Many Americans struggle to have hope in these times of crisis. Since COVID-19’s onset six years ago, we’ve lived through mass death, economic whiplash, accelerating climate disasters, an attack on the US Capitol, book bans and curriculum censorship, rollbacks of reproductive rights, mass deportations, defunding of cultural institutions, killings of American citizens by armed federal guards, and the steady normalization of white nationalist rhetoric, amplified by media feeds that turn these crises into endless engagement loops.

To be sure, people and organizations still formulate, and advocate for, bold solutions to address our most pressing problems. But no matter how effective these solutions would be if implemented, we find that people doubt that any of these solutions will plausibly happen, which in turn undermines them before they are even tried. At BLIS Collective, a solidarity and action hub that leverages narrative and storytelling to advance transformative social policy, we call this measurable distance between support for a cause and belief in its feasibility the Hope Gap.

Support is easily quantifiable, is comparable over time, and often predicts voting behavior. But support alone doesn’t give us a complete picture of how people feel about an issue, emotionally and psychologically. Hope, the belief that change is possible, must be part of how we understand support. Large shares of the population may endorse a policy or goal, but if people don’t believe that it is achievable, they are far less likely to commit their time or resources.

In this prolonged era of political exhaustion and apathy, identifying and quantifying hopefulness can be a powerful tool for addressing hopelessness. In the face of overlapping crises, we must bring a critical lens to what breaks down and, more important, what builds hope, because it is essential for collective action.

Quantifying the Hope Gap

Take, for example, the climate crisis: 83 percent of Americans say that the United States should participate in global efforts to combat climate change. Yet, only 38 percent feel optimistic that the United States can actually address climate change. That pessimism undermines the supermajority support for action that could, if energized, ensure that action gets taken.

Guaranteed income and universal health care suffer from their own stark Hope Gaps. Preliminary evidence from a nationally representative survey conducted by BLIS and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that while 35.1 percent and 52.9 percent of Americans support guaranteed income and universal health care, respectively, only 9 percent and 10.5 percent of these supporters believe the policies can ever pass nationwide.

Read the full article about bridging the hope gap by Camilla Griffiths, Trevor Smith, Christina Pao, and Justin Morgan at Stanford Social Innovation Review.