Speaker 1: I was talking with the columnist David Brooks recently and
Speaker 1: he said that he asks his students each year do
Speaker 1: you think people are generally good or bad? And he
Speaker 1: said that over the last ten to fifteen years, the
Speaker 1: proportion of students who say, yeah, I think people are
Speaker 1: generally bad has skyrocketed.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is doctor
Speaker 2: Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and
Speaker 2: the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Jamil trained
Speaker 2: at Columbia and Harvard studying empathy and kindness in the
Speaker 2: human brain. He's interested in how we can learn to
Speaker 2: connect better. Today, Jamil and Eric discuss his book, Hope
Speaker 2: for Cynics.
Speaker 3: Hi, Jamil, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to have you on. We're going to be
Speaker 3: discussing your latest book, which is called Hope for Cynics,
Speaker 3: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. But before we get
Speaker 3: into that, we'll start, like we always do, with the parable.
Speaker 3: And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
Speaker 3: their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
Speaker 3: wolves inside of us that are always a battle. One
Speaker 3: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 3: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandshot stops. They think about it for a second.
Speaker 3: They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I love that parable. I think about it all the time,
Speaker 1: and to me, it speaks to something that is deeply
Speaker 1: true about people, based on not just my personal experience,
Speaker 1: but also my experience as a behavioral scientist and research psychologist,
Speaker 1: which is that our beliefs about the world are realities.
Speaker 1: Our inner realities are self fulfilling prophecies that change the
Speaker 1: lives we live and the relationships that we build. So
Speaker 1: if you have the belief that in general, fear will
Speaker 1: win out, that in general people are selfish and greedy
Speaker 1: and dishonest, well then you'll treat people that way and
Speaker 1: they'll treat you accordingly. That, I suppose would be feeding
Speaker 1: the bad wolf. And if you instead choose to hope
Speaker 1: and to be more driven by the data, you will
Speaker 1: put faith in people and they will bring their best
Speaker 1: out for you. I suppose that would be feeding the
Speaker 1: good wolf. I think that, well, I love this idea
Speaker 1: in general, and I love that this is how you
Speaker 1: start your conversations because I don't think we focus on
Speaker 1: this enough. I don't think that we understand as a
Speaker 1: culture how much power we have, through our habits of
Speaker 1: mind to change the reality that we reside. And it
Speaker 1: really speaks to one of the most profound insights from
Speaker 1: all of psychology.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's really powerful. Now, I'd like to turn this
Speaker 3: to our listeners. What part of that message struck a
Speaker 3: chord with you as you think about nourishing your good wolf.
Speaker 3: What specific ideas or actions come to mind for me
Speaker 3: this month? It's relationships. Relationships are the cornerstone of our
Speaker 3: well being. When they thrive, we flourish, and when they struggle,
Speaker 3: we suffer. Many of us face relationship challenges, feeling lost
Speaker 3: and frustrated, but there is hope. Strong relationships aren't just
Speaker 3: about fate. They're built on learnable skills. By developing these abilities,
Speaker 3: you can transform your connections and in turn, your life.
Speaker 3: So relationships are this month's theme and our weekly Bite
Speaker 3: of Wisdom for a Wiser, Happier You newsletter, and I'd
Speaker 3: love to send them your way. Each week, we send
Speaker 3: a menu of a few small exercises you can put
Speaker 3: in practice to feed your good wolf, along with a
Speaker 3: reflection and a related podcast episode on the topic. At
Speaker 3: the end of this episode, I will be giving you
Speaker 3: a tip from this week's newsletter. But in the meantime,
Speaker 3: if you'd like to join thousands of others who are
Speaker 3: already benefiting from these tips. Go to Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 3: slash relationships. That's good Wolf dot me slash relationships. There's
Speaker 3: something you talk about in the book. I'm jumping ahead
Speaker 3: a little bit here, but you say that Maya Angelou
Speaker 3: once advised when you show people who they are, believe them.
Speaker 3: But what people show you depends on who you are.
Speaker 3: And then you go on to quote a psychologist Vanessa Bones,
Speaker 3: maybe something called influence neglect. Say more about.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, Vanessa, Vanessa Bonds is a great Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a great psychologist who studies again, this idea of influence neglect,
Speaker 1: which I think people should really try to internalize if
Speaker 1: they can. She has a great book about this called
Speaker 1: You Have More Influence Than You Think. And in general,
Speaker 1: the idea is that we imagine that other people are
Speaker 1: just who they are, and that when we observe them
Speaker 1: do something, we'll learn about their true colors. This is
Speaker 1: wrong in at least two ways. First, people are totally
Speaker 1: different in different circumstances.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: If you put somebody at a high stakes poker table
Speaker 1: and then put them with somebody they disagree with about
Speaker 1: a political issue, and then put them with their child,
Speaker 1: you will see three completely different people. They might be
Speaker 1: in the same body, but the different situations draw out
Speaker 1: different versions of who they are. So that's Number one,
Speaker 1: is that when you see somebody, you're only seeing one
Speaker 1: version of them inside. Number two, which comes from Vanessa's work,
Speaker 1: is that the version that you see has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with you. You know, I think a lot
Speaker 1: about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, right that when you try to
Speaker 1: observe the physical world, the mere fact that you're observing
Speaker 1: it at a quantum level causes it to change. And
Speaker 1: I often think, you know, Heisenberg applies to sub atomic particles,
Speaker 1: but we also have Heisenberg's friends in Heisenberg's colleagues and
Speaker 1: family members. Right when we observe somebody, the fact that
Speaker 1: we are part of their situation changes who they become
Speaker 1: in that moment. And so I think that we have
Speaker 1: a lot of responsibility and a lot of opportunity. I
Speaker 1: write and think a lot about trust, for instance, and
Speaker 1: we tend to imagine that trust is a risk that
Speaker 1: we are taking on. We worry about being betrayed, and
Speaker 1: that's a fair worry. But what I don't think we
Speaker 1: realize enough is that when you trust somebody, they often
Speaker 1: become more trustworthy, right, because human beings reciprocate what others
Speaker 1: give to them, and when you distrust somebody, they often
Speaker 1: become less trustworthy because we retaliate the harms that other
Speaker 1: people do to us. So when we make decisions around
Speaker 1: other people, I think it's critical to remember we're choosing
Speaker 1: not just to learn about the person, but how we
Speaker 1: want to influence them, which version of them we want
Speaker 1: to bring out.
Speaker 3: Right, it's completely obvious on one level that how we
Speaker 3: treat other people has to do with how they treat us.
Speaker 3: If I had gotten on this call with you and
Speaker 3: been like, yeah, thanks for coming on, sucks, but I
Speaker 3: can't wait to talk about it, right, Like, it's obvious
Speaker 3: you and I would be having a different conversation right now.
