Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Man, Welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Nori with you.
Speaker 2: Doctor Jamil Zaki with us for the first time. Professor
Speaker 2: of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the
Speaker 2: Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He trained at Columbia and Harvard,
Speaker 2: studying empathy and kindness in the human brain. He is
Speaker 2: interested in how we can learn to connect better. His
Speaker 2: book is called Hope for Cynics. Hey, doctor Jamiel, welcome
Speaker 2: to the program.
Speaker 3: Thanks George, it's a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 2: How did you get involved in this kind of psychology.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating, you know.
Speaker 3: It's a long story. In psychology, they say that research
Speaker 3: is research. That is, we start studying stuff that is
Speaker 3: personally relevant to us, and for me, that comes from
Speaker 3: my family. My parents are immigrants, my father from Pakistan
Speaker 3: and my mother from Peru, and as far as I
Speaker 3: can remember, I don't think they ever got along that way.
Speaker 3: So a lot of my childhood was navigating the very
Speaker 3: different realities of two people totally different parts of the
Speaker 3: world who saw life in really different ways, which a
Speaker 3: made me super interested in how we connect and especially
Speaker 3: how we can connect with people who are different from us,
Speaker 3: and B made it a little hard for me to
Speaker 3: trust people because of the chaos in the home where
Speaker 3: I grew up. So both my interests in empathy and
Speaker 3: kindness and then my secret interest in cynicism and mistrust,
Speaker 3: I think came from that early life experience.
Speaker 2: I was watching the debates last week with former President
Speaker 2: Trump and Kamala Harris a couple of weeks ago, and
Speaker 2: a argument broke out with two people who were watching
Speaker 2: the debate there too, And I watched this while they
Speaker 2: were shouting at each other, not talking, not discussing, but
Speaker 2: shouting at each other because of the different views of
Speaker 2: the candidates. What's happening to people.
Speaker 3: Doctor Well, I think that we are shouting a lot
Speaker 3: more where in part because we're more threatened. One of
Speaker 3: the things that can raise our internal alarm systems and
Speaker 3: put us in fight or flight mode is just the
Speaker 3: sense that other people are endangering us. And that sense,
Speaker 3: to me, seems to be more pervasive in our everyday experience.
Speaker 3: You know, forty fifty years ago, Americans disagreed with one another,
Speaker 3: but we didn't let those disagreements become as personal as
Speaker 3: they've become now. So In nineteen eighty, for instance, Republicans
Speaker 3: and Democrats said that they liked members of their own
Speaker 3: party and they felt neutral about members of the of
Speaker 3: the other party. By twenty twenty, that pattern had shifted completely.
Speaker 3: We now disliked people we disagreed with more than we
Speaker 3: liked the people on our own side. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of this also comes from the way that we
Speaker 3: interact or don't interact with one another. We have fallen
Speaker 3: there are fewer conversations with people we disagree with in
Speaker 3: the course of our everyday lives. We've sorted such that
Speaker 3: we don't get to talk about another weather or sports,
Speaker 3: or our dreams and hopes with people who are different
Speaker 3: from us. Where we do see those people is through
Speaker 3: social media and the news, where we are given a
Speaker 3: representation of the other side that is way more extreme, hateful,
Speaker 3: anti democratic, and even violent than people on the other
Speaker 3: side truly are. So we end up fighting phantoms. We
Speaker 3: end up fearing that other people on the other side
Speaker 3: don't just disagree with us, but want to kill us.
Speaker 3: And if you feel that way, then it makes perfect
Speaker 3: sense to yell and scream instead of having a conversation.
Speaker 2: I'm in Saint Louis right now, doctor, and they arrested
Speaker 2: a young youngster today with a gun who was threatening
Speaker 2: to go into a school to do some harm. He
Speaker 2: was arrested because his friends picked up on social media
Speaker 2: that this kid was about to do something bad. How
Speaker 2: important has social media been plus or minus to what
Speaker 2: you've just talked about.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that there's the obvious benefit of
Speaker 3: having information travel quickly is that we can do things
Speaker 3: like stop people who are about to commit violence the right.
