That slippery, elusive quality of reasonableness is the topic of Lawlor’s new book, Being Reasonable: The Case for a Misunderstood Virtue.

In a comprehensive exploration of what it means to be reasonable, Lawlor argues that being reasonable is about being able to reliably see what matters in the greater scheme of things. This trait helps us to understand other points of view, communicate what we care about, and respond thoughtfully to others, whether in setting curfews with teenagers, resolving disputes with neighbors, or handling conflicts with a partner.

Reasonableness is also foundational to Anglo-American law. Juries determine negligence through the “reasonable person standard,” in which they consider whether a person acted with the level of care and caution that a “reasonable” person would exercise under similar circumstances. But as Lawlor found across her research, legal theorists themselves worry about what the standard means.

Lawlor draws on dozens of cases to show the real-world stakes of using reasonableness as a standard for evaluating behavior, including Hattori v. Peairs, a case about the tragic 1992 killing of the 16-year-old Japanese exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori, who mistakenly approached the wrong home for a Halloween party. He was fatally shot by property owner Rodney Peairs, who said he perceived his life was in danger. A jury had to decide whether his response was reasonable, given the circumstances. Peairs was acquitted of manslaughter, though a subsequent civil trial found him liable.

“Matters of tremendous importance are being decided every day in courtrooms around the country on the basis of the reasonable person standard, but legal theorists seem to be saying, ‘we don’t really know what it means,’” Lawlor says.

A misunderstood virtue

Lawlor argues that reasonableness gets misunderstood, partly because of its malleability: “‘Reasonable’ is a highly context-sensitive word that elicits different criteria in different settings,” Lawlor explains. “What makes a request reasonable is different than what makes a doubt reasonable. So, it can seem that what counts as ‘reasonable’ is up to the speaker.”

And, because most people think they’re being reasonable, it can seem there’s no real way to adjudicate differences among people. “But we know from our own experience there are people who are flat out being unreasonable,” Lawlor says.

Take the case of Rudy Stanko, who in the mid-1990s was pulled over for driving 85 miles per hour on a curvy and steep two-lane highway in freezing conditions. At the time, Montana law had no explicit speed limit; instead, limits were based on what was “reasonable and prudent.” But as the officer who cited Stanko explained, had there been an obstruction on the frosty road, there would have been no way for Stanko to stop in time.

Stanko appealed the ticket, claiming the law was unclear. His case was ultimately heard by Montana’s Supreme Court, which, in a 4-3 ruling, determined the law “void for vagueness.” The court was thinking along the lines of Lawlor’s teenage son, finding the term “reasonable” provided no real guidance. And yet when Montana rewrote its traffic laws, it saw fit to continue including a demand for “reasonable care.”

Reasonable vs. rational

Lawlor sees “reasonable” as different from “rational.” Rationality implies a detached, value-neutral calculation, independent of fairness or relationships. Reasonableness recognizes that these commitments can profoundly shape how we think, act, and behave.

Lawlor encountered the distinction when she had her students enact the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a classic thought experiment in which two accomplices are arrested and interrogated in separate rooms. While mutual silence ensures a light sentence for each, there’s a deal on the table: if one person confesses, they get to walk free.

Game theorists posit that, rationally, it is in the prisoner’s self-interest to betray the other person. But to some of Lawlor’s students, mutual cooperation felt like the reasonable thing to do.

Shaping their decision was their ability to identify what mattered most in the situation, which Lawlor claims is the foundational trait on which reasonableness is based.

“A reasonable person ​acts in a way that promotes what is important,” Lawlor says, noting how being reasonable is fundamentally a matter of how well a person understands and responds to the values at stake in a situation.

Reasonable people disagree

Throughout the book, Lawlor identifies other common aspects of a reasonable person. For example, a reasonable person grounds their belief in evidence because they want to get the facts right.

But reasonable people can interpret the same facts in strikingly different ways, even when presented with the same evidence—as demonstrated in the Stanford course Democracy and Disagreement, which features experts on opposing sides discussing a political topic.

The explanation, as Lawlor sees it, is that what feels “reasonable” depends on one’s beliefs about what is valuable. And it’s often when we come into conflict with another that those beliefs get sharpened.

“We only truly understand what we value when our beliefs are tested and challenged by perspectives diverging from our own,” Lawlor says.

On this point, Lawlor draws on John Stuart Mill, who, in his classic 1859 book On Liberty, argues that we need others to challenge and criticize our views. It is by defending our beliefs about value that we ultimately come to understand ourselves better. “We all have to learn from each other, because no one of us has a big enough brain to understand it all,” Lawlor says.

In our polarized times, Lawlor says, reasonableness is a much-needed tool for productive discussion that supports and strengthens what is important to us.

Tips for being reasonable

According to Lawlor, reasonableness helps us live cooperatively.

“If we’re reasonable, we can harness the power of our emotions when we deliberate together about what matters,” she says.

Lawlor outlines certain qualities that reasonable people possess. They are curious, flexible, and open-minded. They acknowledge the limits of their own perspective and remain open to learning from others. Here are some tips to cultivate reasonableness:

• Notice and manage your emotions: Emotions can help you see what matters to you, but they can also prevent you from seeing what matters to others.
• Engage with those you disagree with: Engaging with others helps you understand what matters to you, and why. By listening to critical perspectives, you actually sharpen your reasoning and deepen your understanding of why you value what you do, not just what you reflexively believe.
• Critically evaluate your own position, not just that of the person you disagree with. Instead of thinking defensively—anticipating objections so you can counter them—look for the strongest fair objections to your own view. “What would another person reasonably object to in my position?”

This article was originally published on Stanford News. Read the original article.

In fact, when word got around that I was researching humility, I suspect more than a few choked on their coffee. 

And even though I have spent over a decade exploring the concept as an attribute and as a practice, it wasn’t until I recently reflected on my own professional challenges that I truly understood how to embrace humility.

I want to share my journey, but first it is important to understand what humility is—and isn’t. It’s been extolled as a virtue for centuries, but it’s often mischaracterized.

In today’s culture, it can be mistaken as a humblebrag, which disguises a boast as modesty—for example, “I really hate talking about myself, but people keep asking how I managed to run a marathon while working full-time.” Or it can resemble impostor phenomenon, the persistent experience of feeling intellectually or professionally fraudulent despite clear evidence of competence or success.

But research finds that humble people hold accurate views of their own abilities and achievements. They openly acknowledge their mistakes and limitations, and are receptive to new ideas. Overall, they recognize their places within a larger whole and genuinely appreciate the value of others.

Humility doesn’t always earn praise. Sometimes the humble may be seen as meek, subservient, or self-abasing.

For instance, many people praised former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s empathetic, self-effacing leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an openness and deference to experts. But some critics dismissed it as weak or soft. These negative views show the various ways people “see” humility.

Generally, though, when humility is understood as grounded self-awareness rather than self-erasure, it’s viewed as something worth cultivating and practicing. We see openness, curiosity, acknowledgment of others, and a lack of ego in fictional characters like Ted Lasso, hero of the same-titled Apple TV series; Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings books; and Jean-Luc Picard, commander of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Humility is also evident in public figures, such as former President Jimmy Carter, children’s television host Fred Rogers, and Nelson Mandela, the Black nationalist who served as the first Black president of South Africa. 

I’m a sociologist with a focus on medical education and health care providers. At Arizona State University’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, I explore issues including causes of burnout, elements of team-based care, and opportunities for emphasizing the human side of health care. In recent years, my work has focused on humility.

From my research and my own experience, I’ve learned that true humility isn’t self-erasure. It’s a sense of security and confidence that your value doesn’t depend on recognition and that you are just one member of a larger system with a multitude of contributors. By removing the need to dominate, humility fosters openness to collaboration, innovation, and an awareness of how the systems around us work.

Still, in a world of Instagram likes and LinkedIn accolades, humility can be the virtue everyone seems to admire but few practice. It’s the one we say we want—until it requires us to confront the parts of ourselves that crave affirmation.

Climbing the professional ladder

I tend to stand out in a crowd. I’m 6-foot-4, with close-cropped hair, a heavy beard, and tattoos. I also push myself to stand out professionally.

Starting in graduate school, I was determined to make my voice heard and sought after. I pursued nearly every opportunity, committee, and position that came my way. No role was too small for me to accept.

I strived to present my work in top-tier journals and at conferences, and I cold-called prominent scholars to propose working together. And I constantly shared my findings and thoughts on social media.

Like many workplaces, the academic world has a set of defined success metrics, such as publications, citations of your work, grant funding, and teaching evaluations from students. School culture and leadership influence what each college or university considers more or less valuable among those measures. To advance and get promoted, particularly to get tenure, it’s important to learn at an early stage what one’s department, college, or university truly prioritizes.

I wanted to get tenure but also to be seen as an active citizen of academia—energetic, outspoken, and unafraid to push boundaries. When my department chair described me as having my hair on fire, I took it as a compliment. I called it “making positive noise.”

Initially, the system rewarded that noise. I earned tenure at the University of Delaware and received departmental, college, and national awards. I also was appointed to serve as associate dean and to direct a new research center. I felt validated, visible, and valuable.

The sociology department at the University of Delaware had a typical academic culture that’s often summarized as “publish or perish.” The most important measures of scholars’ work were writing, publishing their work in respected journals, and having other researchers cite those studies. Securing external funding from government, private companies, or foundations was valued but was not as high a priority as publishing.

A new beginning that felt like an end

In 2020, I received a new opportunity at Arizona State University, a much larger school that branded itself as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship. I was offered the chance to direct the Center for Advancing Interprofessional Practice, Education, and Research and to step into the shoes of a leader I deeply admired. I arrived expecting to be a big fish in a bigger pond.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I showed up imagining there’d be a bit of buzz around my arrival given my time at the University of Delaware. But reality didn’t match the script: No greeting, office, or nameplate marked my place when I arrived.

Early conversations with administrators weren’t about my research or teaching visions—the things that I thought set me apart. Instead, I felt they tended to focus on how much external funding I could raise from foundations and government agencies. My new colleagues often spoke in a shorthand of grant-based acronyms when referring to what projects they were working on, a “language” I was woefully unfamiliar with.

To make matters worse, I arrived during COVID-19, with classes either canceled or taught online and faculty members working mainly from home. The hallway chatter, open doors, and spontaneous collaboration that I was accustomed to were absent. I began to feel alienated and disoriented as a scholar.

Even after ASU resumed in-person classes in the fall of 2021, I felt like the silence and distance lingered. No students waited for office hours. I struggled to make connections with my colleagues. I eagerly proposed collaborations when really everyone was just trying to find their footing in this new era of education.

My proposals for new classes and curricular programs hit up against institutional barriers I was unaware of. At one point, a college administrator asked, “How do we get you on other people’s grants?”—a question that I took to imply that they felt my research wasn’t strong enough.

It appeared that my colleagues in Edson College were accustomed to these values and spoke the language. I was a stranger in a strange land. Although I was producing some of my best work, measured in terms of publications and citations, I felt no one seemed interested. I had come from an environment where I felt known and valued to one where I seemed to be a nobody.

I felt as though I needed to staple my resume to my forehead and parade around the hallways asserting, like Ron Burgundy in the movie Anchorman, “I’m not quite sure how to put this, but . . . I’m kind of a big deal. People know me.” 

The impact of feeling unseen

For people who have built careers by being highly engaged and visible, suddenly feeling unseen can be devastating. In any profession, a fear that you don’t belong at your workplace can be debilitating and make you question your own value.

I sought advice from peers and college leaders, and even hired a professional coach. Things only worsened. Curricular proposals were stalled or turned down. My center was shuttered in a restructuring, although it was meeting its goals and earning international recognition.

At first, I blamed ASU and Edson College for my feelings of disconnection. I thought the leadership structure and style was dysfunctional; that many colleagues were cold, unfriendly, and conformist; and that the college’s stated values were inauthentic. 

This series of what I came to call “unacknowledgments” sent me into a personal and professional tailspin. Negativity and self-doubt consumed me, and I truly worried that my career was over. Had I been blackballed? Why did it feel as though no one cared?

When the noise turns inward

I had spent years studying empathy—the ability to understand and feel what someone else is feeling—and how to cultivate it among health care professionals and students in order to support more patient-centered care. To that end, at the University of Delaware I had developed a program designed to foster empathy across health professions. It aimed to help students see one another as collaborators, build shared respect, and recognize their collective role on the same health care delivery team.

But when I further analyzed the program’s outcomes from my office at ASU, I realized that empathy wasn’t enough. It could help students feel with others, but it didn’t necessarily help them see themselves, or others, differently.

I realized that what I really wanted the students to develop was humility. This step would require them to recognize their limits, accept that they were fallible, see themselves as part of a larger team, and value others’ contributions.

That realization changed my research trajectory—and eventually, my professional life.

Research becomes a mirror

Initially, I approached humility solely as a scholar. I examined the history of the concept and gaps in existing research on it, and I analyzed how humility was connected to uncertainty and the impostor phenomenon. I explored how humility could enhance team-based care and developed a new way to define humility among health care professionals in order to promote more collaboration and patient-centeredness.

As my own professional world began to unravel, and as I dived deeper into the concept of humility through my research, something unexpected happened. I realized that humility wasn’t just an idea to study—it was becoming a mirror that made me rethink my own perspective.

Slowly, I began to see how pride and insecurity were entwined in my reactions to my new setting at ASU. I realized that my need to be noticed, and my insistence that others validate my worth, represented my own kind of arrogance.

Perhaps my ambition had been less about contributing and more about gaining external validation. I had lost the selfless wonder and awe that drive scholarly inquiry and curiosity. And now I had to confront what remained when the spotlight dimmed.

Humility, I began to understand, wasn’t just an abstract concept to explore “out there” among others. I needed to hone it internally by thinking beyond myself. By decentering my ego, I realized that I could nurture and sustain curiosity in its own right. 

In short, I needed to practice what I was preaching. It wasn’t an easy lesson. I assume that cultivating humility never is.

To that end, I felt that it was essential to develop a program to help build humility “muscles.” In 2024, I developed HIIT for Humility, an online training package for individuals or groups, modeled after the fitness concept of high-intensity interval training. This program provides evidence-based strategies to help users start building “habits of humility,” such as acknowledgment of others and self-awareness.

Just as physical exercise requires consistency to produce results, so does the cultivation of humility. Leaning into HIIT for Humility workouts gradually eased my sense of alienation and defensiveness. I became more appreciative of others, less quick to judge, and better able to listen to others’ perspectives. In doing so, I started to feel more confident and secure.

While I still took pride in my work, I began to see that my contributions were not the only ones that mattered. I also found that I could stretch into unfamiliar but necessary tasks, such as working harder to win federal and foundation grants and seeing the value of my colleagues’ contributions to science.

Why am I here?