Speaker 3: So it's really obvious, and yet, like you said, most
Speaker 3: of us don't actually think of it that way. It
Speaker 3: makes me think about one of my favorite things that
Speaker 3: you know, listeners are probably like, he's going to bring
Speaker 3: up the fundamental attribution error again, but I am because
Speaker 3: it's such a great example. Right in the fundamental attribution error,
Speaker 3: as I understand it is that like if I saw
Speaker 3: you acting in an angry way. I assume you're an
Speaker 3: angry person, but when I act angrily, there's a very
Speaker 3: good reason for it. Right, Circumstances apply in my case,
Speaker 3: but in your case it's who you are. As if
Speaker 3: circumstances aren't playing an equally sized role in exactly how
Speaker 3: you are behaving.
Speaker 1: You're singing my song, Eric. I mean, I could talk
Speaker 1: about the fundamental attribution error all day.
Speaker 3: The Kindred's Spirit.
Speaker 1: Finally, you know, the fae as it's called in my
Speaker 1: nerdy corner of the world, is most associated with one
Speaker 1: of my colleagues, the late great psychologist Lee Ross. Lee
Speaker 1: was a brilliant and very kind person who thought a
Speaker 1: lot about how we think about each other, and I
Speaker 1: actually want to share with you that later in his career,
Speaker 1: Lee said that there's the fundamental attribution error, where we
Speaker 1: type cast people based on their behavior. We don't realize
Speaker 1: how malleable other people are. But Lie said, there's also
Speaker 1: the truly fundamental attribution error, which is our sense that
Speaker 1: when we perceive something, we're doing so objectively. This is
Speaker 1: what's often known as naive realism. Right that if I
Speaker 1: think a song is good, it's because it's good. If
Speaker 1: I think that that dress is black and blue and
Speaker 1: you think it's white and gold. The question is not
Speaker 1: whether I'm wrong, The question is why are you wrong?
Speaker 1: What's wrong with your visual system?
Speaker 3: Right? Right?
Speaker 1: And this sense of the truly fundamental attribution era, the
Speaker 1: illusion of objectivity, is at least as damaging to our
Speaker 1: relationships and our ability to connect with others as the
Speaker 1: regular fundamental attribution error.
Speaker 3: I love that because indeed that is the true fundamental
Speaker 3: attribution error, that we actually see the world in some
Speaker 3: kind of way. It actually is versus very much a
Speaker 3: reflection of our conditioning.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that's part of why I love the
Speaker 1: two Wolves parable because it speaks to the idea that
Speaker 1: there is no single reality. And I think about this
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, a lot of my work
Speaker 1: these days centers around the question of are people fundamentally
Speaker 1: kind or cruel, compassionate or callous? Good or bad? And
Speaker 1: these are philosophical questions that will never be answered, I think,
Speaker 1: in a clear scientific way. But the way you answer
Speaker 1: the question matters enormously, and the way that we answer
Speaker 1: these questions has been changing. I was talking with the
Speaker 1: columnist David Brooks recently, and he said he asks his
Speaker 1: students each year, do you think people are generally good
Speaker 1: or bad? And he said that over the last ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen years, the proportion of students who say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think people are generally bad has skyrocketed. Wow, and
Speaker 1: data bear this out right. So, as I write about
Speaker 1: in the book, in nineteen seventy two, about half of
Speaker 1: Americans believed most people can be trusted, and by twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen that had fallen to a third of Americans, a
Speaker 1: drop as big as the stock market took in the
Speaker 1: financial collapse of two thousand and eight. So we are
Speaker 1: living through a deficit in trust and in our faith
Speaker 1: in each other. And you might just say, well, that
Speaker 1: sounds like it feels bad, but hey, maybe people are
Speaker 1: just right. But I think the point again to this
Speaker 1: idea of the truly fundamental attribution error, is that when
Speaker 1: you perceive that, it changes how you act in the world.
Speaker 1: And if a lot of us lose faith in each
Speaker 1: other all at once, it literally changes the world that
Speaker 1: we create together. Yep.
Speaker 3: Makes me think of some of the research start to
Speaker 3: see about loneliness, which is that if you're lonely, you
Speaker 3: begin to think more suspiciously of other people. Which of
Speaker 3: course makes you more lonely. It's this negative spiral that
Speaker 3: you get into that is a feedback loop that is
Speaker 3: not headed in the right direction. There's something that you
Speaker 3: say in the book, though, about this idea that when
Speaker 3: you ask people, they will say that people are not
Speaker 3: good to the extent that we used to believe maybe
Speaker 3: that people are good, but that if you then ask people,
Speaker 3: are the people that you know in your life better
Speaker 3: or worse than they used to be, they'll say they're
Speaker 3: about the same. So it's like, on one level, we
Speaker 3: are saying out there, you know, beyond what we actually
Speaker 3: can see with our own eyes, it's all bad. But
Speaker 3: when I look with my own eyes at the people
Speaker 3: around me, well, actually people seem pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, brilliantly put, and I appreciate you picking that out.
Speaker 1: I think that this speaks to both the nature of
Speaker 1: the problem and to some potential solutions, or at least
Speaker 1: treatments for the problem. Cynicism, this idea that people are
Speaker 1: generally self interested and untrustworthy and rotten, is very prevalent
Speaker 1: on our screens, on TV, on our computers, on our
Speaker 1: doom scrolling, endless feed phones. There is a vast perception
Speaker 1: that people in general are pretty terrible, and that's for
Speaker 1: a bunch of reasons. One is that these media companies
Speaker 1: that give us this information have learned that human beings
Speaker 1: have a natural instinct to pay lots of attention to
Speaker 1: negative information, So they feed us more and more negative information,
Speaker 1: and we feed the wolf that is based on fear
Speaker 1: and judgment from that information. And by contrast, when we
Speaker 1: go off of our screens and interact with actual human beings,
Speaker 1: things go much much better. The way that I think
Speaker 1: about it is that there is a neighborhood size hole
Speaker 1: cut into our cynicism. And as you put it beautifully,
Speaker 1: when we think about abstractly what people are like, we're
Speaker 1: terribly judgmental, we're quite hopeless. But when we think about
Speaker 1: the people we know, or even just the people we
Speaker 1: see on a regular basis, we feel completely different. And
Speaker 1: that to me is really sad because it suggests that
Speaker 1: there are really big misperceptions that are clouding our ability
Speaker 1: to see each other clearly and to connect with each other.
Speaker 1: But it also speaks to a gigantic opportunity, which is
Speaker 1: that if we can move past those misperceptions and actually
Speaker 1: pay more attention to the good data that we're taking in,
Speaker 1: the accurate data that we're taking in from our real lives,
Speaker 1: there are pleasant surprises everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that idea. So let's back up a
Speaker 3: second and maybe start from the getting a little bit more.
