“Moldova, like many post-Soviet nations, inherited a system heavily reliant on institutional child care. Prior to 2000, the country had over 17,000 children living in orphanages. Known in the country as residential institutions, they generally had austere conditions and provided a basic level of care and education…

But over the past two decades, the Moldovan government has been dismantling this legacy of institutional care, working with non-profits and UNICEF to prevent family separation and reform the child care system. Closing orphanages has given way to building new social support systems for disadvantaged families and single mothers, with the goal of keeping children with their birth families whenever possible. Introducing inclusive education for children with special needs has also been key, destigmatizing what it means to have a child with a disability. Developing a network of compassionate foster families has been at the heart of this shift.

The launch in 2007 of Moldova’s National Strategy to reform its residential childcare system aimed to deinstitutionalize 50 percent of children housed in orphanages as the country began focusing on raising social standards to align with the rest of Europe, all in preparation for EU membership, which it is still negotiating. Today, only around 700 children remain in Moldova’s orphanages. By 2027, the goal is to have none.”

From Reasons to be Cheerful.

Summary: Human progress depends on understanding human nature to some degree. Our blended capacities for cooperation, competition, empathy, and aggression cannot necessarily be ignored or overwritten by social engineering. Sustainable progress arises when institutions and innovations work with our evolved psychology rather than against it, channeling our instincts toward creativity, cooperation, and flourishing.

“Nature versus nurture” is a debate older than the field of psychology itself. Are we born with fixed traits, or are we shaped entirely by our upbringing? Of course, this is a false dichotomy. Both genes and environment shape most psychological traits. The real question is not nature versus nurture, but how much each contributes to different outcomes.

This question matters deeply for thinking about human progress. Any attempts at improving the human condition must be compatible with human nature, or they will risk creating more problems—such as the collapse of communist and socialist economies, for example—than they solve. And understanding human nature means grappling with our biological constraints and evolutionary history. Progress for squirrels might mean a world devoid of natural predators, where every tree grows acorns year-round. But human progress is a distinctly human concept.

As a psychologist, I am interested in the psychological foundations of human progress. To understand and sustain human progress, we must first understand the nature of the humans who are progressing. Strangely, the beings most capable of reflecting on our own values are also the most skilled at obfuscating them, as my graduate advisor, Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker, has explored at length in his books The Blank Slate and Rationality. Many influential thinkers throughout history have questioned or outright denied the concept of human nature. 

Superficially, that makes sense. Unlike some animals, which can walk and forage minutes after birth, human infants are born helpless and remain dependent on others for years. We are not born with language, and the languages we learn to speak depend entirely on the environment we were brought up in. As the English philosopher John Locke noted, all knowledge appears to come from experience, whether firsthand or taught by others. The human mind, at birth, is seemingly a true blank slate.

The blank-slate view was profoundly influential on the Enlightenment philosophy that set the stage for the miraculous forms of human progress in the coming centuries. If every baby starts out essentially the same, only advantaged or disadvantaged by their environment, then the case for equality becomes not just moral, but empirically necessary. It suggests that no one is born inherently superior, and that differences in status, intelligence, or virtue are all shaped by experience, not destiny. If all minds begin equally blank, then all individuals are capable of reason, learning, and democratic self-governance.

The idea that human nature was endlessly flexible fueled optimism, but it also began to cast blame on modern society. If we are all a product of our environments, then violence, poverty, and inequality were the results of a manipulated system. This philosophy was most famously embodied by the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that humans were born fundamentally good and were corrupted by society. In his view, the natural state of humanity was one of egalitarian peace, disrupted only by the emergence of social institutions that fostered competition and inequality.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in stark contrast, believed the default state of human life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. For Hobbes, society constrained the worst of our innate impulses, and a strong legal system made crime more dangerous than cooperation. While Hobbes’s vision was often caricatured as bleak or authoritarian, modern psychology has increasingly validated his core insight. Humans are not born peaceful and rational, but possess a mix of impulses—some prosocial, others aggressive, impulsive, and self-serving. As the Canadian developmental psychologist Richard Tremblay has shown, the most aggressive humans are, in fact, toddlers. Although they cannot inflict real harm, most toddlers hit, steal, and lie as soon as they are capable. As all parents know, these innate antisocial behaviors must be patiently weaned out of children through healthy socialization and repeated instruction.

These two visions—Rousseau’s romanticism and Hobbes’s realism—have shaped centuries of thought about human nature and the role of institutions. One sees society as the source of our problems; the other sees it as the solution. Both, in their extremes, miss the full picture. We are born capable of both empathy and cruelty, cooperation and tribalism, innovation and superstition. Society both nurtures us and constrains us. Different aspects of different ideologies and institutions both facilitate and prevent human progress.