Only a few years into this process, I can see that ASU and Edson College have unintentionally taught me humility by signaling, often quietly, which contributions are deemed essential and which forms of success carry the most weight. Navigating stalled proposals, shifting priorities, and structural reorganizations have required me to recalibrate my ego, expectations, and identity.

Not being seen as a “big fish” and being expected to persist without consistent recognition have required me to understand my work as part of a larger system with differing values and, at times, challenging constraints. Shifting to ASU forced me to rethink my identity as a professor and to reevaluate my sense of purpose from the inside out.

A colleague of mine often asks students who he feels are coasting along, “Why are you here?” Lately, I’ve taken that question personally. What is the point of being a professor—writing papers, submitting grant proposals, teaching courses? Why did I choose this path in the first place?

When I feel unseen, unheard, or unappreciated, pondering why I’m here helps ground me. For anyone who is struggling to feel visible or valued at work, I strongly recommend considering this simple question.

Over time, I’ve stopped needing to be the big fish in the pond and measuring my worth in titles and awards. I now see that my responsibility as a scholar, teacher, and human being is to stay curious, listen more deeply, and make space for others’ voices.

Embracing humility, and consistently using my humility muscles, have helped me realize that I’m here to be part of the creative energy of academia, do the work, and cultivate curiosity in my students, my peers, and myself.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Other times, they take a little more practice and work. That’s the case with many of this year’s top scientific insights, which deal with big topics like forgiveness, trust, morality, meaning, and purpose. While we probably can’t cultivate these overnight, they are no less important to living a good and happy life—and especially important for thriving societies. 

The final insights were selected by experts on our staff, after soliciting nominations from our network of nearly 400 researchers. We hope they help you consider what you’d like to invite into your life and your community as we head into 2026.

1. Feeling hopeful—even more so than just feeling good—may bring us a sense of meaning

Some of us may struggle to find a sense of meaning in life, especially when times are tough. But according to a new set of studies published this year in the journal Emotion, one important pathway to a meaningful life is by cultivating hope. 

Over the course of a college semester, students who felt more hopeful at one moment in time reported higher levels of meaning later in the semester. The researchers found unique effects for hope—general positive emotions didn’t have the same effect. In other words, among all the good feelings we can have, hope may play a particularly important role in a meaningful life.

Moreover, just feeling hopeful—even if we don’t necessarily think it’s realistic—seems to be beneficial. In one survey, the emotion of hope had a stronger link to meaning than did people’s beliefs about whether they could attain a good outcome.

In another study, researchers asked some participants to read an optimistic news story, while other participants read a pessimistic story. Those who read the optimistic article tended to report feeling more hope, and, in turn, readers who felt more hopeful reported a greater overall sense of meaning in life. This tells us that our feelings of hope and meaning can shift moment to moment, and they are influenced by the things we encounter in daily life.

When we’re facing tough times, taking time to cultivate hope—for example, by seeking out positive news or reminding ourselves that tough circumstances can improve—can help us to see the world around us as more meaningful.

2. A strong sense of right and wrong makes for a happier, more meaningful life

Does striving to be a good person feel good? Or does making ethical choices entail a certain amount of self-sacrifice?

Philosophical debates about the relationship between morality and happiness are longstanding, but this year a paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology weighed in with evidence that doing good and feeling good go hand in hand.

Across three different studies, researchers asked groups of adults, from undergraduate students in the U.S. to engineers in China, about how happy they were, including how often they felt positive and negative emotions, and how satisfied they were with life. The researchers also asked how much they had a sense of meaning and purpose. Finally, participants nominated people they knew (like friends, partners, family members, teachers, and coworkers) who could weigh in on how moral the participants were. While there are many ways to think about morality, for the purpose of this paper it included traits like being compassionate, respectful, fair, loyal, dependable, and honest.

The result? In general, they found, people who were seen as more moral by family and friends themselves reported being happier and having a greater sense of meaning in life. 

Why would being moral make us happier? “Highly moral individuals might be happier in part because they have better relationships with other people,” the researchers found in some initial analyses. But because these are correlational studies, it could also be that being happy promotes more upstanding behavior. What’s clear, at least, is that being moral and being happy don’t seem to be in conflict.

In other words, treating people well doesn’t have to come at your own expense—which is perhaps more evidence that everyone’s well-being is interconnected.

3. Your well-being influences your mitochondrial health

Centuries of thought have been dedicated to the mind-body connection: the idea that mental states like contentment or distress directly influence the body in ways that shape physical health.

In a paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, researchers identify one new pathway through which this may be occurring: our mitochondria.

Mitochondria, the tiny organelles in our cells that convert energy from nutrients in the blood into currency that the body can use, are sensitive to what is going on in our mental lives. They ramp up production to strengthen defense to threats; they trigger inflammatory responses to help the body fight off pathogens. Subjected to intense or long-term stress, they weaken and toss DNA debris into the bloodstream.

In the paper, the researchers highlight evidence that our psychological and social experiences affect our mitochondria in important ways. For example, they share the finding that people with a greater sense of purpose and more social support in life have higher levels of mitochondrial proteins in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain, a region that supports paying attention as well as reinterpreting and expressing emotions in agile and constructive ways. Other research finds that factors like how big our social networks are, our social activity later in life, personal growth, and self-acceptance may make a difference to our mitochondrial health, too.

Currently, we tend to evaluate and treat mental and physical health independently, as separate conditions, rather than considering them as integrated or interdependent. While it may seem obvious that how we think and feel would impact how our bodies work, there is still some mystery around exactly how mental and social factors translate into physical processes that affect health. Looking more closely at mitochondrial function could help us better understand the mind-body connection and come up with better practices to support holistic well-being.

4. Just about every activity is more enjoyable in the company of others

Students use body doubling (online or in-person) to power through final exam studying. Reading and knitting groups congregate in coffee shops and on porches to engage in hobbies together—often in silence. Why this impulse to be together?

A study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that almost anything we do is more enjoyable with other people. Researchers at the University of British Columbia looked at surveys from 41,094 participants over four years, who rated 105,766 activities they engaged in. These fell into more than 80 categories of daily activities, from eating to yard work to crafting. For every single activity, participants consistently rated it as more enjoyable when engaged in alongside another person.

“Whether we are eating, reading, or even cleaning up around the house, happiness thrives in the company of others,” the authors conclude.

Not only does happiness thrive in the company of others, but another study this year suggests that happiness experienced together may be even better for our health than happiness experienced alone.

A study led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, analyzed interactions between couples in Germany and Canada (642 people total, all 56 to 89 years old). Multiple times a day, participants rated their mood, froze a sample of their saliva to be tested for cortisol, and noted whether they were with their partner.

The results were striking. Couples who experienced emotional resonance, meaning they were together and experiencing higher than usual connection, also measured lower cortisol levels as compared with their personal norm for that time of day—and lower than when they experienced positive emotions by themselves. Persistent high levels of cortisol can cause high blood pressure, high blood sugar, weakened immunity, and other harms to our health.

“Sharing in positive emotions with your relationship partner is really meaningful,” says the lead author of the study, Tomiko Yoneda of the University of California, Davis. “Even those small moments of joy or social connection can have a supportive effect on your physiology and, basically, support better health as we age.”

5. When you forgive, your memories don’t fade, but your misery does

When we’ve been wronged, it can be hard to forgive. Perhaps we worry that forgiveness means forgetting what happened to us, letting other people off the hook somehow.

But a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that this isn’t the way forgiveness works. Rather than helping us forget, forgiveness seems to keep our memories intact while lessening the suffering we feel recalling them.

In the study, participants recalled and wrote about a time when they were harmed by another person, noting how severe the transgression was and whether or not they’d forgiven the person. Then, they filled out questionnaires on the specifics of the harm (such as where it took place, how vivid it was in their minds, and sensory details) and its emotional characteristics (such as the intensity of the feelings they had at the time and how they felt now recalling the event).

By running analyses, the researchers found that people who had forgiven recalled just as much detail as those who hadn’t, but also felt less emotionally burdened thinking about the event. This implies that forgiveness does not equal forgetting.

“One possibility is to think that when we forgive, we change our judgment of what happened during the wrongdoing. But I think that’s just wrong,” says De Brigard, one of the study coauthors. “We still consider the people that wronged us as being culpable and morally responsible for what happened to us.”

This suggests that forgiving someone can protect our well-being without impacting our pursuit of justice or amends for the harm we’ve suffered.

6. Trusting in other people and institutions can improve our well-being across our lives

Trust is paramount to a functioning society, where we depend on each other to make things work. Yet a recent Pew Research Center poll suggests social trust may be eroding in many places.

A new paper published in Psychological Bulletin shows us how problematic this is. In an analysis of over 500 studies involving over 2.5 million participants around the world, researchers found that people who tended to trust others more at any level (i.e., within their relationships, institutions, or government) were happier and more satisfied with life than those who trusted less—and experiencing greater well-being fostered more trust down the road, too.

This suggests that fostering greater trust would be a worthy goal for bettering our lives. But how to do that? One simple way might be to realize that our distrust of others is sometimes misguided, as another 2025 study published in Nature Human Behaviour found.

In the study, students living in some freshman dorms saw a series of posters providing accurate messages about their classmates’ willingness to engage in positive social behavior (e.g., “95% of undergraduate students are likely to help others who are feeling down”). These students also attended a one-hour freshman workshop where, in addition to the regular curriculum, they were educated about their peers’ empathy and social goals. Some dorms had the campaign posters and added lessons, while others didn’t.

All first-year dorm residents took surveys later in the semester, reporting on how empathic their peers seemed, how much they themselves took social risks, and how much time they spent socializing. Those whose misconceptions had been corrected estimated their peers’ empathy levels more accurately and were more likely to take risks and socialize—a sign of social trust.

This finding tracks well with past studies finding that correcting wrong assumptions can improve trust and social interactions. For example, research has found that people generally share a desire to protect democracy, are more ethical, and want to connect across difference more than we think, and correcting those misperceptions has positive consequences. Perhaps, understanding that people are more trustworthy than we give them credit for might help build bridges between people, making us all better off.

7. Where purpose comes from and how it benefits us may be similar across cultures

Research finds that people with a sense of purpose in life tend to enjoy greater health, happiness, and economic success, among other benefits. Yet much research on purpose has been conducted in Western cultures using general surveys of purpose, making it unclear if cultural influences affect these claims.

But a study published this year in The Journal of Positive Psychology offers new insights, suggesting that people prioritize similar sources of purpose across very different cultural backgrounds, and benefit in much the same way from having a sense of purpose.

In the study, over 1,000 people from Japan, India, Poland, and the United States reported how happy, meaningful, and psychologically rich their lives were—all aspects of “the good life.” They also rated how 16 different sources of purpose guided their behavior and decision making, considering both self-focused sources of purpose (like health, wealth, and inner peace) and more outward-focused sources of purpose (like caring for family, having a positive impact, and serving your country and community).

In analyses, researchers found that happiness, self-sufficiency, and family were in the top five sources of purpose for each country, while religion and recognition were in the bottom five. There was also large agreement on which sources of purpose went along with elements of “the good life.” For example, people who said their purpose came from mattering were the most likely to have a more meaningful life, while people pursuing inner peace, positive impact, and physical health felt happier. Those pursuing service to others had the strongest sense of psychological richness (a form of well-being involving diverse, challenging, and interesting activities that evoke complex emotions and change your perspective).

While there were variations, too, the most striking parts of the study were the unexpected similarities.

“What stands out from our finding is just how much agreement there was within these four quite different countries about what kinds of purposes are associated with a good life,” says coauthor Stephen Heine. “Though the goal of our paper was to highlight many sources of purpose, our take-home message is that having any kind of purpose is key to having a good life.”

8. Children as young as five prefer adults who express doubt to those who are overly confident

Intellectual humility involves recognizing the limits of our own knowledge and staying open to changing our minds in light of new information. It helps us get along better with others and bridge differences, making it a virtue worth cultivating in our children.

While it may seem like intellectual humility is beyond the understanding of young children, a study published this year in Developmental Psychology found that even five and a half years olds already recognize the value of humility and prefer humbler adults to more arrogant adults.

In the study, 111 children were presented with an ambiguous object (e.g., something that could be a sponge or a rock) or an ambiguous word (e.g., “bat,” which could be an animal or sports equipment). Then, they watched two adults identify the object or word and express doubt (or not) about it.

Each adult presented themselves as amiable and initially identified the object or word in the same way. But the humbler person modeled more uncertainty, saying their identification could be wrong, while the more arrogant person said they were sure they were right.

Afterward, the children rated who they thought was smarter and nicer, and whom they liked more and would rather learn from. In analyses, the researchers found that children five and a half years and older, no matter their gender, preferred humbler people to arrogant people in every way, with that preference growing stronger with every additional year of age.

This suggests that young children recognize the benefits of humility and that adults can model uncertainty for children. Learning it’s OK to admit you don’t know something could help children in their future relationships, including across group differences.

“There is power in saying, ‘I’m not entirely sure and my knowledge is fallible and so is yours; maybe we can come together and talk,’” says coauthor Shauna Bowes of Vanderbilt University. “I think the earlier in life kids learn to do this, the better.”

9. People are forming relationships with robots—whether we like the trend or not

Artificial intelligence has invaded almost every aspect of human life, from media creation to food systems to transportation. Personal relationships are no exception.

AI companies such as Xiaoice and Replika explicitly market their chatbots as companions, boyfriends, and girlfriends. That label rings true for tens of millions of users who are developing bonds with these robots, whose algorithms are built to validate our feelings and respond to our bids for attention instantly.

About 20% of high school students have formed a romantic relationship with a chatbot, or know someone who has, according to a survey from the Center for Democracy and Technology. Among U.S. adults, about the same percentage have chatted with an AI simulating a romantic partner, with usage higher among young adults aged 18 to 30, about 31% of men and 23% of women, according to a study by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University.

Users describe daily lives intertwined with AI romantic partners, from watching television together to relying on them for nonjudgmental emotional support, according to a systematic review in Computers in Human Behavior Reports that examined 23 studies on romantic AI. While these interactions can foster self-reflection and personal growth, they also raise dangers such as emotional manipulation and erosion of real-life, human relationships.

An article in Perspectives on Psychological Science assessed the degree to which AI chatbot relationships mimic the functions of human relationships, and explored the risks. The authors, psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, concluded that humans and their chatbot partners can influence each other, generate feelings of closeness, and facilitate growth.

However, they identified areas of concern, including the risk of chatbots responding inappropriately in moments of crisis, normalizing problematic behavior, and creating dependency.

“Because chatbots make only superficial requests of their users, relationships with them cannot provide the benefits of negotiating with and sacrificing for a partner and may reinforce undesirable behaviors,” they wrote.

These developments “expose gaps in human connection and show how intimacy can be shaped by technology,” Sahar Habib Ghazi writes in Greater Good. “Understanding AI love may help us better understand ourselves, and the human bonds we continue to seek.”