Speaker 3: You say early in the book that you know, exploring
Speaker 3: decades of research, I discovered that cynicism is not just
Speaker 3: harmful but often naive. I think we've talked a little
Speaker 3: bit about the harmfulness right the way that if we
Speaker 3: perceive others to be a certain way, we're going to
Speaker 3: get that back in response to a certain way. So
Speaker 3: that's one of the ways it's harmful. Are there other
Speaker 3: ways that it's harmful?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, Unfortunately, cynicism seems harmful in basically every way
Speaker 1: scientists can measure. Cynics tend to be less healthy than
Speaker 1: non cynics, so they tend to suffer from more depression, loneliness,
Speaker 1: heart disease. They die younger than non cynics, so all
Speaker 1: cause mortality greater among cinics. Cynicism does not help us succeed.
Speaker 1: So if you follow cynics and non cynics over ten
Speaker 1: years of their careers, cinics earn less money and are
Speaker 1: less likely to rise to leadership positions and their work. Cynicism,
Speaker 1: not surprise, risingly bad for our relationships. It's also bad
Speaker 1: for our communities. Cynical communities tend to be less civically engaged.
Speaker 1: People vote less if their trust in each other is low.
Speaker 1: They donate to charity less, volunteer less, and even engage
Speaker 1: in activities like self harm more so really, I mean,
Speaker 1: the most famous line about cynicism is probably from Thomas Hobbes,
Speaker 1: the philosopher who in Leviathan said, you know, we need
Speaker 1: a strict government because, left to our own devices, human
Speaker 1: life is nasty, brutish and short. Unfortunately, that probably applies
Speaker 1: best to cynics themselves, right. It seems that again through
Speaker 1: self fulfilling prophecies, if you write people off, it's just
Speaker 1: enormously difficult to be vulnerable, And if you're unwilling to
Speaker 1: be vulnerable, it's enormously difficult to build the relationships that
Speaker 1: human beings depend upon for psychological nourishment. And that's a
Speaker 1: really tragic again, another of these vicious cycles that we
Speaker 1: see in the psychology of cynicism.
Speaker 3: Before we move on to cynicism being potentially naive, I
Speaker 3: suppose we should define it a little bit, or I
Speaker 3: would imagine many people listening to this are going and, well,
Speaker 3: am I a cynic? I don't know, right? I mean
Speaker 3: some people know, you know, you can sort of tell
Speaker 3: some people know their cynics. We know some people we
Speaker 3: can be like their cynics, But for a lot of
Speaker 3: us we might be like, well, am I I'm not
Speaker 3: entirely sure. What are we talking about here when we
Speaker 3: say someone's a cynic?
Speaker 1: That's a really important question. I think of cynicism as
Speaker 1: and I want to be clear, I'm talking about modern cynicism,
Speaker 1: not the school of cynicism, which was an ancient philosophical school.
Speaker 1: But modern cynicism is a theory, the theory that in general,
Speaker 1: people are selfish, greedy, and dishonest, and there are ways
Speaker 1: to measure that in yourself. For those of your listeners
Speaker 1: who really want to go deep, you can find online
Speaker 1: the Cook Medley's Cynical Hostility Scale, which is a questionnaire
Speaker 1: developed in the nineteen fifties. It includes questions like the
Speaker 1: falling do you agree or disagree that most people are
Speaker 1: honest chiefly through fear of getting caught? Eric, I wonder
Speaker 1: whether you agree or disagree with that.
Speaker 3: In classic fashion for me, I would actually ask about
Speaker 3: five follow on questions to that I'd be like, well,
Speaker 3: honest about what you know? Like I mean, I think
Speaker 3: we can be honest and dishonest about different levels of things,
Speaker 3: you know, like it might be maybe it's easy to
Speaker 3: be dishonest about small things, but about big things or
Speaker 3: how much is the harm that would come from me
Speaker 3: and dishonest? So absolutely, I'm terrible at these sort of
Speaker 3: tests because I'm always like, well, I don't have enough
Speaker 3: information to answer this question.
Speaker 1: You sound just like a social scientist. This is what
Speaker 1: we do. We love to say. You can't answer that question.
Speaker 1: You need context. Yeah, but in general, right, there are
Speaker 1: fifty questions sort of like that. Do you think people
Speaker 1: are honest chiefly through fear of getting caught? Do you
Speaker 1: agree that people generally don't like helping one another? Do
Speaker 1: you think that most people can be trust These yes
Speaker 1: are no questions, and they're pretty negative statements, and the
Speaker 1: more of them you agree with, the higher you would
Speaker 1: score in cynicism. Another way to think about cynicism is
Speaker 1: through what that theory does in terms of our behavior. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you think that most people are on the take,
Speaker 1: they're just out for themselves. Well, that's going to change
Speaker 1: what you do. Trusting people is a gamble. It's a
Speaker 1: social gamble. We put faith in somebody and we stand
Speaker 1: to gain if they show up, and we stand to
Speaker 1: lose if they don't. And cynics think of that as
Speaker 1: a sucker's bet, right, they think of it as a
Speaker 1: terrible gamble, And so they're much less likely to trust
Speaker 1: people in economic games. They're less likely to trust people
Speaker 1: in terms of opening up about their struggles or putting
Speaker 1: faith in people in any way. So that's another way
Speaker 1: that you might look to yourself and your own behavior
Speaker 1: to assess your cynicism. How much are you willing to
Speaker 1: bet on other people?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in that regard, I'm not a cynic. I do
Speaker 3: think people are general good and can generally be trusted.
Speaker 3: And yet I believe also in the parable of the wolves, right,
Speaker 3: we all have good and bad things in all of us.
Speaker 3: But in general I'm not cynical about people. Where I
Speaker 3: might tend towards more cynicism, and I wonder if this
Speaker 3: is a different aspect of it, is cynicism towards the
Speaker 3: size of the problems that we might face societally. So
Speaker 3: I may be hopeful about people in general, believe people
Speaker 3: are generally good, they want to do the right thing,
Speaker 3: they're decent people, and not feel hopeful at all about, say,
Speaker 3: our ability to solve the climate crisis. And so is
Speaker 3: that cynicism? Is that something different? What is it when
Speaker 3: it's you know, not applied at an individual level or
Speaker 3: a personal level, but at a scope of the problems
Speaker 3: that we face level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that doesn't sound very cynical to me at all,
Speaker 1: And I should share, by the way, I appreciate you
Speaker 1: being transparent about where you fall on all of these dimensions.
