Who can you help today?

Pandora, the first human woman in Greek mythology, opened a jar of human evils which spread around the world. Hope, however, remained within the container. Hope was, in essence, given to us by the gods. In addition to Greek mythology, other sacred teachings position hope as located in God. Hope is central in Christianity, and the Holy Qur'an and medieval Islamic writings have many references to hope. For others, hope is not linked to a divine being; Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson saw hope as a genetically encoded element within babies that is activated by the nurturing, positive interactions we experience as infants. Hope is innate, he said, but it can fail to be fully actualized if this compassionate care is missing. Take in another slow breath and tense all of the muscles in your legs. Do this in any way that feels natural and comfortable for you. Notice that you are feeling more and more deeply relaxed. Now, bring your awareness to your stomach. Draw in a long breath and tense your abdominal muscles in a way that feels comfortable for you. Keep that tension for a moment and then release it as you exhale. Next, you are going to focus on the muscles in your back. Draw in a nice deep breath and as you do, arch your back slightly and tighten the muscles there. Hold for just a moment and then release as you slowly return to your original position. Move up to the muscles in your shoulders. Consider the following scenario, which you're likely to have seen in any episode of Law and Order or another such courtroom drama. As a witness faces intense questioning from the opposing attorney, he blurts out some off-limits comment about the defendant's prior criminal record.

The judge quickly intervenes, declaring, The jury is to disregard that testimony. When framed in terms of reactance theory, this directive can be viewed as an attempt to restrict what you are allowed to think about. And in light of what you now know about reactance, you won't be surprised to learn that such instructions often backfire and produce a boomerang effect (Lieberman & Arndt, 2000). In an experiment by Wolf and Montgomery (1977), mock jurors were presented with a simulated trial in which specific testimony was ruled either admissible or inadmissible. An important aspect of the inadmissible conditions was that the ruling was accompanied by a weak or a strong admonition. The weak admonition simply instructed the jurors not to consider that testimony, whereas the strong admonition declared, I want to remind you that the testimony . Therefore, it must play no role in your consideration of the case. You have no choice but to disregard it (p. Even in adulthood, hope, according to Erikson, requires ongoing attention and restoration. By delivering compassionate care, physicians, he argued, could restore hope to their patients. Philosophers, spiritual leaders, psychologists, poets, neuroscientists, and others continue to try to tease out the essential elements of hope. Lately there's been a heightened interest in hope in the academic literature. Some say it's a response to a growing collective sense of crisis, and the lack of political and ideological direction to solve it. The recent Hope & Optimism project, developed by Notre Dame, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania, assembled a massive collection of research papers probing the theoretical, empirical, and practical dimensions of hope, as well as seeding artistic explorations of hope through screenwriting and playwriting competitions. With such a long and diverse history, it's not surprising many different ideas about hope exist. Hope is often conceptualized as a belief in the possibility of a better future. It's also seen as a state of mind, as a disposition or capacity, as an emotion, as a process or activity, and often as a combination of all of these things. Peter Burke, emeritus professor of cultural history at the University of Cambridge, introduces the notion of scale into the conceptualization of hope: we have big hopes, such as hopes for a better world, and small hopes, including hopes for a better life for ourselves or our families. Often it feels as though we carry a great weight in our shoulders. Take care of them now by breathing in deeply and pulling your shoulders up toward your ears.