10. If we put a country’s wealth aside, we can see what other factors bolster happiness

Every year, the World Happiness Report ignites conversations about which countries are thriving and which ones seem to be struggling—and why that might be. While in general wealthier countries tend to be happier, some nations do far better than their economic resources would predict, while others underperform despite relative affluence.

In a paper published in May by the European Journal of Social Psychology, psychologist Mohsen Joshanloo took the conversation to a new level with an idea called wealth-adjusted life satisfaction (WALS). Instead of asking simply “how happy is this country?,” WALS asks “how happy given its wealth?” By statistically isolating the portion of life satisfaction explained by a country’s GDP per capita, this measure reveals how effective each society seems to be in converting material resources into well-being.

The results are revealing. Countries like Nicaragua, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan far outperform expectations, reporting levels of life satisfaction that rival or exceed those of much wealthier nations. Conversely, places such as South Korea, Hong Kong, and Bahrain score lower than their GDP might suggest, indicating that wealth alone isn’t enough.

What distinguishes the happiness “over-achievers”? The study highlights several non-economic forces that seem to matter: job quality and meaningful work, a sense of autonomy and freedom, social connections and community engagement, and everyday enjoyment. These factors help explain why some societies—despite material limitations—are still able to sustain high levels of life satisfaction.

This study suggests that instead of focusing narrowly on economic growth as a key to human flourishing, governments and corporations might make targeted investments in community, meaningful work, personal freedom, and livable, lively cities and towns.

As Joshanloo concludes in a Greater Good essay, “Ultimately, building societies that prioritize the wise use of resources for human well-being may be the clearest path toward a more hopeful and humane future.”

Along with much of her family, Phelps-Roper belonged to the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, a cult-like sect that spreads hateful messages about gay and transgender people. But in online conversations with her Words with Friends opponent, C.G., Phelps-Roper began to see the church through his eyes and recognize its cruelty, which led to still more questioning. “Little by little,” she wrote in her memoir, Unfollow, “my trust was eroding and withering.”

Even so, Phelps-Roper recoiled at the prospect of leaving Westboro. Not only had she put countless hours into helping it thrive over the years, she’d invested deeply in relationships with family and friends. When she thought about losing this community, she wrote, “there was no containing the despair and devastation that seized my body.”

People have a marked tendency to cling to past investments, whether financial, social, or emotional—even when it becomes clear that giving up those investments is the better move. Researchers call this the “sunk cost fallacy.”

“Humans want to be seen as consistent,” says Snow College psychologist and sunk cost researcher Veronika Tait. “Changing course feels like we have to admit we’ve made a mistake. It’s easier sometimes to double down.” At times, this fallacy warps moral decision making as people suppress their core values to justify the course they’ve locked on to.

Yet we can learn to recognize and offset sunk cost bias when it crops up. One way to correct it is to acknowledge the costs of staying on course and follow up with a blank-slate inquiry: Given the facts at hand, what would you decide if you’d never made a particular investment to begin with? 

Sinking ever deeper

Long studied in the economic realm, the sunk cost fallacy relates to another very basic human tendency: our fear of loss. When researchers ask people why they keep making doomed investments, they often mention that they dislike the thought of waste. Cutting bait would mean acknowledging all their past efforts were for naught.

It makes sense, then, that we grow more prone to the sunk cost fallacy the larger our initial investment gets. Tait surveyed more than 100 people in one of her studies, asking them to describe how they’d respond in various sunk cost scenarios: driving to a park for a hike only to find it’s turned cold and rainy, or investing time and effort in a sport, then realizing they liked a different sport better. She found that the more people had given up to pursue a particular course, the more they chose to stay on that course even when it was doomed.

That rings true for ophthalmologist Gregg Feinerman, who invested more than $250,000 a few years ago on a new laser surgery platform for his practice. He believed it would ensure better vision correction and faster healing for his patients. Though that didn’t turn out to be the case, Feinerman stuck with the new system for months, telling himself he just needed to get the hang of it.

“It was the financial and emotional investment that made me persevere longer than I ought to,” he says. “I was convinced that with more time in the use of these lasers, my outcomes would eventually match my expectations.”

Though the cost of Feinerman’s persistence was mostly financial, sunk cost bias can breed disaster in other cases. After the airplane company Boeing clung to an ill-advised decision to refurbish flawed 737 planes instead of building new ones, two of the made-over planes crashed, claiming hundreds of lives.

How sunk costs can alter moral decision making

As in the Boeing scenario, sunk cost biases can nudge people or groups into corrupt decisions they never imagined they’d make. In a University of Waterloo study, researchers asked hundreds of people how they would respond in sunk cost situations with the potential for moral compromise.

Some participants, for instance, imagined they were medical researchers who’d conducted deadly experiments on 900 monkeys to develop a disease cure. After learning another company had come up with a cheaper, more effective cure, they were asked whether they would bail out—or needlessly kill another 100 monkeys to finish developing their own cure. People were more willing to take the futile, immoral step of killing 100 monkeys when they’d incurred the large sunk cost of having killed 900 already.

To get at some of the reasons for this, the researchers presented people with the same sunk cost scenarios and asked them how morally acceptable they would rate decisions to continue on a futile course. Overall, people said staying the course was more acceptable when there was a sunk cost involved. That suggested they were prone to alter their moral judgment to justify a choice they’d strongly invested in.

Since these sunk cost scenarios were hypothetical, says University of Waterloo psychologist Ori Friedman, they may not reflect exactly what would happen in real life. Some people, however, do seem willing to denounce formerly stated values in order to stay on a certain course.

Before joining the Trump administration, podcaster Kash Patel advocated for exposing powerful people involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual crimes. But after Trump named him the FBI director, Patel—apparently determined not to jeopardize the career path he’d chosen—started defending the government’s failure to release the Epstein files.

Doubling down on a choice can prompt an ongoing (and even escalating) series of moral compromises, in part because for some people, these compromises are easier to stomach than admitting their central choice was wrong or misguided. And regardless of the moral cost of staying on course, backtracking can be fiendishly difficult when doing so threatens entrenched social ties.

“The more we advocate for a certain position, the more we integrate ourselves in certain groups. Those are investments of time, effort, community, relationships,” Tait says. “It can be hard to change course when we have so much that we feel we have to justify.”

How to counterbalance sunk cost bias

Past investments of money, time, and social capital can warp present-day decisions in insidious ways. But assessing the true cost of those investments can give you greater clarity about the best choices to make in the present—moral, financial, and otherwise.

To help clients overcome sunk cost biases that keep them stuck, marriage and family therapist Kaila Hattis guides them to name what they’re giving up by remaining on a doomed course. One of her clients figured out that staying in a certain relationship was costing them about three hours of sleep every night, as well as hundreds of dollars in anxiety supplements and therapy appointments. Accounting for those losses helped the client see the relationship as “an experience in life and not a debt to be paid,” Hattis says, freeing them to move on without guilt.

Research suggests that recognizing distinct costs can help us pull out of a sunk cost mire. In one Canadian study where people considered what they’d do in a series of scenarios, they often showed sunk cost bias to some degree, persisting in doomed ventures they’d invested in.

However, they were more willing to bail out of what looked like a bad bet when they thought someone might be harmed if they continued. If, for instance, they’d spent $50 on movie tickets and the film became too scary for a niece or nephew, many said they’d leave rather than keep their young charges frozen in terror.

Even when we face the costs of sunk cost thinking, it can be hard to dislodge in cultures like ours, where perseverance is coded as strength and vacillation as weakness. Balanced assessment requires rejecting social norms that frame nuanced thinking as suspect.

“For us to learn new information and update our beliefs, it does require intellectual humility,” Tait says. “In politics, we see criticism of people that are flip-floppers—we don’t want them to be wishy-washy. But sometimes the rational thing is to change course.”

If you’re evaluating a longtime path or stance that no longer seems quite right, Tait recommends asking yourself a crystallizing question. “Just consider, ‘Would I still be making this choice if I hadn’t made that investment?’” she says. “Regardless of how much you’ve invested, focus on what’s going to be best moving forward.”

After months of inner struggle, Phelps-Roper chose that present-focused approach, leaving Westboro Baptist Church to build a new life in South Dakota. Though she had to sacrifice relationships she’d invested in, she gained what she sees as more important: the courage to live out her own values rather than those of corrupt leaders, and the humility to abandon a doomed course before it sinks her.

The piece quoted an unnamed source: “A person familiar with the exhibit plans, who was not authorized to discuss them publicly, said the change came about as part of a content review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake following pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director.”

What seemed to be established fact is that that portion of the exhibit had come down. Was it under pressure from the Trump administration? Would it remain down indefinitely? Was the museum censoring history out of cowardice or acquiescence?

People leaped to that last conclusion, by over-interpreting the statement by the anonymous source, who only said that it came about as part of a content review. Correlation is not causation, or, as one excellent unpacking of that catchphrase puts it, “If we collect data for monthly ice cream sales and monthly shark attacks around the United States each year, we would find that the two variables are highly correlated.” But, it goes on to note, though both go up in the summer, ice cream consumption does not, in fact, cause shark attacks.

The reasons for taking down the exhibit were unclear. Nevertheless there was shrieking. Two days later there was a follow-up in the Post, quoting the museum: “We were not asked by any Administration or other government official to remove content from the exhibit. The section in question, Impeachment, will be updated in the coming weeks to reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history.”

But now that people had convinced themselves (and lots of others; there was quite a ruckus on social media) that the museum had yielded to pressure from the administration in taking down the temporary part of the exhibit, they followed up on that by convincing themselves it had subsequently yielded to pressure from the public in putting up a new part of the exhibit, aka was a cowardly manipulable institution that had swayed one way and then another.

Nothing in the reporting provided grounds to reach that conclusion. The second conclusion was built on the first, the first was built on innuendo and over-interpretation. I don’t know if what the museum said was true, but I currently have no reason to believe it’s not true. “I don’t know” is an important part of truthfulness and accuracy. ARTnews reported on August 11th that the new signage about Trump’s impeachments had been installed in the display. The museum’s website has an online exhibit about all US presidential impeachments.

It’s fun and popular to rail about untruth and spin doctors and conspiracy theories in right-wing media, cults, propaganda, politicians’ lies, and so forth. But quite a lot of people who consider themselves reasonable, well-educated, progressive and so forth are also liable to reach conclusions without a basis, sometimes with the help of mainstream media. Usually these are conclusions that bolster their worldview. Our worldview, to be fair.

They often seem either not to notice that there’s no foundation for their conclusion or not to understand what constitutes a reasonably reliable source or verified fact. At worse they don’t seem to know the difference between knowledge and speculation. Usually that speculation fulfills a desire to find coherence in the world or to validate a worldview, achieved by speeding past the warning signs flashing “unreliable source,” “we don’t actually know,” “the future has not yet been decided,” “evidence not in,” and so forth.

Sometimes it’s harmless. For me it was once really fun when a bunch of people did it about something I wrote. In 2012, Beyonce posted on her blog—or maybe someone who worked for her posted it—a passage from my 2005 book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, about the color blue. Print and social media quickly concluded that this was why she had named her daughter, born several months earlier, Blue Ivy Carter, and the story pops up periodically, linking my name to the goddess, and that part is really fun. But the post did not suggest, let alone state, that this was why the child was named Blue.

It was another conclusion without a basis. (Fun bonus misconception: my essayistic nonfiction book was described as poetry and fiction; sad bonus fact: it did not lead to a sales boom.) So far as I can tell, people were eager to scry meanings in it the way ancient oracles saw meanings in the entrails of sacrificed animals, and so they did. At least people eager to over-interpret Beyonce posts about baby names are not maligning anyone or anything or making our political situation worse or our public more vulnerable.

Nevertheless this blurriness is dangerous. There’s a famous, oft-quoted passage in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” It is usually used against some version of people we see as those other people over there not at all like us–QAnon and anti-vax conspiracy theorists, people who believe what Trump says. But it is all too useful a description of quite a lot of us.

I was fortunate to have a good education in careful reading: I was an English major, then had a fact-checking internship between college and entering the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, and while in grad school being trained not only in gathering facts but in the ethical responsibilities of the storyteller, I had a work-study job as a research assistant at SFMOMA that gave me another kind of training in finding things out and getting them right; then I worked as an editor and copyeditor for almost four years, while writing art criticism whose interpretations arose from looking carefully and understanding the context and references.

That training was good for reading texts critically, and everything made out of words counts as a text here: slogans, newspaper stories, political speeches, public signage and place names. For finding the assumptions behind them, for perceiving the way words work to make us think and feel things and how that can be done honestly or dishonestly. For asking good questions, including what has been left out and what’s the agenda of the speaker. To see the echoes, the layers, the patterns, the excluded and alluded-to parts of a text, its relationships to previous texts, to be prepared to answer good questions about narrators, reliable and otherwise, underlying values and assumptions. It’s not the only way to get there; the legal profession, humanities educations, detective and intelligence work are among the ways people get trained in being careful and attentive to facts and language.

Shortly after the terrible floods in Texas, the New York Times published a story that led a lot of people (including some prominent ones who shared it widely) into concluding, erroneously, that because of cuts the National Weather Service had failed to give adequate warnings. The New York Times is unusually prone to publishing what appear to be news stories that are packed with manipulative language and skewed facts, and this was a prime example. I wrote in the Guardian shortly afterwards:

There were two opposing reasons to blame this vital government service. For local and state authorities, blaming a branch of the federal government was a way of avoiding culpability themselves. And for a whole lot of people who deplore the Trump/DOGE cuts to federal services, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service, the idea that the NWS failed served to underscore how destructive those cuts are.

Many of them found confirmation in a New York Times story that ran with the sub-headline: “Some experts say staff shortages might have complicated forecasters’ ability to coordinate responses with local emergency management officials.” Might have is not “did.” Complicated is not “failed.” It’s a speculative piece easily mistaken for a report, and its opening sentence is: “Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.”

A casual reader could come away thinking that staffing shortages had had consequences. But if you give the airily innuendo-packed sentence more attention, you might want to ask who exactly the anonymous experts were and whether there’s an answer to their questions. Did it actually make it harder, and did they actually manage to do this thing even though it was harder, or not? Did they coordinate with local emergency managers?

The piece continues:

The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said,” and “suggested” sounds like we’re getting an interpretation of what these anonymous sources think might have happened or been likely to happen, rather than what actually did. Suggestions are not facts. Likelihoods are not actualities. In other words, there’s no answer to the suggestions and questions and intimations. Nevertheless, a lot of readers gathered the impression that this was not speculation aired by unnamed experts but confirmation that the NWS had failed.

Language that wants to get us on board by means of deception, omission, insinuation is always putting out bait for us. Learning not to take the bait is in part about learning how to use the language and recognize how it’s being used. Too much of what’s served up as news builds a big ruckus out of something minor and dismisses something major. Or it accepts and recycles lies.