Institutions are not just abstract systems—they are extensions of human psychology. Their success or failure often hinges on how well they accommodate and channel our evolved tendencies. When institutions align with human nature, they can guide self-interest into cooperation, aggression into justice, and tribalism into civic identity. When they ignore it, they risk collapse, corruption, or unintended negative consequences.

Consider the market economy. At its best, it transforms individual ambition into mutual benefit. Entrepreneurs seek profit, but in doing so, they create goods, services, and jobs. This is not a triumph over human nature—it is a clever use of it. As the Scottish economist Adam Smith noted, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Contrast that with utopian communes that attempt to erase hierarchy, suppress competition, or eliminate private property. These experiments often fail because they ignore deep-seated human drives for status, autonomy, and reciprocity. When institutions deny these drives, they invite dysfunction.

Successful democracies are not built on the belief that humans are all born the same, but that our differences can complement each other, given sufficient freedom and equality before the law. Checks and balances, the rule of law, and free speech are not just moral principles, but safeguards against the psychological realities that humans are fallible, competitive, and prone to power-seeking. Progress is not achieved by transcending our psychology, but by building systems that align with our best impulses and constrain our worst.

Despite these self-evident truths, discussions of progress often neglect human nature in favor of nurture. Whether arguing for government intervention in the market, increased social welfare spending, or profound cultural change, advocates of such positions share a commitment to reshaping our environments. Yet even in identical environments, outcomes vary dramatically depending on psychological factors such as trust, optimism, gratitude, and self-control. These are not variables that can be socially engineered. Instead, they are traits that arise from genetic inheritance, individual beliefs, decisions, and cultivation of habits.

Even in this almost miraculous age of superabundance—characterized by unprecedented material wealth, a high degree of freedom, and technological sophistication—many people feel lost, cynical, and devoid of purpose. To improve people’s psychological outlook, a deep understanding of human nature is necessary. That consists of considering not only our environments but also human nature itself. Without that understanding, progress can lead to unintended, sometimes negative, consequences. Material abundance can breed obesity and lethargy; excess freedom can lead to decision paralysis; technological progress can erode attention spans and lead to addiction. History shows that we are not blank slates who can be remolded into something we are not.

My role at Human Progress will be to not just examine the psychological aspects of progress—mental health, optimism, rationality, cooperation, creativity, and productivity—but to understand how progress interfaces with human nature and leads to human flourishing. In the words of the American economist Thomas Sowell, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. Progress is a negotiation between our aspirations and our nature—between what we were built to be and what we hope to become. The most enduring advances come not from denying our instincts, but from designing systems that guide them toward constructive ends.

Summary: Every generation believes it is living through a moral decline, yet the evidence tells a different story. While people often perceive society as growing more selfish or rude, they see kindness and integrity in those closest to them. In reality, cooperation, generosity, and moral progress have grown over time. Our tendency to focus on the negative simply makes it harder to recognize how far we’ve come.

Every generation thinks it’s witnessing humanity’s moral collapse. New York Times columnist David Brooks claims that “we inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.” But are these timeless claims now true? This time, are we really living in the most immoral era?

Moral panic and pessimism appear to be largely illusory. In a study conducted by psychologists Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University, they found that every generation perceives moral decline. By consolidating survey data covering 235 questions about morality over a 70-year period, and with more than 12 million participants, Mastroianni and Gilbert found that people collectively believed that their generation and successive generations are morally declining compared to previous ones.

But here’s the paradox: When people rated those close to them (neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family), the perception of moral decline disappeared. In some cases, they viewed people they knew as more moral than the population at large. Thus, people hold inconsistent beliefs: Everyone is becoming more selfish, rude, and dishonest—except the people they know best.

Mastroianni and Gilbert attribute this mistaken perception of moral decline to two psychological biases working in tandem. First, we overvalue, seek out, and focus on negative information. When we witness immoral behavior, this information becomes especially memorable, skewing our beliefs about human morality.

Second, we view the past through rose-colored glasses, remembering earlier times as better across many measures. Because of this bias, we naturally assume that people in previous generations were more moral and virtuous than they actually were.

“Moral behavior” is difficult to quantify, never mind track over time. As argued by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, the modern world has experienced a severe decrease in homicide, slavery, and torture. Such historic moral improvement, Pinker argues, can be attributed to the advent of liberal society and the acceptance of Enlightenment values.

But the evidence for moral progress extends beyond these dramatic historical shifts. Social trust appears to be increasing as well. In a meta-analysis of social dilemma surveys from 1956–2017, psychologist Mingliang Yuan of Anhui Agricultural University and fellow researchers found that, in America, the “level of cooperation among strangers has increased” over the 61-year period. Moreover, they found that increases in urbanization and societal wealth correlated with greater social trust and cooperation.

