The Power of Perception: Parents' Influence on Children's Worldviews

Have you ever wondered how our beliefs about the world, which we were taught as children, affect our later lives?

The following article is based on a 2021 study¹ by Jeremy D. W. Clifton & Peter Meindl. It explores primal world beliefs and their effects on our lives.

"Primals" are our fundamental beliefs regarding the nature of the world and our expectations for living in this world. For example: ,,The world is dangerous" vs. ,,The world is safe and most people will treat me right.''

While depression research suggests that negative worldviews should correlate with poorer outcomes across the board,^{2,3 & 4} the authors of the current study suggest that negative worldviews may not always correlate with poorer outcomes.

For example, life satisfaction is often influenced by comparisons to social, counterfactual, or personal standards. Also, negative worldviews may be linked to greater professional success, especially in careers where failure is costly, like law enforcement or legal professions. Moreover, seeing the world as dangerous could increase awareness and preparedness. This could lead to better health by avoiding physical dangers and harmful habits.

Put simply, the authors of the study¹ explain that there are reasons to believe that negative primal beliefs about the world might lead to positive outcomes, particularly in certain contexts. Understanding the links between primals and well-being is crucial. It's key for designing effective interventions and advancing science. It's also key for ensuring the ethics of such interventions. Before changing someone's core beliefs, it is important to explore how they could impact a person's life.

In their study, they looked at how parents think about teaching their children positive or negative core beliefs about the world. They also analyzed links between those core beliefs and the following eight outcomes:

1. Job success

2. Job satisfaction

3. Negative emotion

4. Depression

5. Suicide

6. Physical health

7. Life satisfaction

8. Overall psychological flourishing

In their first study, the researchers explored the perspectives of parents in the United States regarding the core beliefs they believe are essential for teaching their children to prepare them for the future and help them to navigate through life independently. Surprisingly, a slight majority, about 53% of parents, felt that their children would benefit most from learning to see the world as dangerous, declining, competitive, fragile, unfair, barren, humorless, and full of physical threats. Interestingly, even among those who valued positive primal beliefs, most parents did not see an overly positive worldview as ideal for their children.

In their second study, the researchers analyzed data from six sample groups. The groups had 4,535 people across 48 career types. They did this to see how negative and positive primal beliefs affect people in different occupations.

The results showed that negative primals were rarely associated with positive outcomes. Of the 3,921 statistical results obtained, only six cases (.3%) showed a correlation between more negative primals and positive outcomes, but only with small effect sizes and limited subsamples. By contrast, in 99.7% of cases, negative primals were correlated with worse outcomes, often significantly.

Believing in a safe world, for example, was strongly correlated with increased life satisfaction in all samples, including those in professions where the ability to recognize threats is critical, such as law enforcement.
According to the research, negative primals were associated with slightly less job success, moderately lower job satisfaction, poorer health, increased negative emotions, increased depressive symptoms, a slight increase in suicide attempts, lower life satisfaction, and significantly lower psychological flourishing.

In summary, the findings challenge the common perception among parents that negative primal beliefs lead to positive outcomes. Across different samples and professions, negative primals were consistently associated with negative outcomes. People with more negative primal beliefs tended to be less healthy. They also had more negative emotions. They had higher depression rates. And, they had lower life satisfaction and psychological flourishing.
This research indicates the importance of rethinking the early beliefs we teach our children.

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Have a nice day and kind regards
- Gatlin Crawford (editor)

References:

1. Clifton, J. D. W. & Meindl, P. (2021). Parents think—incorrectly—that teaching their children that the world is a bad place is likely best for them. The Journal Of Positive Psychology, 17(2), 182–197.

2. Butler, A. C., Chapman, J. E., Forman, E. M. & Beck, A. T. (2006). The empirical status of cognitive-behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Clinical Psychology Review, 26(1), 17–31.

3. Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. P., & Emery, G. (1979). Cognitive therapy of depression. Guilford Press.

4. Hofmann, S. G., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I. J., Sawyer, A. T., & Fang, A. (2012). The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 36(5), 427–440.

5. Cheung, F., & Lucas, R. E. (2016). Income inequality is associated with stronger social comparison effects: The effect of relative income on life satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 110(2), 332–341.