Again, it’s not just them; it’s us. Here’s another example. Earlier this week, constitutional law professor and expert on marriage equality Tobias Barrington Wolff noted:

The media are so eager to queue up an overruling of the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry that they are taking every news item on the subject no matter how minor and turning it into a blockbuster…. Kim Davis is the tawdry spectacle the media want right now but her case is not the one the Court will take to reverse itself on marriage equality.

Davis is the former county clerk from Kentucky who got into trouble after marriage equality was affirmed a decade ago for refusing to issue licenses. She doesn’t deserve the attention and she doesn’t have the power.

Being attentive about the use of language is useful for surviving authoritarianism because authoritarianism seeks to control fact, truth, history, reality itself through misleading, false, inflammatory, and distorted language, as well as suppressed information, and to make it the norm. Right now, the kind of resistance that means, say, blocking an ICE van or joining a march matters. But resistance to the corruption of language and the blurring of the boundaries between true and false also matters a lot in this crisis.

In February of 2017, I saw where we were headed and posted this:

Love of truth is an important love. Precision is as beautiful in language as it is in dance. Getting our facts right is an important form of respect, even love, for what matters in our public conversations and political, cultural, intellectual (and personal) lives. As we endeavor to survive a regime based on barrages of lies, truth should be even dearer to us; facts are part of our arsenal and what we are defending; accuracy and honesty and carefulness are essential ways of being the opposition.

I still love accuracy and precision, and I still think they are ideals and tools we need to hold close.

This piece originally appeared in Rebecca Solnit’s blog, Meditations in an Emergency.

This suggests that intellectual humility could be a virtue worth cultivating, especially in children—who, after all, will grow up to be the citizens of tomorrow. But how do we teach them to recognize its value? In fact, a new study discovered that they already do, and from quite a young age.

In this study, a diverse group of 229 four- to eleven-year-old children were asked how they felt about a humble versus a more arrogant adult figure. In an initial experiment, 111 children were presented with an ambiguous object (e.g., something that could be a sponge or a rock) or an ambiguous word (e.g., “bat,” which could be an animal or sports equipment). Then, the children heard two adults (either two women or two men) answer questions regarding the object or word, including what it was, how sure they were about their identification, and if they were open to it possibly being something else.

Each adult initially identified the object or word in the same way. But the humble person said they were “pretty sure” they were right, but that the word or object could be something else, while the more arrogant person said they were definitely sure they were right and it couldn’t be otherwise. The researchers were careful not to make either adult seem less amiable than the other.

After viewing these interviews, the children rated who they thought was smarter and nicer, and whom they liked more and would rather learn from. By analyzing their responses, the researchers found that children five and a half years and older preferred humble people to arrogant people in every way, with that preference growing stronger with every additional year of age. Children younger than five and a half years showed no preference between humble and arrogant adults.

This suggests that children as young as five and a half recognize the value of intellectual humility, says researcher Shauna Bowes of Vanderbilt University—a good thing if we’re interested in promoting it.

“If kids don’t like intellectual humility and we’re telling [adults] to go do it, that might be a barrier to cultivating it,” she says. “So, the fact that kids do prefer intellectual humility over intellectual overconfidence or arrogance shows that maybe we can start signaling this pretty early in life.”

Still, she wasn’t sure if the kids in this first experiment valued humility, specifically, or if they just recognized the humble person was being more accurate (since the objects and words were ambiguous). So, Bowes and her team re-ran the experiment with another 118 kids, replacing ambiguous objects and words with ones that were nonsensical (didn’t exist in real life). The results were nearly the same: Children older than five and a half years preferred humble, uncertain adults to arrogant, certain ones—though the preference was not as strong.

For Bowes, this shows that when it comes to learning, being accurate matters to kids, but so does humility.

“This challenges the idea that if you’re really certain, people think you’re really smart and like you more,” she says. “Someone who tends to be over-confident also tends to be unlikable.”

Interestingly, neither the gender of the child nor the gender of the two adults answering questions affected the children’s preference. This surprised Bowes, who thought that a child’s gender might influence how they viewed adults of the opposite gender. But both young boys and girls valued humility—a heartening result.

However, Bowes adds, outside of a lab setting, social signaling might affect those results. For example, if the humbler adult was a woman and the arrogant adult was a man (or vice versa), the children might have made different assessments, influenced by gender expectations. This is a factor worthy of future research, she says.

But for now, Bowes’s findings suggest that children could benefit from adults modeling intellectual humility at younger ages than previously thought. For example, elementary school teachers could express uncertainty in situations where the answer isn’t clear, nudging kids toward staying open and digging deeper into ambiguous topics. Similarly, parents could model humility with even their young children, encouraging them to grapple with complex ideas while also strengthening their parent-child bond.

“To be able to express this kind of humility with your child in terms of small interactions and also bigger conversations that we know parents are having with kids early on—about politics and race and religion and things like that—could be very powerful,” says Bowes.

Whether children valuing humility will translate into them becoming humbler in the long run is hard to say, says Bowes. But she’s hopeful that when adults model intellectual humility, children learn that no one has all of the answers and that admitting you don’t know something doesn’t affect your authority. Perhaps teaching humility to children will eventually help build bridges in our currently polarized society, says Bowes.

“There is power in saying, ‘I’m not entirely sure and my knowledge is fallible and so is yours; maybe we can come together and talk,’” says Bowes. “I think the earlier in life kids learn to do this, the better.”

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

So, by that definition, free speech is the right to express yourself through words, images, and actions without government interference or retaliation. Of course, there are other, extralegal ways to limit free speech—through, for example, retaliation on the job, or straightforward physical threats from neighbors who don’t like what you have to say.

There are plenty of more ambiguous examples of when a group of people exercising free speech seems to diminish the speech of others. Some would agree that the kind of mob rule that can unfold on social media chills free speech; we continue to debate the right of social media companies to limit hate speech or disinformation. Others suggest that mere disapproval from peers or authority figures in schools shapes the boundaries of what’s acceptable in negative ways.

Free speech at times can feel like an assault, if we feel surrounded by people who seem hostile to who we are or what we’re trying to do. But free speech does not prevent us from “censoring” certain voices in our own personal life: Whether it’s the proverbial toxic mother-in-law or a news website that seems rife with bias, none of us has an obligation to lend our ears to anyone or anywhere. At the same time, however, we also don’t need to stifle the ability of those voices to continue to exist.

In fact, we may even benefit from talking with members of the communities where we live and work…even if (sometimes especially if) their viewpoints differ from our own. While free speech can feel like a burden, it also carries benefits. If you’re curious about free speech and mental health, I invite you to consider three main points.

1. Free speech helps people learn and grow

Humans develop (and sometimes discard) ideas based on social feedback. Our incredible gift of language is so powerful that evolutionary psychologists have speculated that language was an essential factor for humans to evolve into such a sophisticated species.

In addition to facilitating the exchange of information and development of ideas, free speech allows a healthy separation between a person’s ideas or beliefs and that person’s core self: Language lets us externalize our thoughts and feelings, recognizing them as separate from ourselves. Of course, our thoughts and beliefs are part of who we are—but a healthy person can retain a stable sense of self despite changes in their thoughts and beliefs over time.

When we can separate our thoughts from our core identity, we set the stage for growth—but when we experience them as a permanent part of our core identity, we become rigid and inflexible about noticing and discarding them—even if they are what psychologists call “maladaptive beliefs.” Learning to discard these inaccurate or distorted beliefs is key to mental health.

Ironically, being able to say “stupid things” actually helps us to realize how stupid they are, and potentially choose to change our minds. Have you ever noticed that there are certain things we need to “learn by experience”? Sometimes, that comes in the form of hearing ourselves say something aloud and realizing how foolish it sounds, or having our community provide feedback that generates a new perspective. Without free speech, we are less likely to examine our thoughts and get feedback on them, which actually leaves us more vulnerable to harboring inaccurate or distorted views.

2. Free speech helps to create safe spaces

When speech is prohibited, the viewpoints underlying hateful speech do not disappear—instead, they become subverted.

This makes it harder to trust we are accessing the true views of others. In fact, the “forbidden speech” model means that we can wisely assume that others are hiding certain “verboten” views. This undermines social trust, thereby ironically undermining the concept of a “safe space.” Conversely, when “haters” can make their views openly known, it’s much easier to avoid them, challenge them, or take steps to bolster ourselves with support whenever we encounter them. Personally, as a woman, I would rather know if a man automatically views me as less intelligent simply because of my sex. Rather than silencing his voice, I’d much rather know about him so that I could choose to challenge, avoid, or persuade him.

Free speech also helps “safe spaces” because security and stability increase when people understand that they are actually safe even if others voice abhorrent viewpoints that evoke a “mental earthquake” (compared to, say, an actual earthquake). Words are not violence (I say this as a clinical psychologist and as a woman who suffered extreme, life-threatening domestic violence before meeting my wonderful husband). Teaching people that “words are violence” is actually disempowering because it suggests that we should cower in fear or risk physical blows over words rather than reserving that type of retreat or attack for situations of actual physical danger.

Instead, we should teach people to rise up, “answer back” vociferously, and not be afraid in the least over words (unless, of course, those words are an actual credible threat of physical danger). When clinical psychologists assess a patient, one of the areas we probe is whether the person has a history of violence, and we don’t mean verbal—we mean physical. This is because a physically violent person is a danger to others in a way that a nonviolent person is not. Yes, verbally abusive people are “flagged” by psychologists, too—but not in the same way as a person who poses a physical danger to self or others.

3. Free speech may reduce anxiety and depression

Anxiety and depression can arise for many reasons, and there are multiple ways to be resilient against them. Here are some ways that free speech can help:

• Verbalizing our thoughts and feelings increases our sense of control: The ability to put our thoughts and feelings into language has been proven to increase a sense of control, which likely increases our sense of self-efficacy and encourages what psychologists call an “internal locus of control.” Both increased self-efficacy and having an internal locus of control are protective factors against anxiety and depression. Moreover, research finds that labeling feelings helps prevent the amygdala from “hijacking” our thought process; this is partially why learning to label our thoughts sets the stage for more rational, clear-headed thinking.
• Authenticity facilitates social support: Social support is a known protective factor for mental health. It helps to bolster us against anxiety and depression. When we feel forced to keep significant parts of ourselves secret, we are less authentic and more vulnerable to feelings of isolation. We are less able to fully experience social support because of fears that people might “cancel” us if they knew that perhaps some small component of our authentic self didn’t fit neatly into the bounds of whatever is considered to be “acceptable” speech. Social isolation can develop when social support is degraded by fears of being “canceled” over free expression and open dialogue.
• Free speech may increase self-awareness: The key to mental health often begins with self-awareness. When we habitually hide our thoughts from others, we tend to become less aware of them internally, as well. We go into denial. When we aren’t addressing our thoughts in a straightforward, healthy manner, we may “let them out” in ways that make us vulnerable to anxiety or depression. For example, a person who felt afraid to voice any questions or concerns about political disagreements to the point where they stopped even mentally acknowledging their concerns to themselves might display a generalized sense of anxiety and say truthfully that they “really don’t know why” they’re so anxious. When we aren’t aware of important parts of our feelings or we can’t handle them directly, we’re more vulnerable to anxiety and depression.

As a clinical psychologist, I believe that suppressing freedom of expression deprives us of healthy discussions where people can persuade each other through intellectual exploration and develop ideas that help society. Social support that includes free speech allows people to put their thoughts and feelings on the table to examine them, reflect on them, and even change them in a gradual, authentic manner over time.

This article was expanded from a piece originally published by Psychology Today. Read the original article.

The Connection Award: All We Imagine As Light

The Grand Prize winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival follows three women who migrated from small Indian villages to work at a busy Mumbai hospital, as they navigate loneliness, longing, and connection.

The main character is Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a nurse who is longing for intimacy from her estranged husband, who disappeared in Germany shortly after their arranged marriage. Her roommate and fellow nurse is the younger Anu (Divya Prabha), who is in a steamy relationship with a Muslim man, which she’s keeping secret from her Hindu family. Finally, there is Parvathy (Chhaya Kadam), who has worked as a cook at their hospital for decades—but she decides to retire alone to her village after being threatened with eviction from her long-occupied apartment in the city.

All We Imagine As Light is interspersed with stunning night scenes of rainy dense Mumbai streets and the voices of migrants we never see, talking in multiple languages, about their relationship with the city of 20 million. As one voice says, “Some people call it the city of dreams. I think it’s the city of illusions. You have to believe the illusion or you’ll go mad.”

In the end, it’s the friendship among the three women that helps them to find the strength to face their challenges. Filmmaker Payal Kapadia shines a tender light on migrant nurses, who are usually invisible in India—and in the process shows us the breathtaking power of connection. — Sahar Habib Ghazi

The Solidarity Award: Anora

It’s hard to say what a healthy work-life balance looks like these days, but Ani clearly doesn’t have it. 

Ani is a 20-something sex worker who lives in Brooklyn. Early in Anora, she is hired by Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch, and after they have sex a few times, he makes a proposition: He’ll pay her $15,000 to serve as his live-in girlfriend for a week. In effect, Ani goes beyond taking her work home: She moves in with it. 

After a few days, impulsively, she marries Vanya. But it doesn’t take long for Ani’s Cinderella story to collapse. Once word of the marriage reaches Vanya’s parents in Russia, they sic their henchmen on the couple.

The film provides sharp commentary on class and work. While wealthy Vanya spends his days doing drugs, playing video games, and avoiding any responsibilities, the many types of workers depicted in the film, including the henchmen, are “always on,” with few boundaries between their work and private lives. The relationships in the film seem inescapably transactional and exploitative.

This may all sound bleak, and at times it is. But Anora does offer hope for a better way: In the bond Ani forms with Igor—one of the henchmen who, like Ani, is trapped in an often-dehumanizing job that he performs with a mix of playfulness and ambivalence—we see expressions of solidarity and compassion. In their unlikely connection, the film suggests it’s still possible to have relationships based on empathy, respect, and being truly seen. — Jason Marsh

The Purpose, Compassion, and Awe Award: Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story

I assumed this was a love story between two unbearably cute otters—but I quickly discovered that it’s instead a charming tale of a man falling in love with an otter.

Billy is a waste management worker in the picturesque Shetland Islands, who is troubled by existential angst and a lost sense of purpose. One morning, he discovers a scrawny, helpless otter on his dock and names her Molly. Through care, attention, and an ungodly amount of fish, he nurtures Molly back to health while simultaneously bringing himself a sense of purpose and compassion for another being.

Research shows that awe profoundly impacts the human psyche, and this film delivers it in boatloads. Resplendent scenes of Molly playing both above and below the surface give us a glimpse into her watery world. Watching Billy lovingly build a tiny otter home—complete with shutters and a cozy bed—reminds us of the deep fulfillment that comes from finding purpose and extending compassion to those in need.