This growing cooperation between strangers may help explain the increase in our charitable giving to people we’ll never meet. With the rise of the Information Age and global connectivity, we now have instant access to news about poverty and suffering worldwide, and we respond with unprecedented generosity.

According to Giving USA, in partnership with the University of Indiana School of Philanthropy, American charitable giving increased 3.3 percent (when adjusted for inflation) to $592.50 billion in the past year. The largest increase was in “international affairs” philanthropies, many of which aim to improve the well-being of the global poor.

The growth in charitable donations over the last decade has even inspired more evidence-based charities. One of these, GiveWell, publishes comprehensive research on the cost-effectiveness of the global health and development charities they fund. GiveWell even goes so far as to publish their mistakes, should a program or charitable organization prove to be less effective than expected, or if GiveWell’s research methods prove to be defective. They’re not only trying to maximize moral impact, but doing so with unusual transparency and self-correction.

Contrary to this evidence of generosity and the historic trends of moral progress, many still believe that the virtue of humanity is decaying. Some recent data seem to support their pessimism: The Understanding America Survey from the University of Southern California found in 2025 that conscientiousness (a tenet of the Big Five personality traits) is in decline. John Burn-Murdoch, at the Financial Times, speculates that this survey data on the decline of conscientiousness can be partially explained by technology enabling our ability to ghost and abandon social commitments. 

But we should interpret these findings carefully. The survey data on conscientiousness is self-reported: how people perceive their own conscientiousness. In a new global culture focused on self-optimization that rewards dieting, perfectionism, and prestige in higher education, it’s perhaps no surprise that we see ourselves as less dependable, less industrious, and not nearly as conscientious as our grandparents.

Even if we fall prey to thinking of our generation as less moral than our predecessors, we need not let this pessimism make us pessimistic. In Mastroianni’s paper, “Things Could Be Better,” he conducted seven studies asking participants to imagine various events, institutions, and objects to be different. In every experiment survey participants routinely thought of how it “could be better” and not how things “could be worse.” Thus, they were less likely to appreciate the ways humanity has progressed. Mastroianni noted in an interview, “When it comes to moral progress, we may be less grateful that we won’t get stabbed by a spear when we walk down the street, instead we feel like there’s moral decay when someone gives us a weird look on the bus.” 

We tend to overlook our moral progress and focus on how things could be better, which keeps us imagining a more virtuous world. Yet historical evidence shows we’re living in a time of unprecedented moral advancement; people are more cooperative, generous, and concerned for others than in any previous generation. We want to improve, and we want moral progress so much that at times we miss the forest for the trees.

Summary: Before the Industrial Revolution, life in England was marked by widespread poverty, illiteracy, and relentless labor. Even children worked from as young as three. Most people lacked education, political voice, and basic comforts, enduring hunger, disease, and harsh living conditions that kept them in constant proximity to hardship and death. Peter Laslett’s The World We Have Lost reveals that the deprivations often blamed on early industrialization were in fact the norm long before factories and industry.

Peter Laslett’s book The World We Have Lost is an influential history of what life was like in England before the Industrial Revolution. Laslett makes clear that the infamous problems of the industrial era were preexisting, not innovations that first arose with the construction of factories: “The coming of industry cannot be shown to have brought economic oppression and exploitation along with it. It was there already.” His book brings into focus the poverty and hardship faced by preindustrial people and the fact that “we now inhabit a world wealthy on a scale quite unknown before industrialization.”

Laslett describes the dearth of schooling, observing that neither Isaac Newton’s nor William Shakespeare’s parents could read. Inventories from Kentish towns between the 1560s and 1630s show a steady increase from a fifth or less owning books to nearly a quarter, although such inventories were recorded only for prosperous households and thus probably overestimate the extent of book ownership. Leicestershire wills from the 1620s to 1640s show that only 17 percent of people with wills bequeathed books to their heirs, and even among the gentry that figure was only 50 percent.

The “inability to share in literate life cut most men off from even contemplating a share in political power.” And the idea of women attaining a political voice was more absurd still. Even James Tyrrell—an associate of John Locke, a critic of absolutism, and a believer in limited political authority—noted in 1681, “There never was any government where all the promiscuous rabble of women and children had votes.”

Illiteracy often not only limited women’s ability to engage with society but also increased women’s vulnerability. “An illiterate maidservant whose place was five or ten miles from home was cut off from her parents and her brothers and sisters,” effectively unable to send them messages and alert them if her employer physically abused her or sexually assaulted her (as was, sadly, common).