Speaker 1: I want to also be open with your listeners because
Speaker 1: I feel like sometimes when somebody writes a book about
Speaker 1: something like cynicism, they're saying, oh, it's all it's bad,
Speaker 1: it hurts us. It sounds like they're calling other people
Speaker 1: out or judging people. I want to be really open,
Speaker 1: and you know this from reading the book, Eric, but
Speaker 1: I struggle immensely with cynicism. In fact, I would consider
Speaker 1: myself a cynic at the time that I started writing
Speaker 1: this book, and now I would consider myself a recovering
Speaker 1: definitely not recovered, but recovering. Cynic. So for those folks
Speaker 1: out there who feel this way, I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1: I'm not standing apart. I think that to your point
Speaker 1: about well, on the one hand, my faith in people
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, my faith in our ability
Speaker 1: to tackle the problem. Here, you're really nicely getting at
Speaker 1: some of the dimensions of hope. So maybe we can
Speaker 1: talk about what hope is and we can try to
Speaker 1: put these pieces together.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So hope is different from optimism. Optimism is the
Speaker 1: idea that things will turn out well, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: can be a complacent feeling. Right you think, well, I
Speaker 1: think the climate crisis sounds bad, but I'm sure scientists
Speaker 1: will figure something out in the next thirty years, so
Speaker 1: there's nothing really that I have to do here. I
Speaker 1: think optimism actually is really similar in some ways to
Speaker 1: cynical hopelessness, which is, hey, nothing's going to happen. I'm
Speaker 1: a doomer, So again, I don't have to do anything
Speaker 1: right because my actions. If you are certain of the outcome,
Speaker 1: then your actions do not matter one way or the other.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes that can be fair and totally uncynical.
Speaker 1: For instance, if there was a giant meteorite headed to
Speaker 1: Earth and all the nuclear weapons in the world aren't
Speaker 1: enough to stop it, and we will be obliterated in
Speaker 1: six months. It would in no way be cynical to
Speaker 1: say I think we're going to be obliterated in six months.
Speaker 1: That would be realistic. I think with things like solving
Speaker 1: or even addressing the climate crisis, this is a little
Speaker 1: bit different because it's a collective action problem, and so
Speaker 1: our belief in each other now relates to our hope
Speaker 1: for the future. Right hope is the idea that things
Speaker 1: could turn out better and that our actions mattered. It's
Speaker 1: an empowered and action oriented emotion. And one thing that
Speaker 1: I write about with respect to climate is that people
Speaker 1: in the US at least greatly underestimate how much other
Speaker 1: voters in the US care about the climate crisis. So
Speaker 1: it could be that I don't think we're going to
Speaker 1: be able to do anything about it because I think
Speaker 1: I'm the only one who cares. If that's where you're
Speaker 1: coming from, Eric, then I would say, well, maybe let's
Speaker 1: look a little bit more at the data about what
Speaker 1: other folks want, and maybe if you realize that other
Speaker 1: people want the same thing you do, maybe there's a
Speaker 1: little bit more collective efficacy, a sense of possibility for
Speaker 1: what we could do together.
Speaker 3: Let's go back for a second to the claim that
Speaker 3: cynicism is not just harmful, which we covered, but often naive.
Speaker 3: Talk about the naive piece.
Speaker 1: This, I think is so important because it counters to
Speaker 1: my mind what has become a cultural stereotype. When I
Speaker 1: write about hope and talk about hope, I get made
Speaker 1: fun of constantly. What is this, Obama two thousand and seven?
Speaker 1: Come on, you know, it's so try hard. It's cringe,
Speaker 1: it's naive, sometimes even worse, it's privileged. It's toxic to hope.
Speaker 1: It's denying our problems. And by contrast, people say, yes, cynicism,
Speaker 1: it feels bad, but you know what cynics are, right,
Speaker 1: And so if it feels bad to know the truth,
Speaker 1: well then I guess I'll feel bad, to which I
Speaker 1: would say not so fast. You know, look a little
Speaker 1: bit more closely at the data, and it turns out
Speaker 1: that the data here are quite clear at a number
Speaker 1: of levels. One, people think that cinics are smarter than
Speaker 1: non cynics. Right, So if you ask people, if you
Speaker 1: describe a cynic and a non synic, you say, who
Speaker 1: will do better at cognitive tests, who will be wiser?
Speaker 1: Seventy to eighty five percent of people pick the cynic
Speaker 1: But then if you actually give cynics a nonsenics cognitive
Speaker 1: and social tests, cynics do worse than non cynics. Now
Speaker 1: why is that. Well. Cynicism, as we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: is a blanket theory. It's an assumption about people. And
Speaker 1: if you move through the world with an assumption about people,
Speaker 1: you won't engage in a lot of critical thinking. You
Speaker 1: will paste that assumption onto every situation in your life.
Speaker 1: It's actually a very unthinking or in other words, naive
Speaker 1: way of viewing the world. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: that makes cynics wrong in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 1: In fact, even folks who would not consider themselves cynics
Speaker 1: tend to underestimate people. There is decades of evidence that
Speaker 1: people don't realize how trustworthy, generous, open minded, and warm
Speaker 1: others are. So cynicism here it's naive in terms of
Speaker 1: the way that people are thinking, which is resting on assumptions,
Speaker 1: and it's also demonstrably wrong when you compare our cynical
Speaker 1: assumptions to the data about what people are really like, yeah.
Speaker 3: That makes a lot of sense. And you talk about
Speaker 3: moving from cynicism to something that you call skepticism or
Speaker 3: maybe hopeful skepticism. I mean it's not just plain skepticism,
Speaker 3: but it's a skepticism with a modifier.
Speaker 1: That's right. No, you nailed, it's hopeful skepticism. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: I love the opportunity to help people understand when two
Speaker 1: words that they're using interchangeably mean completely different things. That's
Speaker 1: like one of my jobs as a research psychologist, and
Speaker 1: that's true here as well. We often think that cynicism
Speaker 1: and skepticism are the same, but they're really not at all.
Speaker 1: So cynicism again a blanket assumption about people that we
Speaker 1: use to argue basically for how bad everybody is. A
Speaker 1: cynic will pick up any evidence that somebody does something
Speaker 1: negative or harmful and they'll say, Aha, that's who they
Speaker 1: really are, and they'll explain away evidence about the person's
Speaker 1: positive qualities. Right, they're thinking like a lawyer in the
Speaker 1: prosecution against humanity. Skepticism is not a lack of faith
Speaker 1: in people. It's a lack of faith in our assumptions.
Speaker 1: If cynics think like lawyers, skeptics think like scientists, they say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what evidence do I have to support
Speaker 1: each claim that I'm making, each belief that I'm carrying.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that skeptics, well, First of all,
Speaker 1: skepticism and cynicism not correlated with each other in people, right,
Speaker 1: So being one doesn't mean that you're the other. And second,
Speaker 1: whereas cynics tend to fall for conspiracy theories more, they
Speaker 1: tend to do worse at understanding other people, skeptics do
Speaker 1: much better. They learn more quickly, and they're more adaptable.