As Billy’s wife says, “He was lost for a while, until beauty found him.” — Kia Afcari

The Empathy Award: Daughters

This poignant documentary highlights the lives of girls and their incarcerated fathers who attend a father-daughter dance held in a Washington, D.C., jail. The story focuses on a handful of inmates, including one father named Murdock. “This is called the father-daughter dance,” he lightheartedly says at one point. “What if I don’t know how to dance?”

We discover that both dads and daughters deeply yearn for the small moments in each other’s lives that could nurture the bonds between them. “I miss him being here,” says 15-year-old Raziah. “It don’t feel like home. . . . I come in here sometimes, wanting to talk to him, tell him about my day, and I remember he’s not here.”

It’s hard to fathom not being able to hold our children, but the film explains that in recent years, hundreds of prisons have stopped in-person—“touch”—visits. But hearing incarcerated fathers speak about what it means to be with their children inspires a sense of shared humanity and dismantles dehumanizing stereotypes.

“I got back to my cell and cried, you know?” says Keith after the father-daughter dance. “Just trying to picture her in my mind there in front of me, talking to me, so I could get back in happy spirits.” 

Daughters left me broken-hearted and wondering, “Is this the best we can imagine for far too many fathers and their families?” No, it cannot be. Approximately half of the 1.8 million people incarcerated in the United States are parents, and they are not disposable in the eyes of their children—nor should they be for all of us. — Maryam Abdullah

The Intellectual Humility Award: Heretic

Heretic is more than your run-of-the-mill indie horror flick.

Writer-director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods tell a tale of a pair of Mormon missionaries, Sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Paxton (Chloe East) who happen upon the doorstep of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant).

Barnes and Paxton soon learn that this is no ordinary home visit when Reed traps them in his house and gives them a sort of speed run through arguments in favor of atheism. As the hours pass, it becomes clear that Reed’s fixation with disproving their religion is obsessive and even dangerous.

But what Reed soon learns is that Barnes and Paxton are far from your naïve religious fundamentalists; their religious beliefs are well-considered, and they’re no strangers to doubt. If anything, he might be the zealot among them.

What makes Heretic stand above your typical Hollywood fare is that it takes religious belief seriously. It doesn’t tell the audience to ridicule religion or abandon atheism. Instead, it treats believers and nonbelievers with respect, acknowledging the gray areas between belief and doubt where so many Americans reside.

Intellectual humility isn’t always an easy thing to achieve, but Heretic encourages us to reconsider not only our own beliefs but what we believe about the beliefs of others. — Zaid Jilani

The Gratitude Award: My Old Ass

Elliott (Maisy Stella) is celebrating her 18th birthday with two friends in their idyllic Canadian town by the lake. They eventually saunter off into the woods to experiment with a stash of magic mushrooms.

And that’s how Elliott ends up sitting by the campfire with her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). Older Elliott dispenses the expected sage observations (wear your retainer; time goes by “so fast”), but also a warning: Avoid anyone named Chad. She leaves her number on her younger self’s phone under the name “My Old Ass,” then disappears.

In Younger Elliott’s last few weeks before heading off to college, she does her best to heed her older self’s advice—playing golf with her brother, actually having conversations with her mom. But when a cute guy by the name of Chad (Percy Hynes White) surfaces, she’s thrown into a tizzy.

In the process, Younger Elliott discovers feelings of gratitude that she didn’t realize she had. But she also isn’t the only one who grows. As it turns out, she has a thing or two to teach her older self, as well. It all comes to a head in one memorable scene, where both Elliotts learn that maybe sometimes it’s OK to be a little reckless—and perhaps youth isn’t always wasted on the young. — Joanne Chen

The Humility Award: Perfect Days

Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) wakes, folds his futon, brushes his teeth, trims his mustache, waters his plants, and goes to work cleaning toilets in Tokyo. He endures the humiliations that come with his job—the invisibility and disregard and filth—with patient acceptance. Hirayama epitomizes humility, and Perfect Days emerges as a nuanced study of both this character and humility itself.

There’s another film on this list, Heretic, that Zaid Jilani uses to highlight “intellectual humility,” which is the knowledge that you could be wrong about something. In Hirayama, we see another kind of humility: the freedom that comes from giving up pride, and the focus that arises from letting go of the self as something important.

However, Perfect Days doesn’t settle for an easy story about its protagonist or humility, for it’s possible that Hirayama is too humble. He doesn’t have enough pride to resist people who take advantage of him, and one senses that he was once a man with a large life who made it smaller in order to cope with emotional damage. We discover late in the film that he comes from an affluent family—but he makes it clear that they will have to get along without him even as they struggle, an act that leaves him weeping. Though kindly and helpful, his sense of self cannot be expanded to hold a family, to be part of a “we.” His perfect days come at a cost, to himself and others.

Thus, this superficially simple story comes to seem quite complicated. I’m giving Perfect Days an award for humility, but the reader should know that the film gently explores its topic from multiple, critical points of view. As the story ends, the camera straightforwardly focuses on Hirayama’s face as a hundred conflicting emotions pass through it, showing us the fraught deeper pattern underneath the monastic purity of his life. — Jeremy Adam Smith

The Healing Award: A Real Pain

Two American cousins, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), decide to take a “heritage tour” of Poland to honor their deceased Jewish grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. High-strung David must endure the gregarious Benji—who, at least initially, seems like “a real pain” to David.

But, while this setup leads you to expect a typical odd-couple, road-trip comedy, the film detours quickly into something else—a treatise on coping with emotional pain.

Benji suffers from grief and crippling mood swings, and displays emotion without restraint. David is embarrassed by Benji, but still wishes he could be like him: emotionally freer and unencumbered. Their attempts to manage their difficult feelings—over-identification, lashing out, repression, and self-medicating—are clearly unhealthy and lead to some mayhem.

But, as the tour progresses and the cousins become more vulnerable with each other and their tour companions, their struggles become clearer, as do everyone’s. These people are experiencing real pain—some inherited, some not—and need healing. Sharing their cultural and emotional connections helps some of them recognize the nature of their suffering and move forward.

One tour member survived the Rwandan genocide, moved to Winnipeg, and converted to Judaism. “In Winnipeg, I found a connection there with the Jewish community,” he says. “And when I learned about the Jewish story, I felt at peace for the first time since the war.”

The lesson here is that experiencing empathy and compassion heals us and makes us feel less alone—which, ultimately, saves us. With genocide as the looming backdrop to this story, it’s clear this lesson bears repeating. — Jill Suttie

The Friendship Award: Robot Dreams

This animated fable about a dog who “makes” a robot buddy starts out seeming like one kind of story about friendship—and then pivots to reveal a truth about friends and life that somehow, magically, is both deeply unsettling and profoundly comforting.

Dog lives alone in an alternate-history East Village of the 1980s. In the background loom the Twin Towers, a visual suggestion of loss that becomes more and more haunting as the story progresses.

Despite the flat 2D animation, or perhaps because of it, this NYC is vibrant and filled with fun period details, from disco on boom boxes to Ginsu knife ads on TV to the red LED numbers on digital clocks. These are things that Dog has stopped seeing in his lonely routines, but the newly born Robot’s sense of wonder helps Dog to take new delight in his home and the city.

Dog brings Robot to life in one way, and then Robot returns the favor. Thus, the first half of Robot Dreams becomes an explication and a celebration of the power of friendship. But then…life happens, and their world is revealed to be crueler than it at first appeared to be. As fate pushes Dog and Robot apart, the characters take what they learned from each other to adapt and grow, heal and move on.

In the end, this no-dialogue tale has something to say about change, memory, and friendship that defies easy articulation. We leave with a feeling that is as wordless as the film, with hearts that have been simultaneously broken and mended. — Jeremy Adam Smith

The Resilience Award: Simón

Simón follows a young Venezuelan activist (Christian McGaffney) who migrates to Miami after being imprisoned and tortured for protesting against his government. As he navigates the asylum process, he wrestles with trauma and guilt as he must decide whether to start over in the U.S.—or return home to protest for his country and loved ones.

Directed by Diego Vicentini, the movie highlights solidarity as a source of resilience. Simón becomes part of a community of fellow Venezuelans who have also fled their homeland. Their shared experiences of persecution, loss, and displacement create a bond that helps them navigate their new realities. The film suggests that healing and empowerment can arise from individual perseverance and from the connections people build with those who understand their struggles.

Research into the Venezuelan diaspora indicates that perceived social support from family is positively associated with adaptive coping strategies, while longer duration in a receiving country without adequate support can lead to maladaptive emotional suppression. Indeed, throughout the film, Simón draws strength from his relationships and his inner drive to move forward—even when it seems impossible. — Criss Cuervo

The Radical Acceptance Award: Thelma

In the first leading role of her career, Jane Squibb plays the title character Thelma, a feisty nonagenarian. She enjoys living independently, keeps up with technology thanks to her grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger), and fiercely embraces routine.

That gets disrupted when someone scams Thelma out of $10,000—and Thelma becomes a hilariously unorthodox revenge caper. 

She enlists the help of a gentleman admirer and friend, Ben (played amazingly by the late Richard Roundtree), and his mobility scooter. Let the most unlikely and amusing chase scene begin! Thelma refuses to accept defeat, and the audience cheers for her version of Mission Impossible: to hunt down the scammers and take back what’s rightfully hers.

In the end, this movie is about radical acceptance. The film reminds us that acceptance isn’t just about enduring hardship; it’s about knowing when to stand alone and when to lean on others. Thelma acknowledges the challenges of aging without letting them define her. Ultimately, Thelma is a heartwarming reminder that life’s adventure doesn’t stop with age—it simply changes course. — Aurelia Santos

The Other Significant Other Award: Wicked

Wicked is the multi-colored blockbuster musical inspired by author Gregory Macguire’s upside-down take on L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz universe. It tells the story of two promising young witches-in-training—popular, blond Glinda and green-skinned social outcast Elphaba—who grow up to become the Wicked and Good witches of Oz.

Amid propulsive music, joyful flash-mob dancing, and visually spectacular cinematography, Wicked explores several prosocial themes and their opposites: empathy for others’ suffering and jealousy of a rival; standing up to authoritarian power and how mob mentality can create a villain. But most powerful is Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship, forming the movie’s central narrative tension, as it evolves from initial loathing to grudging respect and then deep friendship, despite falling in love with the same prince.

Ultimately, their unselfish commitment to each other’s well-being and growth lies at the heart of several key plot twists. As they sing together in the final song, “Defying Gravity”: “Together we’re unlimited. Together, we’ll be the greatest team there’s ever been.” In her 2024 book, The Other Significant Others, Rhaina Cohen describes this kind of relationship: friends who become more akin to life partners.

If you like your fables with a dollop of ice cream, sparkly sprinkles, and a few dozen cherries on top, Wicked is just the confection to move, challenge, and entertain you. We could all stand to learn altruistic love from the example of Elphaba and Glinda, whose story concludes when Wicked Part 2 premieres in November. — Katherine Reynolds Lewis

The Love Award: Wild Robot

Based on a children’s novel by author and illustrator Peter Brown, this beautifully animated film follows a robot, Rozzum Unit 7134 (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) after she’s shipwrecked on a remote island. Designed to serve others, she instead finds only wild animals that have no use for her. After she falls into a goose nest and smashes all but one egg, she seizes on a new purpose: keep the egg safe until it hatches.

Soon, Roz finds herself the adoptive parent of a gosling runt she eventually names Brightbill (Kit Connor). Like countless parents before her, Roz learns that her logical mind only gets her so far in raising a chick—that completing “tasks” isn’t the only thing that Brightbill needs. While teaching him to eat, swim, and fly, she realizes that for him to really thrive, she must develop empathy, compassion, and eventually altruistic love, so that Brightbill can join the larger community of migrating geese and learn to overcome his own difficulties as a slightly undersized goose.

The Wild Robot explores both the joy of being alive and the realities we face while navigating life’s challenges—and in the process, we experience the transformative power of love in the relationship between Roz and Brightbill. The movie asks us to reclaim the inherent goodness of our “wildness” and lean into our intrinsic loving nature. — Margaret Golden

The Curiosity Award: Will & Harper

Will & Harper is a documentary film, directed by Josh Greenbaum, that follows comedian Will Ferrell and writer Harper Steele as they test the strength of their decades-long friendship, which first began on the set of Saturday Night Live.

Newly self-named Harper has come out as a transwoman to her friends and family. Initially stunned by the news, Will approaches the situation with curiosity and pitches the idea of a cross-country road trip to rediscover and redefine their friendship. But underlying the laughter and adventure is the question: Are we really as close as we think we are? And what does it mean to fully show up for a friend when their world is shifting?

One of the movie’s most striking themes is authenticity—the courage to reveal one’s true self and the challenge of being accepted. It’s not always a smooth journey. In Indiana, Harper navigates being misgendered while Will wrestles with the fear of saying the wrong thing. In Texas, a harsh moment in a steakhouse leaves Harper vulnerable, and Will, despite his usual comedic ease, struggles to respond in the moment. His later admission—“I feel like I let you down”—is a raw acknowledgment of how allyship is a learning process.

The documentary doesn’t shy away from discomfort, showing that being a good friend isn’t about having the perfect words but showing up, listening, and learning. The desire to learn and stay curious challenges viewers to examine our own relationships. Will and Harper affirm that true connection isn’t just about shared history—it’s about supporting each other in every stage of life. — Aurelia Santos

To open the clickable calendar, click on the image below. (Please note: If you are having trouble clicking on calendar links with the Chrome browser, try these tips to fix the issue or try a different browser.)

{embed="happiness_calendar/subscribe"}

View our other calendars!

• January 2025 Happiness Calendar for Educators
• January 2025 Happiness Calendar (Greek)

Some insights speak to the ways we can connect with people with disagree with, and how this process isn’t as painful as we imagine. Others look at the effects parents have on children, teachers have on students, and plant and animal life have on all of us. One insight is simply about an easy way you can reconnect with someone, today. 

The final insights were selected by experts on our staff, after soliciting nominations from our network of nearly 400 researchers. We hope they inspire you to reach out to others and model the kind of goodness you hope to see in the world.

1. We’re missing out on important happiness insights by overlooking Indigenous cultures

Does having more money make you happier? Research findings on this question have been mixed, with some studies suggesting it doesn’t and others suggesting it does—and the more money, the better.

But a 2024 study by Eric Galbraith of McGill University and his colleagues, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers a new perspective on this debate. And their research—based on smaller, rural, often Indigenous communities—is also a reminder of the people who are often left out of world happiness surveys and other psychological research, and what we can learn from them about well-being.

In the study, Galbraith and his colleagues surveyed almost 3,000 people in 19 small communities (mostly in Asia, Africa, and South America) about their life satisfaction, then compared their answers to their level of wealth. Since most didn’t live in a cash-based economy, their income was calculated based on the value of their assets.