Instead of learning to read, many children began work at shockingly young ages. Laslett informs the reader that, as John Locke noted in 1697, poor children were expected to start working at age three, contributing in what capacity they could, often through apprenticeships. The apprentice’s contract typically went thus: “He shall not absent himself by night or by day without his master’s leave.” Some apprentices “stayed subordinate to a master in a master’s house for the whole of their lives,” far beyond the initial terms of their contract.

Not only could children start work at age 3, but by age 12, they were considered old enough to help run businesses. In 1699, at an alehouse in Harefield, Middlesex, run by Catherine and John Baily, 6 of their 10 children still living at home “were above the age of twelve, . . . old enough to help run the family establishment.”

In England grooms could legally be as young as 14 and brides as young as 12, although Laslett notes that thankfully that was relatively rare in practice. Early marriages did occur, though. In 1623, a London parish clerk wrote disapprovingly of the wedding of a 17-year-old boy working as a threadmaker to the 14-year-old daughter of a porter, calling them a “couple of young Fooles.”

A rather offensive (to modern sensibilities) form of divorce known as “wife-selling” sometimes occurred among those who could not afford a formal dissolution of marriage. The Ipswich Journal records such a sale occurring in 1789:

Oct. 29, Samuel Balls sold his wife to Abraham Rade in the parish of Blythburgh in his county for 1 [shilling]. A halter was put around her neck and she was resigned up to this Abraham Rade.

Such bizarre episodes “reveal something of the slightly quizzical attitude of ordinary people to the official marriage code,” with local customs and practices varying wildly. Upon settling down typically, a man tilled land with the aid of his wife and children. Picture the “hard-working, needy, half-starved labourers of pre-industrial times,” who toiled nonstop and yet never produced enough to live comfortably.

Here was an economy conspicuously lacking in those devices for the saving of exertion which are so marked a feature of our own everyday life. The simplest operation needed effort; drawing the water from the well, striking steel on flint to catch the tinder alight, cutting goose-feather quills to make a pen, they all took time, trouble and energy. The working of the land, the labour in the craftsmen’s shop, were infinitely taxing. [The peasantry would] shock us with their worn hands and faces, their immeasurable fatigue.

Those who didn’t work in agriculture were often servants. The percentage of workers employed as servants in the population varied from as low as 4 percent to as high as a third of the population in relatively wealthy times and places, such as London and parts of Norwich in the 1690s. “Everywhere work of all kinds varied alarmingly with the state of the weather and of trade, so that hunger was not very far away.” Many had no employment and begged. “Wandering beggars . . . were . . . a feature of the countryside at all times.”

Any increase in the cost of food staples could prompt social discord. “Right up to the time of the French Revolution and beyond, in Europe the threat of high prices for food was the commonest and most potent cause of public disorder.” Public panic about food was often warranted, as the threat of hunger was all too real. In 1698 in Scotland, contemporary accounts say, “[m]any have died for want of bread, and have been necessitate to make use of wild-runches draff and the like for the support of nature.” A runch is a common weed.

Laslett makes clear that England, being wealthier than much of Europe, saw relatively few famines by the late early modern period. Still, England’s harvest year of 1623–1624 was devastating, and in some locations, such as Ashton, the number of recorded burials was over two-and-a-half times the typical level. Numerous burials record the cause of the death as starvation. The deaths recorded in the Register of Greystoke in England, in 1623, put names to some of these victims of starvation, including, “A poor hungerstarved beggar child, Dorothy,” and “Thomas Simpson, a poor hungerstarved beggar boy,” as well as “Leonard . . . which child died for want of food,” and 4-year-old “John, son of John Lancaster, late of Greystoke, a waller by trade, which child died for want of food and means.”

Preindustrial people also froze. Indeed, in cold climates such as those of northern and western Europe, “the necessity of gathering round fires and sharing beds, make it obvious that the privacy now regarded as indispensable, almost as a human right,” was once rare, with the masses forced to sleep next to each other and their farm animals for body heat.

If there was one thing that was better about the past, it was perhaps that people were—by necessity—tougher. London’s suicide rate circa 1660 is estimated as somewhere between 2.5 and 5 per 100,000 people, low by modern standards.¹ But on the whole, what Laslett calls “the world we have lost” is not a world we’d want back.

1. According to the most recent data from Britain’s Office of National Statistics, London’s suicide rate now stands at 7.3 per 100,000 people, while England and Wales have a suicide rate of 17.4 per 100,000. According to the most recent year of OECD data, only one OECD country has a suicide rate of under 5 per 100,000: Turkey, at 4.8 per 100,000. (In recent years, only two or three OECD countries typically manage to keep suicides below the upper bound of the estimated level seen in 17^th-century London).