Speaker 1: And then the hopeful piece to hopeful skepticism is simply
Speaker 1: an understanding that oftentimes our factory settings, our default mode
Speaker 1: is too negative. So it's an open mindedness to the
Speaker 1: evidence that the world and other people bring, plus knowledge
Speaker 1: that we have a bias, and preparedness to push against
Speaker 1: that bias.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you say in the book that cynics imagine humanity
Speaker 3: is awful. Skeptics gather information about who they can trust.
Speaker 3: And then this last part, in particular being less cynical
Speaker 3: then is simply a matter of noticing more precisely. And
Speaker 3: I really love that idea of just like you said,
Speaker 3: set our assumptions aside and let's actually notice and pay
Speaker 3: closer attention and question our own default settings about the
Speaker 3: way things are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think that oftentimes, again,
Speaker 1: skepticism here can actually not be simply different from cynicism.
Speaker 1: It can be a treatment for cynicism. We think about
Speaker 1: cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and anxiety. Right, what a
Speaker 1: therapist will often do is say, you know, a patient
Speaker 1: will say, Okay, I think that I'm awful or worthless,
Speaker 1: or I have personally eric some social anxieties. All often
Speaker 1: think that people are judging me or don't like me.
Speaker 1: And when I was in therapy, my therapist to say, okay, well, Jamille,
Speaker 1: you're a scientist, defend that claim. What evidence do you
Speaker 1: have that people really don't like you? Has anybody ever
Speaker 1: acted like they like you? You know? If so, then
Speaker 1: you're you're maybe not making a complete argument.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: And that idea of what I call turning our skepticism
Speaker 1: on our cynicism. Being skeptical about our cynical assumptions is
Speaker 1: a hindset shift that can allow us to say, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, where is all of this coming from?
Speaker 1: And you know, I think oftentimes we trust our instincts.
Speaker 1: People are even proud they say, I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of intuition. I trust my gut, to which I say, fine,
Speaker 1: you can do that. But oftentimes our gut instincts are
Speaker 1: really awful, you know. Yeah, we have gut instincts that
Speaker 1: tell us be nicer to people who are your same
Speaker 1: race than somebody who's a different race, or when you're hungry,
Speaker 1: judge people more morally, we would never trust those instincts,
Speaker 1: and the instinct to always look at the worst parts
Speaker 1: of people's behavior, the worst parts of the world is
Speaker 1: adaptive in certain ways. Maybe it helped us survive two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years ago, but that doesn't mean it's helping
Speaker 1: us now. So I think that we don't need to
Speaker 1: trust our gut when it comes to cynical judgments. We
Speaker 1: can be skeptical, we can be open minded instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm always a little bit skeptical of the intuition.
Speaker 3: It's a big thing in personal development, which is just
Speaker 3: trust intuition, trust your gut, And I'm like, well, kind
Speaker 3: as sometimes there's plenty of times our gut sense leads
Speaker 3: us way wrong, and a lot of the research, particularly
Speaker 3: if you look at some of the stuff about like
Speaker 3: even Malcolm Gladwell's that's kind of in thinking fast and slow.
Speaker 3: But this idea of intuition, people who are trusting their
Speaker 3: intuition in those stories he's telling are people who have
Speaker 3: thousands of hours of experience in that very thing to
Speaker 3: the point where they've internalized vast amounts of information. And
Speaker 3: so it's not that I'm totally against intuition, but I'm
Speaker 3: just not a believer that, like you said, like it's
Speaker 3: always right, I think it's used right. It is an
Speaker 3: input into a system that should have multiple inputs.
Speaker 1: This is brilliantly put. This is a really nuanced and
Speaker 1: important point. You're saying that, Hey, wait a minute, intuition
Speaker 1: is more useful if you have expertise because you have
Speaker 1: a crude experience that feeds into that intuition. I do
Speaker 1: want to complicate.
Speaker 3: That even more, Eric, if I may, at least, I
Speaker 3: love complication.
Speaker 1: I can tell your game for this, which is which
Speaker 1: is awesome. So a lot of people would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, my cynicism counts as expertise because I've been
Speaker 1: around people. You know, I feel hope or you trust people.
Speaker 1: That's because you're naive. I am not naive. I've been
Speaker 1: around the block and I've learned through tough one lessons,
Speaker 1: through betrayals, through disappointments, that people can't be trusted. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's actually the illusion of expertise more
Speaker 1: than it's real expertise, because, as you said, expertise means
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of information that's going into your intuitions.
Speaker 1: But one thing about cynicism is that it causes us
Speaker 1: to take information in in an uneven way. Yes, I'll
Speaker 1: give you an example. Right, So when you trust somebody
Speaker 1: and that was the wrong choice, oh, you get feedback, right,
Speaker 1: you learn that that was a mistake. You maybe think
Speaker 1: about that mistake for months or years or decades. But
Speaker 1: when you don't trust somebody and that is a mistake,
Speaker 1: when you miss an opportunity for a friendship or the
Speaker 1: love of your life, or the greatest business partnership you
Speaker 1: would ever have, you don't know that betrayals are visible.
Speaker 1: Missed opportunities are invisible. And that means that the information
Speaker 1: that we're taking in is only really half of the
Speaker 1: information that we could take in. And in that way,
Speaker 1: our experiences don't always lead to expertise. If we're taking
Speaker 1: in information in a way that's biasing us more. As
Speaker 1: we gain more experience.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and because those experiences that are negative like that,
Speaker 3: we weigh far higher also, right, Yes, it's an example
Speaker 3: of a trauma perpetrated on somebody, they obviously and rightfully
Speaker 3: so weigh that very very highly. But it's not indicative
Speaker 3: of the reality out there. And I love that idea
Speaker 3: of saying that. It's that we're not taking an information
Speaker 3: in a balanced way. And I think that's why what
Speaker 3: you're saying about our experiences of people, right, because the
Speaker 3: news is unquestionably and always going to point out the negative.
Speaker 3: It's the person who went into Starbucks today refused to
Speaker 3: wear a mask and threw their coffee at the barista. Yep, right, yep,
Speaker 3: And that's what you hear. But simple paying attention will
Speaker 3: tell me that I've been into thousands of Starbucks thousands
Speaker 3: of times and I've never once seen a bit of
Speaker 3: behavior like that. And it just is this sort of
Speaker 3: not fully bringing things in. And one of my favorite
Speaker 3: sort of counters to cynicism is I think about there's
Speaker 3: uncertainly people behaving poorly right at this very minute. Of course,
Speaker 3: there are, and there are also so many people behaving
Speaker 3: kindly and decently and nobly or just fine decently. You
Speaker 3: drive down the road and that's the case. It's like
Speaker 3: we are all somehow hurtling down the road at seventy
Speaker 3: miles an hour, largely obeying the rules and getting along,
Speaker 3: and the occasional person that counters that is the exception,
Speaker 3: not the rule. But it's the one that we then
Speaker 3: say people are idiots. Like you said, can we take
Speaker 3: in more information and keep the negative information from assuming
Speaker 3: too big of a role. It's like we weigh it
Speaker 3: with like ten points of preference for every good thing
Speaker 3: we see, but it's probably even way worse than that
Speaker 3: though the ratio, if we were to give it a ratio.