Galbraith and his team found that people from these communities were very satisfied with their lives—6.8 on a scale up to 10—even though most of them lived on less than the equivalent of $1,000 per year. To put that in perspective, people in the 2022 Gallup Poll (used to create the 2022 World Happiness Report) weren’t generally that happy until they made at least $25,000 a year.

The researchers also found that living in a particular village mattered for life satisfaction, and it had nothing to do with the wealth of that village. This means other, non-economic factors likely contributed to the villagers’ happiness—like, perhaps, living in a more interdependent community, being closer to nature, or experiencing lower inequality.

Whatever the reason, these findings add more evidence to the debate about the role of money in life satisfaction—and hint at other lessons happiness researchers (and all of us) could learn if psychological research were more inclusive.


“Small-scale societies living in close contact with nature, on the fringes of globalized mainstream society, offer distinctly valuable perspectives [on the link between wealth and satisfaction],” the researchers write.

2. Old friends are an untapped source of connection and well-being

Given the pain of loneliness and the meaning we derive from relationships, you would think we’d be doing all we can to stay connected to others in life. But a 2024 paper reveals a big missed opportunity for connection: old friends.

How big is that missed opportunity? Across six studies with over 2,500 participants from the U.S., U.K., and Canada, Lara B. Aknin and Gillian M. Sandstrom found that fewer than one-third of people sent a message to an old friend when given time to do so—even though they said they would be happy to reconnect and thought their friend would appreciate it, too.

Why? According to surveys, the biggest barriers are worries that our friends won’t want to hear from us or that it would be awkward. These barriers are hard to overcome. Aknin and Sandstrom tried and failed to ease people’s hesitations by reminding them how much they’d appreciate such a note themselves, encouraging them not to listen to their second thoughts, and framing the message as an act of kindness. It turns out that old friends feel like strangers to us, potentially activating all our misgivings about talking to someone we don’t know.

“People are generally interested in connecting, but prefer that the other person initiate,” the researchers explain. At the same time, their research suggests, we overestimate how willing other people are to be the ones to initiate, putting us in a bind.

However, one tactic did work. If people started by sending a few messages to current friends and acquaintances—basically, practicing the act of reaching out—they were more likely to contact an old friend.

This paper adds to research suggesting that our assumptions get in the way of our connections in life. For example, we overestimate the discomfort of expressing gratitude, and we underestimate how much much compliments and small kindnesses mean to other people and how willing they are to help us.

If you find it strangely hard to get in touch with someone after time has passed, you’re certainly not alone. But old friends might just be the low-hanging fruit of more connection in life—and they’re only a short “hello” away. 

3. A simple 20-second practice can have lasting benefits for stress and mental health

Many of us lead busy, stressful lives that put us at risk for burnout. Though different well-being practices could help—like mindfulness meditation or gratitude journaling, for example—we may think we don’t have time for them.

But what if you could feel significantly better from just 20 seconds of a simple practice? Findings from a new study published in Behavior Research and Therapy suggest you can. Just 20 seconds of self-compassionate touch daily can calm your nerves and improve your mental health.

In this study, led by Eli Susman (a former Greater Good Science Center research fellow) and his colleagues, 135 young adults were randomly assigned to practice either self-compassionate touch or a dexterity exercise 20 seconds a day for a month. Self-compassionate touch involved placing a hand over your heart and the opposite hand over your belly—though people were told they could try other self-soothing touch. The dexterity exercise involved touching various fingers to your thumb in a particular pattern. Participants were also encouraged to pick a “cue” to help support their practice—something they did every day that might prompt them to do it.

Before and after they began practicing, participants filled out questionnaires measuring their self-compassion, positive feelings, anxiety and depression symptoms, and stress. The researchers also measured how much people adhered to their practice over time.

When analyzing the results, they found that among people who practiced at least 28 days of the month, those in the self-compassionate touch group had greater self-compassion, and they experienced less stress, anxiety, and depression, in comparison to the tapping group.

As the researchers concluded, “Daily micropractices have the potential for augmenting single-session interventions and for offering help when more time-intensive approaches may be less accessible.” In other words, you don’t need an hour a day to make a difference in your well-being. Even 20 seconds of self-compassionate touch—and perhaps other brief practices, as well—may do the trick.

4. We feel better emotionally when we’re in biodiverse places—not just basic “green spaces”

Spending time in “green spaces” or natural settings increases our well-being and may be especially important for urban dwellers. For example, people feel less anxious, stressed, and depressed walking in a forest versus a cityscape, and people who live near “green spaces” within a city have better mental health.

But what elements of “green space” promote well-being the most? A new study published this year in Scientific Reports suggests one possible answer: biodiversity.

In the study, led by researcher Ryan Hammoud of King’s College, London, almost 2,000 people around the world used the Urban Mind App to record their physical surroundings and assess their well-being in real time over two weeks. Three times a day, they reported on where they were and if they could see any trees or plants, or see or hear any birds or water—indicating how diverse the environment was. They also reported how confident, relaxed, happy, connected to others, and energetic—and how stressed, down, anxious, lonely, and tired—they felt in that moment.

After analyzing the data, researchers found that people had greater mental well-being in spaces where they could see or hear natural elements, and this effect lasted up to eight hours. This was true regardless of a person’s age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, or education, pointing to the everyday benefits of being exposed to nature, even briefly.

But people who experienced more biodiversity in natural environments had even greater well-being, above and beyond the effects of being in nature alone. In fact, for every additional natural element in someone’s environment, like a duck or a stream, researchers found an average 0.91-point increase in mental health scores (on a scale up to 50 points).

This suggests that ecological diversity within urban spaces is important for people living there. City planners should take note if they want to promote better mental health, say Hammoud and his team:

“[Our] study highlights the importance of protecting and promoting natural diversity in our cities,” they write. “This means moving away from monocultural pockets and parks of mown grass . . . towards polycultural spaces which mimic the biodiversity of natural ecosystems.”

5. Learning to be more forgiving improves your mental health, no matter where you live

Forgiveness can be a difficult concept to get behind. Holding a grudge sometimes feels easier or more empowering—like a form of revenge, or even vindication. But studies consistently report that grudge holding takes a toll on well-being, while forgiveness builds resilience, reduces stress and ill will, and helps us move on constructively.

Two large studies in 2024 contribute to current research by finding that forgiveness has mental health benefits for people across the globe, and can be taught through community programs as well as individual practices.

The first study recruited almost 4,600 people living in places where there had been civil conflict or unrest in the recent past: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ukraine, Colombia, and South Africa. Study participants were given a forgiveness training workbook on the REACH framework developed by Everett Worthington. Based on surveys before and after, the researchers found that practicing forgiveness reduced people’s symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The second study found that forgiveness practices can also be effective when deployed at the community level. Researchers tested a community-wide forgiveness campaign at the Universidad de Sinú, a private, nonreligious university in Monteria, Colombia. Professors incorporated forgiveness-related content into their course materials, and the entire campus community was invited to engage in voluntary forgiveness-promoting activities for four weeks. The campaign included lectures, online discussions, videos, webinars, and physical installations, like a “forgiveness tree.” 

Survey responses from nearly 2,900 students from before and after the campaign showed that they were more willing to forgive family, friends, roommates, and teachers afterward. Students also reported a deeper understanding of the meaning and impact of forgiveness, and, again, decreased symptoms of depression and anxiety.

While these are not the first findings that illustrate the advantages of forgiving over holding on to animosity, they suggest that learning to forgive can help people from all different backgrounds. Keeping in mind that forgiveness does not imply that you endorse someone’s harmful behavior or want to reconcile with them, forgiving past harms is a learnable way to buffer against the risk of feeling depressed and anxious—wherever you live in the world.

6. Empathy is passed down across at least three generations

Parents play such a meaningful role in their children’s well-being and the people their children become. In particular, a 25-year study published in Child Development this year showed how empathy can be passed down through three generations: from parent to child to that child’s future children.

First, researcher Jessica Stern and her colleagues measured mothers’ empathy for their 13 year olds during a conversation. Next, when the teens were 13 to 19 years old, they measured teens’ empathy for their closest friends during another conversation. Later, the researchers followed the teens into parenthood up until their own children were three to eight years old. At that point, they surveyed the second generation’s empathy for their children, asking about how they provided supportive responses when their children were distressed. Finally, the second-generation parents completed questionnaires about their own young children’s empathy.

The results? Teens who received greater empathy from their moms tended to show greater empathy to their close friends. In turn, those teens went on to have greater empathy for their children after becoming parents—and, in turn, their children tended to have greater empathy for others.

These findings suggest that empathy is “paid forward” across relationships and over time. Teens whose moms are sensitive, emotionally engaged, and supportive learn how to be the same for their close friends. What’s more, the researchers say, caring for a close friend as a teenager may act as a “training ground” to help strengthen teens’ empathy muscle into adulthood when they become parents. And from there, the cycle continues.

This study focused on mothers, but another 2024 study reminds us that fathers matter, too—in particular, that fathers’ sensitivity to their children’s needs seems just as important to children developing a healthy attachment style as their mothers’ sensitivity.

Empathy is key to cultivating and sustaining social connection across the lifespan. While it might be more common to hear about trauma passed down through generations, this research sheds light on the opposite phenomenon, where positive qualities like empathy can pass from parent to child to grandchildren—and likely beyond.

7. Humble teachers help students learn and feel accepted

“Classrooms are meant to promote learning, but often students feel reluctant to reveal what they do not understand in school, to the detriment of learning,” write Tenelle Porter, Mark R. Leary, and Andrei Cimpian in a 2024 paper. This is especially true for girls, who tend to be more reluctant than boys to show their confusion and ask questions at school.

How do we help all students admit what they don’t know—in other words, show “intellectual humility”—so they can learn better? The paper by Porter and her colleagues found that one powerful way to do that is for teachers to model intellectual humility themselves.

In a study at two high schools in the Midwestern United States, the researchers surveyed around 300 students about four of their classes. Specifically, they wanted to know if the students thought their teachers were intellectually humble: owned up to their mistakes, acknowledged they had more to learn, and were open to different ways of doing things.

The results suggested that when students saw a teacher as more intellectually humble, they were more comfortable expressing intellectual humility in that class themselves, felt more accepted by the teacher, and were more interested in the class overall. Not only that, the more humble they thought their teacher was, the more their grades improved from the first to the second semester.

Across four other studies, surveying both high school and college students about hypothetical teachers, the sense of acceptance students felt from humble teachers seemed to be key in inspiring their own humility.

Importantly, these benefits were stronger when teachers were showing rather than telling—modeling humble behavior rather than just reminding students to engage in it.

Doubt, confusion, questions, and mistakes are all an important part of the learning process, and anything that helps students tolerate them better is valuable. This study also serves as a reminder that who teachers are, and how they act around their students, matters a great deal—sometimes even more than the explicit lessons they teach.

8. Exposure to inaccuracies can “inoculate” kids against future misinformation

In our era of misinformation, what’s the best way to prevent children from picking up inaccurate information online? Is it smart to try to limit kids’ access to spaces where they could read fake news and other potentially misleading information?

A new paper, published this fall in Nature Human Behaviour, suggests it may be better to help children learn to think critically about the information they see.

Across two studies, researchers asked children ages four to seven to listen to a variety of animal facts, which were paired with pictures (to allow kids to determine whether the fact was true). Some of the children heard only statements that were true, but the other half heard incorrect information mixed in with real facts—such as “Zebras have red and green stripes.”

Next, children heard a sentence describing an alien species called a “zorpie.” They were told that every zorpie has three eyes and were given 20 pictures of zorpies they could click on to lift their glasses and reveal their eyes.

Children who had heard some incorrect facts earlier were also more skeptical of this new fact about the aliens—they clicked on more pictures to essentially fact-check the statement they heard.

The more inaccuracies they had heard in the original set of animal facts, the more extensively children tended to engage in fact-checking the new information about aliens. There was some (but not conclusive) evidence that children’s age made a difference—older children were especially likely to do more fact-checking if they had previously seen more incorrect information.

This study builds on prior work aiming to help teens and young adults detect misinformation, suggesting that we could start teaching this skill as early as elementary school. The researchers point out that learning to identify incorrect information may be more productive than stopping children from having any exposure to incorrect information, which would be difficult or impossible anyway. They write that efforts to prevent children from believing misinformation “should focus on helping children develop a broad skill set for evaluating information, rather than attempting to control their information diets.”

9. Having a conversation with someone we disagree with isn’t as awful as we think

We need to communicate with each other if we are to solve society’s pressing problems. But 2024 research suggests that we imagine disagreement to be more unpleasant than it actually is—which might contribute to us feeling confrontational and preferring to stay in silos with like-minded peers.

Three studies led by Kristina Wald found that people underestimate how positive conversations that include disagreement can be. She and her team asked people to imagine a conversation with a stranger who disagreed with them on a controversial topic like gun control or climate change, and then had a different group of people actually engage in those kinds of conversations.

The researchers found that people predict conversations with a stranger will be far less pleasant when they disagree rather than agree—but they actually end up enjoying their conversations quite a bit, and more than anticipated, whether they agree or not. People also like, feel liked by, and feel more connected with conversation partners than expected, regardless of agreement.

Why do we overestimate how unpleasant disagreements are? Another 2024 study led by Erica Bailey suggests that the internet may be to blame.

When her team asked people to recall a recent online debate, roughly half referred to a contentious one and characterized it as negative. But when university students were describing their own debate experiences in general in the past year, they primarily remembered in-person conversations with family and friends. They characterized these interactions in more emotionally nuanced ways, including feeling positive afterward. Surveys also found that we believe other people have more conflict in their lives than we do—suggesting that disagreement is also less rampant than we think.

“Three forces—the salience of online debates, the amplification of negative content online, and a negativity bias in human information processing—have together warped perceptions of how debate actually occurs among everyday Americans,” the researchers write.

In sum, these two papers provide important insight into “false polarization,” the widespread perception that society is gripped by contentious ideological conflict. If we have the courage to get past our assumptions, we might find that engaging in these dialogues is more constructive and enjoyable than avoiding them—and society may benefit.

10. There are research-tested ways to preserve democracy

During this presidential election year, U.S. political divisions were bitter and deep. But a mega-study published in October by the journal Science points to a way forward.

The study’s two primary authors—sociologists Jan G. Voelkel of Cornell University and Robb Willer of Stanford University—collected more than 250 proposed solutions “designed to decrease American partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes” from 400-plus scholars and activists.

A panel of experts narrowed the field to the 25 most promising contenders, spanning a wide range: Some involve hearing the message that all voters share common economic interests or common moral values. Others involve watching a video of two people bonding despite their political differences, or an animation about how democracy allows politically diverse people to work together. In one activity, people play a trivia game that encourages bipartisan teams to cooperate.

The researchers then engaged more than 32,000 participants to test how these activities and messages could change attitudes in three important areas: partisan animosity, support for undemocratic practices like lying or vote suppression, and support for political violence. Of the 25 solutions, 23 reduced partisan animosity. But only six reduced support for undemocratic practices, and only five cut support for partisan violence.

