In an experiment involving a hypothetical choice between $100 guaranteed and $70 plus a $400 climate donation—contingent on an anonymous stranger making the same call—more than 100,000 people across 125 countries chose to cooperate. They picked the option that required trusting someone they'd never meet, even when it meant less money in their own pockets. And here's the surprising part: 69 percent of them cooperated, while believing only 47 percent of others would do the same. That's a gap showing up in 124 of those 125 countries, with real consequences for every problem that requires collective action.
The finding arrives like sunlight through storm clouds. We live in an era that often feels defined by division, where it's easy to assume that most people will look out only for themselves. But according to this research, the opposite is true—and our pessimism about each other may be one of the biggest barriers to solving the challenges we face together.
That same spirit of people demanding better for one another showed up in other headlines this week. In Pakistan, two young lawyers led a campaign so persistent and well-argued that the government finally scrapped its so-called "period tax"—a sales levy on menstrual products that had made affordable access unnecessarily difficult for millions of women and girls. The win was concrete, grassroots, and impossible to ignore.
Meanwhile, at the International Labour Organization, governments from 406 countries voted to extend basic labor protections to gig workers for the first time in history—covering minimum pay, safety standards, and transparency around the algorithms that decide how much people earn and whether they keep their jobs. The United States was among eight countries that voted no, but the margin was decisive. The World Bank estimates between 154 million and 435 million people work through digital platforms globally, and many of them have been operating without meaningful oversight for years. That changes now.
Taken together, these stories suggest something worth holding onto: most people, given the chance, choose cooperation over self-interest, fairness over inertia, and dignity over exploitation. The numbers bear it out. The question is whether we're brave enough to believe it—and act on it.