Speaker 1: The person who cuts me off in traffic is the
Speaker 1: star of my day's story. The nine hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: people who follow traffic laws all around me on that
Speaker 1: same drive float into the landfill of my lost memories.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I agree, that's true of so many things. Plane crashes
Speaker 1: is a major news story, and it should be. It's
Speaker 1: a tragedy. Of course, sixty thousand planes land without crashing
Speaker 1: is a non story. In some ways. The exceptions are
Speaker 1: what we focus on. Rather than the rules that make
Speaker 1: those exceptions exceptional.
Speaker 3: Precisely. Yeah, if you know a thousand planes crashed today,
Speaker 3: we would cease to pay much attention to it. We
Speaker 3: just be like, well, planes crash all the time. I mean,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't make the news anymore. It's the same thing.
Speaker 3: I always think, Like, we talk about things that are dangerous,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I think, statistically, the most dangerous thing
Speaker 3: that we do, and we all do it every day
Speaker 3: is get in a car.
Speaker 1: Is drive. Absolutely, It's far.
Speaker 3: More dangerous than all these other things that we worry about,
Speaker 3: and we do it every day with barely thinking about it,
Speaker 3: which shows you that we're not actually adding up the
Speaker 3: reality in a coherent way.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Last year, I surveyed one thousand Americans and I
Speaker 1: asked them, in general, do you think that the pandemic
Speaker 1: so twenty twenty to early pandemic twenty twenty, twenty one,
Speaker 1: and twenty two. Do you think that people around the
Speaker 1: world during those years became kinder less kind or did
Speaker 1: they stay just as kind as they had in the
Speaker 1: years before the pandemic? And sixty percent of my sample
Speaker 1: believed that the world had become less kind during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: barely twenty percent thought that it had become kinder. But
Speaker 1: the data from this massive project called the World Happiness
Speaker 1: Report are clear and go in the exact opposite direction. Volunteering,
Speaker 1: donating to charity, and helping strangers all increased enormously over
Speaker 1: the pandemic. So there's two pieces of news there. One
Speaker 1: the good news. When push came to shove during one
Speaker 1: of the hardest times, the worst disasters most living people
Speaker 1: have experienced, we showed up for each other. That says
Speaker 1: a lot. The second thing, most people don't know that
Speaker 1: that happened, which I think is a tragedy. And again,
Speaker 1: whenever I talk about this stuff, people will say, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, you can't discount people who commit murder or
Speaker 1: assault or do awful things like you said right Saying
Speaker 1: that plane crashes almost never happened would be a disservice
Speaker 1: to people who really are devastated by those events. And
Speaker 1: of course, I in no way want to diminish the
Speaker 1: real harm that is going on all around the world.
Speaker 1: Right now, The question for me is not is everybody good?
Speaker 1: Is everybody helpful? Is everybody kind? But rather, can we
Speaker 1: correctly understand the average person and I would say that
Speaker 1: it's very clear that the average person underestimates the average person,
Speaker 1: and that is a both really sad state of affairs
Speaker 1: and again an opportunity because if we recalibrate, not only
Speaker 1: will we know each other better, there will be much
Speaker 1: more reason to have hope for the future that we
Speaker 1: can build as a community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that idea. Let's talk about two neighborhoods
Speaker 3: in a Japanese city. I don't know how to pronounce
Speaker 3: Jeff Kobe, Kobe, thank you, And I'm not even going
Speaker 3: to pronounce the two neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: I'll let you.
Speaker 3: I'll let you. Going to stay out of this sort
Speaker 3: of let you do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we were talking earlier about how cynicism hurts
Speaker 1: individuals and trust and vulnerability can help individuals, and how
Speaker 1: that's also true at the community level, and I was
Speaker 1: telling you that trusting versus less trust in communities tend
Speaker 1: to be more civically engaged, more economically prosperous. But it's
Speaker 1: also true that trust, the bonds between people in a
Speaker 1: community strengthen that community, especially during difficult times. And one
Speaker 1: amazing example of that that I write about and learned
Speaker 1: a lot about for the book is this disaster, this
Speaker 1: earthquake that occurred in the Japanese city of Kobe in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, and it was a horrible disaster. You know,
Speaker 1: thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands of buildings
Speaker 1: were destroyed. There are two neighborhoods in the general Kobe
Speaker 1: area that are not that far apart, Mano and Mikura,
Speaker 1: and they're similar in socio economic status, population size, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But they were different in a key way, which is
Speaker 1: that Mono had this history of organizing together as a
Speaker 1: community to advocate for environmental protection. The details matter less,
Speaker 1: but what you need to know is that these people
Speaker 1: counted on one another, They had been through struggles together.
Speaker 1: The level of interconnection in this neighborhood was high. Mikura
Speaker 1: had less of that history, and when the earthquake struck.
Speaker 1: There were fires that followed the earthquake, massive fires, and
Speaker 1: the trust that folks in Mono had made a huge difference.
Speaker 1: So people in Mikura kind of waited for the fire
Speaker 1: department to arrive, and many of them lost their homes
Speaker 1: and sadly, many lost their lives. People in Mono did
Speaker 1: not wait. They organized kind of in a grassroots way,
Speaker 1: came up with a bucket brigade and pulled hoses from
Speaker 1: factories and were taking water from the rivers around there.
Speaker 1: You know, the tragedy was still a tragedy in both
Speaker 1: neighborhood of but the number of homes lost in Mono
Speaker 1: was a quarter of what it was in Mikura. The
Speaker 1: number of lives lost in Mono was one tenth of
Speaker 1: what it was in Mikura. So we think about trust
Speaker 1: as great when things are good, but trust is probably
Speaker 1: even more powerful when things are going terribly and it's
Speaker 1: one of the fundamental needs that we have in times
Speaker 1: of adversity is to be able to count on one another.