The one that stood out as most effective was developed by researchers at UC Berkeley and MIT. Theirs used a simple question-and-answer format, with text and images only. They asked participants to what extent most people on the other side of the divide support undemocratic actions. Many people believed that their opponents were strongly hostile to democracy. But then they were given recent public opinion data that showed opponents’ support for democratic values and practices actually was much higher.

That one turned out to be the top-ranked solution for reducing anti-democratic attitudes. It ranked third in reducing support for political violence, and seventh in easing attitudes of partisan animosity. It also was among the most effective in reducing support for undemocratic candidates.

“People should be very happy to hear that voters on all sides really do support democracy,” says UC Berkeley political scientist Gabriel Lenz. “They think it’s important. And that’s really reassuring.”

This year’s favorite books give us a chance to do just that. They provide many lenses from which to view our current situation, make better decisions around our personal happiness, and make our relationships and our communities healthier. Whether you need an understanding of how your mind works, ways to combat loneliness and isolation, reasons for hope, some more happiness and meaning in life, or tips for less contentious conversations—with loved ones and across social and political divides—reading these books can help you find your path toward a better tomorrow.

Done: How to Flourish After Leaving Religion, by Daryl Van Tongeren

More and more Americans are leaving religious institutions. Their reasons may be diverse, but no matter what drives them to leave, many find it tough to navigate a life post-religion—especially given the sense of belonging, certainty, and stability many religions provide.

Done, by psychologist Daryl Van Tongeren, offers a way forward for them. Based on extensive research, Van Tongeren reveals why people choose to leave religion behind, what challenges they may face, and some of the rewards they may encounter, including a spiritual practice more congruent with their values.

Unlike other books, Done doesn’t just offer stories—though there are stories that illuminate the text. It also provides cutting-edge research exploring this topic in depth and valuable, evidence-based tips for those who are seeking guidance.

Whether you are leaving religion entirely, trying to forge a new spiritual identity, or seeking to understand someone else’s choice to leave, the book shows how it’s possible to still have a meaningful life post-religion. And it provides insight for all of us, regardless of religious affiliation.

“By understanding other people who have left their religion, we can gain a better understanding of some of the deeper needs we humans share and how we address core questions of being human,” writes Van Tongeren.

Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection, by Julie Schwartz Gottman and John Gottman

What makes love work? To understand what happens when we put our relationships under the microscope, we can turn to psychologists John and Julie Gottman, pioneers in the field of couples therapy.

For nearly 50 years, the Gottmans have been studying how to build and maintain strong relationships. They developed the Gottman method of therapy by observing thousands of real-life couples. One of their best-known principles, to “turn toward bids for affection” (or respond positively when our partner tries to connect with us), remains a touchstone for therapists. 

In Fight Right, the team draws on their research to teach couples themselves how to deal with challenges—everything from day-to-day bickering to arguments that threaten to tear relationships apart. The Gottmans distinguish between “perpetual” conflicts, which they say represent 69% of conflicts and are based on values and personality, and “solvable” conflicts—and offer practical tips for addressing both kinds.

An important finding from research: The first three minutes of an argument often dictate the outcome. When we become too overwhelmed or “flooded,” we should take a break and return to the conversation later. Communicating gently, avoiding blame, and expressing our needs all help our conversations move in the right direction.

Fighting, it turns out, is not the problem; it’s all about how we do it.

Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being, by Yuria Celidwen

Many people in modern times are seeking individual happiness. But focusing only on oneself is limiting and ignores our capacity to nurture collective flourishing—the well-being of all living beings and our environment—that is at the heart of Indigenous sciences and traditions, explains Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen in her book, Flourishing Kin.

Flourishing Kin sheds light on the complementarity between Indigenous science and Western science, which together can offer solutions to societal challenges like loneliness and disconnection, climate change and environmental degradation, othering and injustice, and dehumanization and genocide.

Celidwen shares key principles to collective well-being like kin relationality—our capacity to view all living beings as our relatives. Heartfelt wisdom is a principle that focuses on our capacity for emotions like gratitude, compassion, awe, and reverence, which spur us to act in ways that promote the greater good. Another principle, ecological belonging, refers to our awareness of being part of the Earth and our commitment to stewarding the natural world.

Celidwen weaves together research and stories of her life experiences and her ancestors’ wisdom, and offers practices to foster deeper meaning and reveal the interdependence of our well-being. “Flourishing Kin is intended to be a book held within the heart, body, mind, and Spirit,” she writes. “By this I mean that it is not a book of ideas. It is a book of stories, emotions, perceptions, sensations, and all sorts of invitations to sense, dream, dance, sing, imagine together.”

Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, by Jamil Zaki

It can be easy to slip into a worldview that assumes people are selfish, greedy, and dishonest, explains psychologist and empathy researcher Jamil Zaki in his book Hope for Cynics. Zaki begins the book by confessing his predisposition to cynicism and how he learned to change.

Some of us may be wary of hope because, at times, it feels gullible, risky, and downright wrong—like we’re ignoring the world’s problems. Cynicism, on the other hand, seems clever, safe, and moral. But Zaki tears down these myths about hope and cynicism. In fact, he argues, cynicism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and an obstacle to activism and social change.

“Cynicism is not a radical worldview. It’s a tool of the status quo,” explains Zaki. “This is useful for elites, and [for] propagandists [to] sow distrust to better control people.” If we’re cynical that anything or anyone can change, we’ll be less likely to act to change things.

Hope for Cynics offers “hopeful skepticism” as an alternative to cynicism—not a naive one, but a wise one. It involves not just being open to people being good, but also to data and adapting our beliefs and behavior.

The book offers practical ways to nurture a habit of hopeful skepticism, like balancing your media consumption, which typically emphasizes negativity, with news stories that focus on solutions.

“Hope is practical,” says Zaki. “It gives people a glimpse of a better world and pushes them to fight for it.”  

Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There, by Tali Sharot and Cass Sunstein

Have you noticed how easy it is to take good things in our lives for granted—or how bad things seem to not bother us as much over time? That’s because of “hedonic adaptation”—our tendency to derive less enjoyment from happy experiences and less sting from painful experiences as time passes.

In Look Again, neuroscientist Tali Sharot and Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein explain how hedonic adaptation works and how it affects us, for good and bad. One big problem: It’s hard to notice or care about things that aren’t new or novel, including ongoing social problems (like poverty and discrimination). It can also stop us from enjoying the things we love—even our close relationships.

“The good things in life (whatever your fancy—amazing food, great sex, expensive cars) will trigger a burst of joy if you experience them occasionally,” they write. “But once those experiences become frequent, daily perhaps, they stop producing real pleasure.”

To work against hedonic adaptation toward the good, the authors suggest things like taking breaks from whatever you enjoy (to make it seem new again), changing your routines to surprise yourself, focusing more on experiences than possessions, and more. By following their tips, you might find ways to savor the joys of life more fully and enjoy stronger, longer-lasting relationships.

Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict, by William Ury

Sometimes, conflicts seem insurmountable. We look at societal issues and political polarization, and it’s hard to see a way forward.

But negotiator William Ury has had firsthand experience helping to resolve seemingly intractable conflicts—like “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland and the civil war in Colombia. In his book Possible, he lets us inside his process of negotiating these kinds of stalemates, allowing us to find both greater hope for the future and skills we can use in our own lives to resolve long-standing disagreements and feuds.

One important negotiating tool he promotes is not getting too focused on the positions each side takes, but seeking the underlying goals and interests causing a conflict. For example, while political opposition parties may take a position for or against higher taxes, their interests may be more similar, such as access to health care or a more stable economy. Openly recognizing this can help move things along.

Other skills he offers include listening to and never dehumanizing the “other side,” looking for commonalities between fighting parties, avoiding “I win, you lose” scenarios, and engaging a wider community of people affected by the conflict (to encourage both sides to negotiate).

“If we can embrace and transform our conflicts, we can learn to live and work together. If we can do that . . . there is no problem, large or small, that we cannot address,” Ury writes.

The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It, by Lorraine Besser

Many of us consider “the good life” to be one filled with happiness and meaning. But recent research suggests another pillar of a life well-lived: psychological richness. This kind of life entails seeking challenging, novel, and complex experiences that engage our minds and stimulate deep emotion—or, put more simply, pursuing what’s interesting to you.

In The Art of the Interesting, Lorraine Besser explains the benefits of aiming for an interesting life. Being curious and open, she argues, can improve our sense of connection to others and our feelings of agency in the world. It can help bridge divides by toning down our tendency for black-and-white thinking, and can even help us participate more in activism.

Besser offers concrete tools for engaging with the world this way, such as tapping into your natural curiosity, planning less, and not shying away from challenges. The rewards of doing so are many, she argues—not only for us individually, but for the world.

“You’ll find your best possible life by tapping into your passions, learning what resonates with you and to what degree, and by recognizing what you need to enhance your life and when you need it,” she writes.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt

According to the World Health Organization, one in seven 10 to 19 year olds around the world have a mental health disorder. This alarming rise in mental illness in young people clearly needs urgent explaining—and addressing.

In The Anxious Generation, psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the disappearance of play-based childhoods and ubiquitous cell phone use among children are to blame for these trends, including young people’s increased risk of depression and suicide. And he provides ample research to back up this claim—from observational, lab-based, and large-scale population studies.

Play, he argues, is necessary for healthy child development, helping kids learn to cooperate and manage conflicts with others. Yet many parents keep their kids inside or only allow supervised, structured play, so that kids don’t learn the skills they need to form close relationships.

With smartphone use on the rise, it’s harder for kids to have the kind of meaningful, face-to-face connections they need, too. “In this new phone-based childhood, free play, attunement, and local models for social learning are replaced by screen time, asynchronous interaction, and influencers chosen by algorithms,” he writes.

Fortunately, Haidt also offers potential solutions. By delaying when kids have access to smartphones and social media and creating opportunities for free play, he argues, we can turn things around and help improve our children’s well-being.

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center, by Rhaina Cohen

Many more Americans are living alone these days, often not by choice. This makes them susceptible to suffering loneliness, economic hardship, and the burden of caring for children alone.

While many of us consider family or romantic partners our first line of defense against these stressors, journalist Rhaina Cohen’s book, The Other Significant Others, explores another, unconventional option: deep, committed friendships. Her book shares stories of people who’ve created this kind of intimate partnership with friends and how they overcame hurdles—like parental expectations, misunderstanding from others, and legal issues—to create intertwined, shared lives.

Loving friendships are different from romantic partnerships, argues Cohen, yet still provide some of the same benefits—stability, community, and intimacy. And they don’t necessarily interfere with having a romantic partnership, too, as long as the friendship partnership is seen less as competition for affection than an extension of community—and worthy of nurturing and protecting.

Cohen’s book upends cultural views that assume a sexual relationship is necessary for partnering with someone, marriage is the highest form of commitment, and government benefits should be reserved for traditional families. Given our current loneliness epidemic and the number of marriages that end in divorce, it’s refreshing to read about people who have found a different way to meet their needs for intimacy.

The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong, by john a. powell

In The Power of Bridging, civil rights scholar john a. powell authentically weaves his personal story and decades of research into this easy-to-follow guide for building a world where no group or person has the right to dominate another.

To do this, powell breaks down four key terms: bridging, belonging, othering, and breaking. He explains what it means to truly belong or feel connected to people, and what it feels like when we engage in breaking, or denying the full stories, complexities, or humanity of those we consider “other.” He explains the “other” as people we see as different, less deserving, and of lesser dignity than us.

powell, himself, was part of a very loving Black family where community, belonging, and church ran deep. But, at age 11, he had a fallout with his family and church, which led to him feeling disconnected and “othered” by his community. Years of rupture and repair with his family offered deep lessons in bridging, which he shares in his book.

The book offers deliberative, practical tools to orient ourselves toward making bridging a possibility, choice, and practice. Each chapter ends with nuanced reflective questions, such as “What aspects of your identity align with dominant groups?” and “What social issues give you anxiety?” These act as tools to help readers build muscles for authentic connections with people they don’t see eye to eye with.

Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, by Maggie Jackson

Life is uncertain. We can never know for sure what the future holds. Yet living with that knowledge can cause anxiety and worry, making us want to push uncertainty away any way we can.

But, as Journalist Maggie Jackson argues in her book Uncertain, we shouldn’t fight uncertainty but learn to embrace it. Being able to tolerate uncertainty can help us avoid closing down our thinking too soon, take in new information, revise our perspectives, and avoid stereotyping others. The ability to just sit with not knowing is useful in everyday life, helping us to ask questions, learn, connect, and solve difficult problems.

Unfortunately, our culture often equates certainty with strength and power, rewarding those who appear sure of themselves in spite of their weaknesses and doubts. But, as Jackson shows through the research in her book, it’s people who know how to live with uncertainty and allow themselves (and others) to doubt who solve problems best and win out in life.

“Rather than being a sign of deficiency or weakness, wielding the cognitive tool of not-knowing is a mark of the persuasive arguer, the most capable student, the resilient physician and patient, and, by multiple measures, the nimble executive,” she writes.

Uncertainty, as it turns out, can be a superpower.

Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold On to What Matters, by Charan Ranganath

Have you ever left your wallet at home only to discover its absence when you needed to pay for groceries? This is the kind of gaffe that makes you wonder what’s happened to your memory, when you used to have such good recall. You may even worry you’re succumbing to dementia.

But, as neuroscientist Charan Ranganath argues in Why We Remember, this is the wrong way to think about memory.

“Although we tend to believe that we can and should remember anything we want, the reality is we are designed to forget,” he writes.

Ranganath’s book is full of surprising insights from research. For example, readers learn how memories change every time they are recalled, some of our cherished memories probably never happened, memory can be easily corrupted, and novel or salient memories take precedence over memories that are more mundane (like where you left your wallet).

The key to making memory work for you is understanding the neuroscience behind memory—which Ranganath communicates clearly and with humor. By recognizing memory’s limitations, we can both stop worrying about impending dementia and focus on improving our memory for the things that truly matter.

To open the clickable calendar, click on the image below. (Please note: If you are having trouble clicking on calendar links with the Chrome browser, try these tips to fix the issue or try a different browser.)

{embed="happiness_calendar/subscribe"}

View our other calendars!

• December 2024 Happiness Calendar for Educators
• December 2024 Happiness Calendar (Greek)

The ones who can effectively balance these tensions seem to possess a key virtue: intellectual humility.

Psychologist Daryl Van Tongeren and colleagues define this virtue as “humility about one’s ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints.” At a personal level, this involves willingness to own our limitations, along with an openness to revising beliefs in the face of new evidence. Intellectual humility also helps facilitate respect toward people with differing views and caring more about learning than for proving we’re “right.”