Speaker 3: So in that case, social media was a was a
Speaker 3: force that saved likely saved lives, and that's that's wonderful. Now,
Speaker 3: it's also true that many people are radicalized and induced
Speaker 3: to commit violence through communication that occurs on social media.
Speaker 3: So I think that there's more information, which in a
Speaker 3: vacuum sounds like a good thing, but we have to
Speaker 3: ask ourselves how good is the information that we're getting,
Speaker 3: What is it doing to us? And the way I
Speaker 3: see it, online platforms are not built to make people
Speaker 3: happy or healthy or in formed, and this is I
Speaker 3: think really important. They're created to keep us online by
Speaker 3: feeding us whatever will keep us engaged, and oftentimes that's
Speaker 3: feeding us the things that make us frightened and outraged.
Speaker 3: And so there's a lot of evidence that people who spend,
Speaker 3: for instance, a lot of time on social media more
Speaker 3: than usual, they think that in general, people are worse
Speaker 3: than people who than if you spend less time on
Speaker 3: social media. In other words, when we are online, we
Speaker 3: receive this systematically negative information about other people, and that
Speaker 3: can induce us again to feel more fear, more, hatred,
Speaker 3: and even induce us to behaviors like violence.
Speaker 2: The title of your book is called Hope for Cynics.
Speaker 2: Tell us about the title and tell us what exactly
Speaker 2: a cynic might be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, as you mentioned, George, I've been studying empathy
Speaker 3: and kindness my entire career for twenty years now, and
Speaker 3: this has made me a sort of ambassador for humanity
Speaker 3: is better Angels. People like to ask me to speak
Speaker 3: or write for them when they want to feel better
Speaker 3: about our species. But this whole time I've had a secret,
Speaker 3: which is that in private, I'm a pretty cynical person.
Speaker 3: So Hope for Cynics is actually began as a journey
Speaker 3: to see if I could understand and maybe try to
Speaker 3: treat my own cynical worldview, and through that I gained
Speaker 3: a deep understanding of what cynicism is. So you asked
Speaker 3: for a definition, and I think that we need to separate.
Speaker 3: When I talk about cynicism. I'm not talking about the
Speaker 3: ancient Greek school of philosophy headed by Antistines and Diogenes,
Speaker 3: although I'm happy to chat about that just as a
Speaker 3: philosophy nerd. But I mean the modern psychological definition of cynicism,
Speaker 3: which is the belief that in general, people are selfish, greedy,
Speaker 3: and dishonest. Now this is not to say that a
Speaker 3: cynic would be shocked if somebody donated to charity or
Speaker 3: helped the stranger, but they would wonder about that person's motive.
Speaker 3: They would say, well, maybe they're looking for a tax break,
Speaker 3: where they're trying to look good in front of others.
Speaker 3: Icism is not a theory about what we do. It's
Speaker 3: a theory about who we are.
Speaker 2: Is it negativity?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it certainly trades in negativity. You
Speaker 3: might be cynical and not feel that negative. You might say, hey,
Speaker 3: we're just a selfish species and that's fine with me.
Speaker 3: But in general, cynicism is accompanied by a great deal
Speaker 3: of contempt and hostility towards other people.
Speaker 2: Does the cynics say it's partly cloudy as opposed to
Speaker 2: partly sunny.
Speaker 3: It's partly cloudy, the glasses half empty. In general, they
Speaker 3: reinterpret things more negatively, but it's not things not everything right.
Speaker 3: So we should separate cynicism from pessimism. Pessimism is the
Speaker 3: idea of the future is going to turn out poorly.
Speaker 3: Is not a view about the future or the natural world.
Speaker 3: It's really a view about other people. Now, it stands
Speaker 3: to reason if you don't have any faith in other people,
Speaker 3: you probably don't think the future is going to turn
Speaker 3: out very well either, because the future, of course, is
Speaker 3: what we collectively decide to make it.