Speaker 3: There's another story in the book about actually I'm just
Speaker 3: going to tee it up and let you tell it,
Speaker 3: but it's about two villages.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. It's funny, you know, because we've been talking
Speaker 1: about the parable of the wolf you feed, and I
Speaker 1: think that's often a parable at the individual level, like
Speaker 1: about personal development. I think of the Brazilian fishing village
Speaker 1: example as actually one version of when we feed a
Speaker 1: different wolf as a community than another community does. So
Speaker 1: in southeastern Brazil, there are two villages separated by about
Speaker 1: thirty forty miles. Again similar in a lot of ways, religion,
Speaker 1: socioeconomic status. They're both fishing villages, right, and one village
Speaker 1: is by the ocean. And it turns out that in
Speaker 1: order to fish on the ocean you need heavy equipment
Speaker 1: and large boats because the waves are large, and it's
Speaker 1: just it's pretty dangerous, and so that type of work
Speaker 1: is fundamentally cooperative. Fishermen work in teams on the lake
Speaker 1: because there's no waves of the fish are smaller. People
Speaker 1: work independently, and actually they often run into each other
Speaker 1: on their small boats only when they're competing for the
Speaker 1: best fishing spots. And about ten years ago, economists, including
Speaker 1: a friend of mine Andrea's, went to those villages and
Speaker 1: they gave the fishermen in those villages different social games
Speaker 1: to play, assessing how trustworthy they were and how generous
Speaker 1: they were. And it turned out that when fishermen started
Speaker 1: their career, it didn't matter which village they were in.
Speaker 1: They were equally trusting, equally trustworthy, and equally generous. But
Speaker 1: over time the environment shaped these people. If you were
Speaker 1: in a cutthroat, competitive workplace, you became less trusting and
Speaker 1: less trustworthy over time. And if you were in a cooperative,
Speaker 1: positive some workplace, you became more trusting and more generous
Speaker 1: over time. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It gets back to what we talked about earlier, which
Speaker 3: is where your view of other people will shape the
Speaker 3: behavior you get back from them, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think it's also not just your view
Speaker 1: of other people, but the structures that you are in.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that one thing about today is
Speaker 1: culture is just how unequal we are. You know, times
Speaker 1: of great economic inequality tend to be less trusting times,
Speaker 1: and places that are more unequal tend to be less
Speaker 1: trusting as well. And that's not because people have a
Speaker 1: bad attitude. It's because structurally, when things are very unequal,
Speaker 1: people often feel like they have to compete, like their
Speaker 1: lives are a zero sum struggle to meet their basic necessities.
Speaker 3: There was something that you said in the book. You
Speaker 3: say that it didn't matter who they were, rural and urban,
Speaker 3: liberal and conservative. Baby boomers and gen Z may not
Speaker 3: agree on much, but they all believe humanity is in
Speaker 3: a state of vicious decline and that we yearn for
Speaker 3: a gentler, friendlier past that never was. Is this just
Speaker 3: a feature of human beings as we age.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting question. So this is work by Adam
Speaker 1: Mastrioni and Dan Gilbert who look at this illusion of
Speaker 1: moral decline. They look at ser over a seventy year period,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people, and at all times people
Speaker 1: say things were great twenty years ago, but they're terrible
Speaker 1: now in terms of morality. Right, People were great twenty
Speaker 1: years ago and not so much now. And the irony,
Speaker 1: of course is that some of the people in these
Speaker 1: surveys there now other people's twenty years ago. Right. So
Speaker 1: people in nineteen seventy think that nineteen seventies America is
Speaker 1: very untrustworthy and unkind compared to the nineteen fifties, But
Speaker 1: people in the nineteen nineties think that nineteen seventies America
Speaker 1: was great, right, right, exactly. Yeah, And so I do
Speaker 1: think that there is a little bit of nostalgia here,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that because we have this negativity bias,
Speaker 1: we when we're thinking about what's happening now, we're so
Speaker 1: hyper focused on the threats in our environment. There is
Speaker 1: also something known as the psychological immune system, which is
Speaker 1: the idea that over time we acclimate to our circumstances
Speaker 1: and even block out some negative things that have happened
Speaker 1: in the past. So Dan and Adams think that it's
Speaker 1: a combination of these two effects that we're seeing that
Speaker 1: one I'm so focused on everything bad that's happening now,
Speaker 1: and two I tend to sugarcoat the past. And you
Speaker 1: put those together and you get this illusion that things
Speaker 1: are getting worse, even when they're demonstrably in some cases
Speaker 1: getting much better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I always think of it as a sure sign
Speaker 3: of getting old, and I'm exaggerating a little bit, but
Speaker 3: when I look at like the sort of ways in
Speaker 3: which we ossify potentially as we get older, it's one
Speaker 3: of the big ones on my internal checking, Like, am
Speaker 3: I starting to say things like it was better? When
Speaker 3: as like a sign that tells me that, like I
Speaker 3: need to keep like you say, keep taking in more data.
Speaker 1: I feel the same way about being confused by younger generations,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think the worst version of that is
Speaker 1: being judgmental of younger generations. I hear all the time
Speaker 1: because a lot of my work focuses on empathy and kindness.
Speaker 1: Aren't young people just jerks? They self centered, narcissistic influencers
Speaker 1: and I think no, And I also want to know
Speaker 1: how many of these folks do you know? I teach
Speaker 1: college students every day. I think I have a lot
Speaker 1: of experience with young adults, and they are some of
Speaker 1: the least selfish, most globally conscious people I've ever known,
Speaker 1: much more than I was at their age. So I
Speaker 1: think when we start stereotyping people who are younger than us,
Speaker 1: that's a red flag that maybe we're getting older than
Speaker 1: we realize exactly.
Speaker 3: Talk to me about what solutions journalists are.
Speaker 1: Solutions journalism is an attempt to provide an antidote, or
Speaker 1: at least counter programming to many of the things we've
Speaker 1: been talking about. As we've been talking about, generally, journalists
Speaker 1: and news organizations focus on the negative because that's what
Speaker 1: will keep us clicking and scrolling and watching. But that
Speaker 1: gives us a biased sense of the world. Right we're
Speaker 1: basically only being shown the worst half of humanity by
Speaker 1: news organizations. Solution journalists try to do the opposite. Now,
Speaker 1: I should say that when I say do the opposite,
Speaker 1: I do not mean puff pieces about a dog that
Speaker 1: was stuck in a tree but is rescued, you know,
Speaker 1: or even great stories like a veteran comes home to
Speaker 1: their family who doesn't know that they're there. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's all these beautiful stories that we call human interests sores, right,
Speaker 1: are just lovely anecdotes. That's really great, and that's completely fine.