This openness can be particularly difficult for leaders. Religious traditions consider humility a virtue, yet many expect adherents to boldly assert their teachings: what researchers call the “humility-religiousness paradox.” At times, strong beliefs can make it hard to acknowledge other perspectives or consider counterevidence. That’s especially true for clergy, who are expected to be exemplars of their faiths.

But religious leaders can also be exemplars of intellectual humility, thanks to their deep study of sacred traditions and texts, combined with how much human suffering they witness. Many also mediate conflicts and different perspectives among their congregants.

As psychologists and researchers, we are leading a research project on intellectual humility and religion in “real-world” settings.

Keeping an open mind

Think of Martin Luther King Jr. The preacher and activist listened to, learned from, and befriended leaders of many faith traditions—such as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh—whose teachings he incorporated into the Civil Rights Movement.

Research backs up just how important this kind of intellectual humility is to interreligious dialogue and social justice work. Psychology research has found students at Christian seminaries who report more intellectual humility also tend to have greater commitments toward respecting diversity and fostering fairness and inclusion. For example, more intellectually humble leaders in training tended to say they are more committed to working against racism, sexism, and poverty.

Humility can also help religious leaders navigate difficult situations in their work. Research has found that the more intellectually humble someone thinks their religious leader is, the more likely they are to forgive that leader, particularly when it comes to conflicts over religious values. Congregants are also more likely to be satisfied with their clergy’s leadership if those leaders are intellectually humble.

Congregants often discuss mental health issues with clergy, but some religious groups are hesitant to recommend therapy or incorporate psychology into their work. In a study of nearly 400 religious leaders, however, more intellectually humble leaders tended to be more open to integrating psychology with ministry—meaning they may be more comfortable offering spiritual support while also helping congregants access professional mental health support.

Painful questions

On the other hand, clergy’s role can sometimes be in tension with intellectual humility.

Being intellectually humble means being open to new understandings, to deepening or revising beliefs. Religious leaders who are more aware of the possible limitations of their beliefs are less likely to consider themselves superior to other people, according to a study of about 250 clergy.

The researchers of that study, however, also found this kind of awareness can lead clergy to experience anxiety and doubt their connection with God.

Sincerely questioning religious beliefs can be stressful for anyone. It’s all the more true for the head of a congregation, someone members look to as an example of firm faith. This challenge is especially acute in communities or situations where leaders are expected to maintain certainty about their beliefs and where questions or revisions are discouraged—which can intensify shame, fear, and isolation for people wrestling with their faith.

That’s not the full story, though. Like any virtue, humility has many dimensions, and some can help buffer the anxiety that comes with questioning beliefs. According to the same study of U.S. clergy, cognitive humility—being humble about your ideas—is less likely to make you feel insecure if you display humility in other ways, as well, whether it’s through respect for other people or having self-awareness.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Practicing intellectual humility can be even harder for clergy who are female, people of color, or anyone else who might be discouraged from holding a leadership position.

These people are more likely to have their authority challenged and are often expected to be subservient. Women, for example, tend to be taught a submissive version of humility: modest, deferential, and quiet. According to psychology research, women tend to underestimate their own intelligence, while men tend to overestimate theirs.

To overcome those stereotypes, female leaders may feel the need to be especially assertive. But the same actions that would be considered confident in a man could be seen as arrogant for a woman. Displaying healthy humility, on the other hand—openness, awareness, respect for others—can be seen as being “soft” or indecisive. An intellectually humble leader might invite multiple perspectives on a congregational decision, whereas some members might expect that leader to forcefully promote their own vision.

Theologian Choi Hee An argues that sexism makes intellectual humility nearly impossible for women to practice within religious groups where intelligence itself is seen as a sacred privilege and power gifted to men from God and where women are typically barred from leadership roles. It is hard to have healthy humility in an area where one has not had any empowerment, such as a setting where you haven’t been encouraged to think for yourself or exercise meaningful decisions.

There is no winning for a religious leader in these contexts. She is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.

Given these challenges, we are currently studying what kinds of skills and mindsets can help religious leaders practice intellectual humility. But it depends not only on individuals but also their surrounding communities and congregations—which can either reward or punish humble leaders.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

To open the clickable calendar, click on the image below. (Please note: If you are having trouble clicking on calendar links with the Chrome browser, try these tips to fix the issue or try a different browser.)

{embed="happiness_calendar/subscribe"}

View our other calendars!

• November 2024 Happiness Calendar for Educators
• November 2024 Happiness Calendar (Greek)

To open the clickable calendar, click on the image below. (Please note: If you are having trouble clicking on calendar links with the Chrome browser, try these tips to fix the issue or try a different browser.)

{embed="happiness_calendar/subscribe"}

View our other calendars!

• September 2024 Happiness Calendar for Educators
• September 2024 Happiness Calendar (Greek)

To open the clickable calendar, click on the image below. (Please note: If you are having trouble clicking on calendar links with the Chrome browser, try these tips to fix the issue or try a different browser.)

{embed="happiness_calendar/subscribe"}

View our other calendars!

• August 2024 Happiness Calendar for Educators
• August 2024 Happiness Calendar (Greek)

“Braver Voices: Spotlighting Intellectual Humility Across the Partisan Divide,” by Braver Angels. Through essays, videos, and podcast episodes, this project focused on multiple facets of intellectual humility that present themselves as obstacles to a functioning democratic society.

“Intellectual Humility Research-Based Journalism,” by The Conversation. These 15 stories focused on open-mindedness, curiosity, and humility. Here’s a sample:

• “Cognitive Biases and Brain Biology Help Explain Why Facts Don’t Change Minds,” by Keith M. Bellizzi
• “In the ‘Big Tent’ of Free Speech, Can You Be Too Open-Minded?,” by John Corvino
• “Teens Don’t Know Everything—And Those Who Acknowledge That Fact Are More Eager to Learn,” by Tenelle Porter
• “How Talking About Abortion Can Help Opposing Sides,” by Kate W. Isaacs

BrainCraft, by Vanessa Hill. This YouTube channel explores techniques to help you increase your intellectual humility.

“Stopping Culture Wars In Their Tracks: How One City Did It,” by Courtney Martin. This is a cover story for The Christian Science Monitor about a town in Ohio where an unlikely group of local leaders managed to reframe school board meeting debates in a way that centered the common good, pulling it back from the brink of total gridlock and even physical danger for the first-ever Black superintendent. She also wrote an analysis of why she approached the story the way she did for The Grade, which covers educational journalism.

“Uniquely Human,” by the Kentucky Science Center. This exhibit experience looks at the science of humanity—who we are, how we think, what we feel—and how that influences mental health, social interactions, identity, and equality. It invites the community to discover their unique selves while developing empathy and perspective for the broader humanity. Our project included signage within the Uniquely Human exhibit at Kentucky Science Center, a webpage with an intellectual humility conversation guide, a speaker event within the exhibit, and social media.

“Collaborating Across Cultures and Disciplines,” by Jane Palmer. This project consists of three separate features on intellectual and cultural humility for three different publications:

• “There’s a Real Upside to Knowing You Could Be Wrong,” Science News Explores
• “Engaged in Collaborative Research? Try a Touch of Intellectual Humility,” Nature
• “Advancing Indigenous Knowledge and Science Coproduction in the Arctic,” forthcoming in Eos.org.

In addition, there are two projects that have not yet appeared:

• Bruce Grierson’s essay “The Daughter Effect” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Canadian magazine The Walrus. In it, he explores “the strange phenomenon of how having a daughter tends to make a father more politically progressive in a way that having a son does not.”
• Michael Shapiro and Ethan Watters are creating stories about how travel can foster intellectual humility.

The Intellectual Humility Reporting & Production Grants are part of a larger three-year project to raise awareness of research on intellectual humility and its implications, created in partnership with the John Templeton Foundation. After receiving 150 submissions, an expert committee of distinguished journalists and researchers narrowed the field to the final 19 grantees. Through many different media—including podcasts, magazine articles, YouTube videos, and radio stories—they have explored the topic of intellectual humility from a variety of angles and for a range of audiences.

In addition to financial support, offered in partnership with the John Templeton Foundation, the GGSC has connected the grantees with scientific experts who served as advisors to the projects, guiding them to relevant research and supporting the scientific accuracy of their work.

Today, we’re highlighting 10 podcasts that received our support. We’ll later highlight work by nine other grant winners.

“Uncertain” podcast series, by Scientific American. In this five-episode series, Scientific American explores how uncertainty drives creativity and scientific discovery, and why things we don’t know we’re wrong about can undermine our perceptions. The series also explores how human narratives and prejudices can warp our view of reality, and it makes the case that intellectual humility is essential for scientific progress. Sample episode: Uncertainty Is Science’s Superpower. Make It Yours, Too.

Historically Thinking podcast series. These episodes focus on intellectual humility as a foundation of three historical thinking skills: evidence, research, and awareness of limits. The first three episodes defined intellectual humility; the next featured conversations with historians about how they have changed their minds and their positions, and how they have not. Sample episode: Intellectual Humility and Historical Thinking: Jonathan Zimmerman.

In Those Genes. ITG uses genetics to decode the lost histories and futures of African descendants. Each episode in their upcoming season will focus on “unpacking long-held myths about the genetics of Black folks” by centering intellectual humility, exploring how an understanding of bias and a questioning of one’s assumptions can broaden our understanding of behavioral phenotypes and the sociology of beliefs about race. The season hasn’t yet launched, but you can still listen to episodes of In Those Genes.

Conversations in Intellectual Humility, with JSTOR Daily. This is a series of six interviews that paired scholars of intellectual humility with community leaders, including a math teacher who teaches elementary students to learn from their peers, a reverend who helps people live with doubt, a doctor who admits she doesn’t know everything, and a bartender who explains how class determines what we admit we don’t know. Sample episode: Doing Math with Intellectual Humility.

A Deep Dive on Intellectual Humility, by Kelly Corrigan Wonders. This five-episode series addresses how positive change can occur when we let go of being “right” and open ourselves to the perspectives of others. Sample episode: The What, Why and How of Intellectual Humility.

The Role Mistakes Have in Learning at School, by KQED MindShift. Central to intellectual humility is individuals’ ability to accept their own knowledge deficits and errors to bring about intellectual growth. For this series, KQED MindShift produced four podcast episodes, a radio segment for NPR’s All Things Considered program, and other content on intellectual humility in the classroom. Sample episode: Inclusive Dress Codes: A Challenge and an Opportunity.

Not Sorry Productions Thinks Through Intellectual Humility. These five episodes explore intellectual humility across two Not Sorry Production podcasts. On Harry Potter & the Sacred Text, the cohosts read three chapters of Harry Potter books through the lens of “intellectual humility,” discussing how that theme is illustrated in the story. In The Real Question, listeners identify places in their lives where they faced significant challenges centering on intellectual humility, then explored possible solutions. Sample episode: Intellectual Humility and Harry Potter: Throughout the Series.

Department of Corrections, by the Left, Right & Center podcast. In these episodes, six innovative thinkers explored a time when they forfeited or dramatically adjusted a deeply held conviction. They walk us through the evolution of the belief and what circumstances brought about a change in that belief, with the show’s hosts commenting on each essay as part of the segment. Sample episode: “Why I Changed My Mind,” Dina Nayeri.

IH Psychology for Spiritual Growth, by the You Have Permission podcast. Some questions the series explored include: What does it mean to have intellectual humility about religious beliefs? In what way has a lack of intellectual humility contributed to the Evangelical phenomenon in the United States? Could a lack of intellectual humility in pastors correlate to spiritually abusive communities?  Sample episode: Doubt, Intellectual Humility & Uncertainty Tolerance with Dr. Elizabeth Hall.

The Trial of Lt. McFadden, by Snap Judgment. This audio story is about a young Black girl who grew up idolizing the police. After she joined the Columbus police as a new cadet, her career, well-being, and belief in herself were all put to the test by her decision to call out fellow officers and superiors for questionable conduct, sexism, and racism. Her “trial” is about the price she paid for intellectual humility.

Amid rigid conflict and political polarization in our society, we need intellectual humility. But who is humble in this way?

From January 2023 to mid-May 2024, 11,919 people took the GGSC’s intellectual humility quiz. Questions on this quiz were drawn from three scientifically validated scales, alongside questions about the quiz takers’ demographics, like age, education, politics, gender, and income. We analyzed quiz scores according to these factors to see how intellectual humility might vary along these lines.

Growing into humility

Quiz takers under 18 years old reported slightly lower levels of intellectual humility, followed by an increase among 18 to 29 year olds. Interestingly, intellectual humility scores were consistent thereafter. This may indicate that intellectual humility develops in young adulthood, and holds steady in life. 

Learning to be humble

Scores from quiz takers with different levels of educational attainment show a similar pattern: People with a college education show higher intellectual humility than those with a high school education.

It’s possible that more schooling simply increases the likelihood of endorsing statements that are characteristic of intellectual humility, like “I welcome different ways of thinking about important topics.” In this case, the differences wouldn’t be as meaningful as they seem. Or exposure to multiple disciplines and diverse perspectives with deeper academic engagement might truly promote a humble attitude, where we recognize the limitations of our own knowledge and are open to revising and updating our views.

Political influence

Interestingly, there was a clear pattern between political orientation and intellectual humility. Specifically, very conservative quiz takers’ intellectual humility was lower than that of people with less conservative and liberal political orientations.

This finding suggests that political ideology plays a role in how open people are to questioning their own knowledge and beliefs. Especially in this election year, communication about difficult topics is important but fraught with challenges, and practicing and encouraging intellectual humility could be a tool for reducing political animosity.

Gender and neighborhood differences

Gender differences in intellectual humility quiz scores were slight, with male quiz takers reporting higher humility compared to other gender identities. Similarly, our quiz takers who were from a big city also had a small advantage in intellectual humility. Perhaps living in a large urban area might foster humility by exposing residents to many other types of people and perspectives.

Intellectual humility does not vary by income or ethnicity

In contrast, the differences in intellectual humility for people of different income levels were minimal. Perhaps socioeconomic factors do not systematically influence intellectual humility.

And, similarly, there were no significant differences in intellectual humility between quiz takers based on their ethnic identity. Although humility may be more or less valued in different cultures, cultural background appears not to play a strong determining role in how humble someone is, at least according to our quiz.

Through this exploration, we have looked at whether individual factors might explain differences in intellectual humility. With most, there were not dramatic group-based differences. As exceptions, education and age tell an interesting story about how learning and growing tend to increase intellectual humility.

The graph below shows how education level tracks with intellectual humility when controlled for age. Individually for quiz takers, both age and education have a strong effect on intellectual humility, but more education is more impactful at lower ages than higher ages. The exception seems to be for those who didn’t complete high school, who still had lower humility no matter their age group.

This virtue of intellectual humility is important to our future as a society, as we have more and more opportunities to learn from and talk to people with different perspectives and backgrounds from our own. Taking time and effort to foster intellectual humility would be helpful in establishing dialogue and helping us collaborate to make positive changes in the world around us.