Speaker 2: Now, the subtitle of your book, Hope FORENX is the
Speaker 2: surprising science of human goodness that fascinates me. Tell me
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it fascinates me too, And I think that so.
Speaker 3: As I said, I started this book as a journey
Speaker 3: to see if I could understand my own cynicism. And
Speaker 3: I spent years marinating myself in the science of mistrust, suspicion,
Speaker 3: and hopelessness. And you might think that would have made
Speaker 3: for a gloomy twenty twenties. The fact was it was
Speaker 3: incredibly uplifting. I've learned over the course of these years
Speaker 3: that in general, people don't realize how trustworthy, generous, open minded,
Speaker 3: and warm other people are. Now, this is not to
Speaker 3: say that there aren't jerks out there or people who
Speaker 3: do terrible things every day, but the average person underestimates
Speaker 3: the average person. And what that means is that when
Speaker 3: you pay closer attention, when you look at the data
Speaker 3: instead of relying on our negative assumptions about other people,
Speaker 3: pleasant surprises are everywhere. And so what I try to
Speaker 3: argue for in the book is a data driven, skeptical
Speaker 3: type of hope, not being a Pollyanna, not trusting people unthinkingly,
Speaker 3: but also not mistrusting people unthinkingly, instead trying to treat
Speaker 3: our lives more like a scientific experiment. And when we
Speaker 3: do that, there's a lot of hope to be found.
Speaker 2: Is the cynic internally unhappy?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, there is decades of evidence that point out and
Speaker 3: find that cynics and to live really diminished lives compared
Speaker 3: to less cynical people, so they are more prone to depression, loneliness,
Speaker 3: but also things like substance abuse, heart disease and even
Speaker 3: early mortality. So it turns out that cynics die younger
Speaker 3: than non cynics, and it's to me really sad and ironic.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the most famous descriptions of cynicism comes from
Speaker 3: Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher who said, we need government to
Speaker 3: restrict us because, left to our own defight devices, human
Speaker 3: life is nasty, brutish, and short. But ironically that might
Speaker 3: best describe the lives of cynics themselves, right, And I
Speaker 3: say this not in a judgmental way. I want to
Speaker 3: remind you that I myself identified as a cynic for
Speaker 3: a long time, so these are experiences that I am
Speaker 3: deeply familiar with. But the evidence is pretty clear that
Speaker 3: cynical thinking hurts us at almost every level that scientists
Speaker 3: can measure.
Speaker 2: We turn around the cynic.
Speaker 3: I sure, hope, though for my own sake, But no,
Speaker 3: it turns out that you can. Cynicism is not a
Speaker 3: It's partially genetic, but really that's a minority share. Most
Speaker 3: of our cynicism comes from our experiences, and by changing
Speaker 3: our experiences and the way that we interact with the world,
Speaker 3: we can systematically try to overturn our cynicism again, not
Speaker 3: by being a Pollyanna, not by becoming naive, but rather
Speaker 3: by trying to pay closer attention to the evidence.
Speaker 2: Well, Doctor jamil Zaki's book is called Hope for Cynics,
Speaker 2: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. After the break, we'll
Speaker 2: come back and talk about skepticism and how you can
Speaker 2: change that. But there is hope, you believe for these
Speaker 2: kinds of folks, Doctor.
Speaker 3: Of course, I think there is, Otherwise I would not
Speaker 3: have written this book. I think that a lot of
Speaker 3: the hope here comes from the idea that we can
Speaker 3: change our minds. We have a lot of control over
Speaker 3: who we become, much more than most people realize. And
Speaker 3: I'm really thrilled to talk more about that as well.
Speaker 3: But were when you look at the psychology of the
Speaker 3: human mind, you've realized that we can be empowered because
Speaker 3: a lot of who we are and who we become
Speaker 3: is actually up to us.
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