which is that they’re able to map a path between where they are and where they want to be, and oftentimes that waypower requires not being alone.
Hopeful people often aren’t hopeful just as individuals. They find communities of people who want the same positive change that they do, and they work together towards creating that change.
What makes someone that way? Are we predispositioned to be hopeful or cynical?
There’s a bunch of research using twins where they look at the difference between levels of optimism and hope among identical twins versus fraternal twins. The idea is if identical twins are more similar, that’s probably due to their genetics. And that research suggests that things like optimism, pessimism, and hope have a little bit of a genetic component, but not much. Twenty-five percent of how hopeful or optimistic you are appears to be explained by your genes, which leaves the vast majority to be explained by your experience.
“I think of cultivating hope as a practice of noticing — not a practice of ignoring the bad side, but a practice of balancing that with real attention to what is beautiful.”
A lot of that experience has to do with what happens to us early in life. If you come from a nurturing, warm household, you tend to be more optimistic and hopeful, but there’s also evidence that we can make a difference for ourselves. Therapy, for instance, tends to be a practice that increases people’s sense of hope. So if you don’t feel like a very hopeful person, that’s not like a life sentence, you can do things to change the way that you perceive the world.
Every week we ask people to call in, and when we asked people how they’re cultivating optimism in their lives, I honestly thought, “Oh, no, people aren’t going to call. They won’t have anything to say. Everything is bad.” But, I was wrong!
I think it’s worth acknowledging that wrongness that you had, because that’s something I think a lot of people are wrong about. If we’re experiencing the world through our screens, it seems like first, everything is terrible, and second, everybody knows that everything is terrible.
The funny thing is that when we return to our local communities, when we actually ask people about their lives, they’re doing wonderful things and you realize how excellent the average person is on a bunch of dimensions. A great thing about human beings, in my opinion, is that we like each other more the closer we get to one another.
Research finds, for instance, that most Americans do not think that most people can be trusted. We’ve become a very cynical nation. But if you ask people, what about the folks in their neighborhood — and this is not just your friends and family, but your grocer, your bus driver, your barber — people feel so much better about the folks that they actually encounter in real life.
People also told us their hobbies bring them joy. I remember people were trying all kinds of stuff at the height of the pandemic, and it seems like it’s still the case. I called 2026 the year of the hobby. I’m just going outside and trying things. What makes that such an effective strategy?
Well, first tell me about your 2026 hobbies. Which one has brought you the most joy?
I’ve gotten back into film photography. I used to do it in high school, and I just go shoot film all around the city.
Does it bring you a sense of hope or optimism to do this?
Oh, yeah. You just look at the world a little bit differently. It’s like, oh, look at that shadow. Look at that angle. What’s the reflection off that building? But also, when you have a camera, especially a film camera, people love to stop and talk to you.
I love this idea of noticing more. A lot of the data from my lab, from lots of other labs, suggest that yes, we don’t want to gaslight people into ignoring the bad things in life, but a lot of us go around missing the good things in life.
I think of cultivating hope as a practice of noticing — not a practice of ignoring the bad side, but a practice of balancing that with real attention to what is beautiful. I think in general, hobbies are a chance for us to pay attention to things that we care about and often bring us in connection to people who turn out to be often pretty great.
Something that I feel like needs to be acknowledged is that this is not the only time in the world where life has been hard. Humanity has survived a lot, and our listeners called in and really reminded us of that. People told us about grandparents who were civil activists, grandparents who survived and met in Auschwitz. Is that an argument that resonates with you?
Absolutely. One practice that I use is to think back to what life was like for my parents or for their parents. We’ve been through so much, and I’m not saying that everything will turn out well, but generally speaking, we are a resilient species, especially when we’re able to come together.