Speaker 1: But solutions journalism is not that. It's instead using journalism
Speaker 1: and storytelling to teach people about folks who are really
Speaker 1: trying to address big problems that we're facing. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: young people engaged in activism to combat the climate crisis,
Speaker 1: or to roll back jerrymandering and re empower voters in
Speaker 1: the Midwest, or people who have been in prison advocating
Speaker 1: for their rights to vote. Right. This is news about
Speaker 1: positive trends that are directly related to the negative news
Speaker 1: that we hear all the time, not kind of disembodied
Speaker 1: or apart from news.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, oftentimes I think the old stereotype is you
Speaker 1: hear four days and fifty five minutes of bad news,
Speaker 1: and then the last five minutes on Friday is a
Speaker 1: human interest story that's supposed to basically be an escape
Speaker 1: from reality. Solutions journalism is not an escape. It's a
Speaker 1: confrontation with negative journalism by saying, yeah, these same issues
Speaker 1: there are positive developments on those fronts.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I loved the story about jerry mandering in Michigan
Speaker 3: that you tell. Do you want to walk us through
Speaker 3: that very briefly, sure, because I think it's a great
Speaker 3: example of this and the sort of example of something
Speaker 3: positive happening around an issue that often seems intractable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is the story of Katie Fahey, twenty six
Speaker 1: year old Michigander who worked in a recycling plant. I
Speaker 1: mean really not somebody who was high up in politics
Speaker 1: involved at all, although she was engaged, and after the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election, she wanted to find a non partisan issue,
Speaker 1: something that people generally agreed on that she could make
Speaker 1: movement on. And it was jerrymandering, right, that kind of
Speaker 1: anti democratic splitting of districts such that votes don't count
Speaker 1: as much. And she created this grassroots campaign and people
Speaker 1: laughed her out of every meeting that she had. At first.
Speaker 1: She's again this young woman, you know, not taken seriously,
Speaker 1: but she did it. She collected three hundred thousand signatures
Speaker 1: from around Michigan and got a ballot initiative passed, and
Speaker 1: now Michigan is one of the most democratic states in
Speaker 1: the nation, meaning that people's votes are relatively counted compared
Speaker 1: to more gerrymandered states. I think it's such a great
Speaker 1: example of how not being willing to lose faith in
Speaker 1: each other can actually create positive change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really great story and to hear about
Speaker 3: how she did it and the different people who came together,
Speaker 3: and it is an example of this solution's journalism that
Speaker 3: is really useful. And you talk about your couple of
Speaker 3: hot button issues. One is, you know, democratic institutions crumbling,
Speaker 3: and this is a great piece of solutions journalism to that.
Speaker 3: And you're also you said I've become a climate doomer.
Speaker 3: I also think there is good news on the climate
Speaker 3: front along with all the bad news. It's not that
Speaker 3: they replace each other, but I've spent more time looking
Speaker 3: for stories that highlight some of the good things that
Speaker 3: are happening. Again, not as a way of becoming optimistic necessarily,
Speaker 3: but as a way of seeing a more full picture.
Speaker 1: That's right, And I think it's important this point you raise.
Speaker 1: Finding and seeking out positive news is not a matter
Speaker 1: of putting rose colored glasses on and being complacent. Finding
Speaker 1: good news a makes us more accurate because having only
Speaker 1: bad news in our feeds is like wearing mud colored glasses, right,
Speaker 1: So trying to balance the information that we get is
Speaker 1: not putting on a pair of rose color glasses. It's
Speaker 1: taking off the bias that we're already wearing, or at
Speaker 1: least most of us are. And second, it's not complacent.
Speaker 1: You know, when we read when we learn that other
Speaker 1: people support climate action. In many cases of social movements,
Speaker 1: that empowers us. People with hope are more likely to agitate,
Speaker 1: to take part in protests to pressure lawmakers to make change.
Speaker 1: So being hopeful is not being complacent. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: the opposite.
Speaker 3: As we wrap up, I'm curious, out of all the
Speaker 3: valuable ideas we've explored today, what's the single most impactful
Speaker 3: insight that resonates with you listener? For me, it's about relationships.
Speaker 3: Many of us grapple with relationship issues in silence, uncertain
Speaker 3: how to mend the cracks. The reality cultivating a fulfilling
Speaker 3: relationship isn't solely about compatibility or fate. It's about developing
Speaker 3: crucial interpersonal abilities. How's that for a fancy phrase? Basically
Speaker 3: means we can improve our relationships. And here's a quick
Speaker 3: tip for you. Focus on active listening. Make a conscious
Speaker 3: effort to listen more than you speak in your next conversation,
Speaker 3: focusing entirely on understanding the other person's perspective. Being a
Speaker 3: good listener goes a long way in making our relationships better.
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Speaker 3: dot me slash relationships. There's a book you're probably familiar
Speaker 3: with it Hans ros Lane, and it's called Possibilism. Is
Speaker 3: that the no, what's the name factfulness? But he talks
Speaker 3: about He says in the book, I'm not an optimist
Speaker 3: or a pessimist. I'm a possibilist. I love that idea
Speaker 3: because you know, what he's saying is that like both
Speaker 3: the positive and the negative, they're both true. There are
Speaker 3: negative things in the world, there are positive things in
Speaker 3: the world, but that he's focused on possiblism, and he
Speaker 3: basically says that recognizing the good things that are happening
Speaker 3: does not make him naive. It makes him somebody who
Speaker 3: can believe in positive action happening. And you sort of
Speaker 3: say this somewhere else also that when we don't believe
Speaker 3: that good things can happen, you say, it forecloses on
Speaker 3: the possibility of anything better. And I love that idea
Speaker 3: of you know, cynicism becomes again, as we've mentioned in
Speaker 3: different ways, self fulfilling prophecy to a certain extent, because
Speaker 3: if you don't believe that things can get better or
Speaker 3: have gotten better in certain ways, you won't do anything different.
Speaker 1: And I want to be really clear, that's helpful to
Speaker 1: a certain group of people. That's helpful to elites or
Speaker 1: others who want the status quo to remain right. I
Speaker 1: mean autocrats, authoritarians, They use cynicism, They cultivate cynicism in
Speaker 1: their people, because a population that doesn't trust itself is
Speaker 1: much easier to control. So I think we often confuse
Speaker 1: cynicism with a radical emotion, and actually it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's often a tool of people in power to remain
Speaker 1: in power. Yeah, I love, of course factfulness. I've often,
Speaker 1: even when I was writing Hope for Cynics, felt like
Speaker 1: I was in conversation with Hans and he's a public
Speaker 1: health scholar and focuses on trends in the world that
Speaker 1: are positive. And I think that as a psychologist, I'm
Speaker 1: very focused on our view of each other, and I
Speaker 1: think that those are really bound up with one another
Speaker 1: because to the extent that we believe in each other now,
Speaker 1: we can also believe that those positive trends can continue,
Speaker 1: that we can continue them. To the extent that we
Speaker 1: lose faith in each other, we also lose faith in
Speaker 1: the future that we can build well.
Speaker 3: I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Jamille. I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed the book. It's called Hope for Cynics,
Speaker 3: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. We'll have links in
Speaker 3: the show notes to where people can get the book
Speaker 3: and find other parts of your work.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Eric, this has been totally delightful.
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