Keep this tensions in your shoulders and neck for a few seconds and then slowly return to your previous position while exhaling. Allow the tension to be carried away with your breath. Feel the heaviness in your body now. You should feel as though the furniture you are on is supporting you more fully than when you began. Your muscles are increasingly becoming soft and relaxed. Now it's time to let go of the tension in your arms and your hands. You can tighten your forearms by raising your wrists and bending your hands backward toward your body. Take a deep breath and tense your forearm muscles in this way. After considering other testimony and arguments, the mock jurors were asked to give their verdicts. Participants receiving a strong admonition actually were more influenced by the inadmissible evidence than participants in either the weak-admonition condition or the admissible control condition. Thus, forceful instructions to ignore information may arouse reactance, leading jurors to reestablish their freedom by more heavily weighing precisely the information they have been told to disregard. To avoid reactance, subtle suggestions work better than forceful directives. Resisting Strategically: Attitude Inoculation Think about what people do to protect themselves from a virus. A weak dose of a virus is administered in the form of a vaccination. The dose is strong enough to trigger the body's production of resistant antibodies but weak enough that it does not overwhelm the body's resistance. The body can then more effectively marshal defenses to ward off stronger exposure to the virus that may come later. William McGuire (1964) applied the logic of vaccination against disease in a method to increase resistance to persuasion. Hope, it turns out, is contagious. We often don't even realize when we are picking up someone else's feelings.

We spread despair or hope to our colleagues, our families, and our friends, and we catch emotions in return. According to a massive 2014 study using Facearticle, hope, despair, and other emotions are contagious online too. When people received more negative content, they produced more negative posts. The opposite pattern occurred when they received more positive content. We catch and spread emotions on Facearticle just as we do through our real-world interactions. Rather than holding a single definition of hope--a one-size-fits-all approach--I find it useful to see hope in terms of what Anthony Wrigley, a philosopher of ethics at Keele University, calls a cluster concept, whereby what we mean by hope varies depending upon the context. Different conceptions of hope for different circumstances feels like a better fit for the vast and varied scope of environmental issues with which we must contend. So, what kinds of hope do we need to carry us through the complicated global transformations the planetary crisis demands? Hold it for a few moments and then exhale fully as you let go of that tension. Next, take a long breath and curl your wrists up toward your shoulders to tense up the muscles in your upper arm. Hold this for as long as you feel comfortable and then release your breath as you slowly lower your arms. Your hands also deserve attention. As you breathe in, clench your fists tightly. Hold this tension to the best of your ability. Exhale and slowly open your hands. Take a moment to allow the blood to flow back into your fingers and enjoy the sensation as they become limp and relaxed. You are nearing a state of complete relaxation. Now tighten the muscles in your face by squeezing your eyes shut and clenching your lips together. He was inspired by the alarming decision of nine U. Army prisoners to remain with their captors in the aftermath of the Korean War, and the popular theory that they must have been brainwashed.

He reasoned that, prior to their capture, the soldiers had rarely if ever been exposed to anticapitalist or procommunist arguments. Therefore, they were unprepared and had no ready defenses or counterarguments when their North Korean captors launched their persuasive attack. This led McGuire to the idea of attitude inoculation as a strategy that enables people to resist persuasion. The basic idea behind attitude inoculation is that exposing people to weak forms of a persuasive argument, much like inoculating people with a small amount of a virus, should motivate them to produce the cognitive equivalent of antibodies--that is, counterarguments--against this weakly advocated position. When later exposed to strong forms of the persuasive attempt, people already possess the motivation and counterarguments to use in their defense and thus more effectively resist the persuasive appeal (McGuire & Papegeorgis, 1961). For example, most people are told and typically unquestioningly believe that flossing is one of the best ways to fight gum disease. But in 2016, the press reported a large meta-analysis that failed to provide clear and convincing support for this belief. How might people be inoculated against suddenly throwing away their floss after reading these headlines? It's helpful to think in terms of three broad categories of situations in which we find ourselves seeking hope: 1. Hope to drive our individual environmental actions; Hope to power societal transformations; Hope in the face of hopelessness. Hope to drive our individual environmental actions Individual environmental actions, even when they feel way too small, matter far more than we might realize. A growing number of studies critically analyze which individual actions have the greatest collective positive environmental impact. Top of the list? Live car free, avoid air travel, eat a plant-based diet, don't waste food, ditch single-use plastic, and push for Earth-friendly policies. Hope researcher Shane Lopez spent many years collaborating with his mentor, Rick Snyder, a pioneer in the scientific study of hope. As you do, breathe in full and hold it. Now breathe out and relax all of the muscles in your face.