Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with Part
Speaker 3: two in our series on cynicism, the tendency to believe
Speaker 3: other people are selfish, untrustworthy, and immoral. In Part one,
Speaker 3: we talked about what cynicism means in its modern usage,
Speaker 3: and we contrasted that with similar but distinct concepts like pessimism,
Speaker 3: and also with cynic philosophy, the latter being a school
Speaker 3: of philosophy born in ancient Greece that emphasized moral integrity,
Speaker 3: self sufficiency, and virtue, and achieved in part by shedding pretensions,
Speaker 3: like ignoring the pressure to conform and living in accordance
Speaker 3: with our nature. The word cynic comes from the Greek
Speaker 3: word for, and so a cynic philosopher in the ancient
Speaker 3: sense might say that we can all learn something from
Speaker 3: watching the honest way that a dog lives according to
Speaker 3: its nature. This, of course, is quite different from what
Speaker 3: we mean by cynicism today in common language, which is
Speaker 3: a disposition of low social trust, the tendency to believe,
Speaker 3: as we put it, last time, that people are bad,
Speaker 3: people are selfish, and morals are fake. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ancient philosophic cynics be like a dog. Modern cynics
Speaker 2: dog eat dog.
Speaker 3: Yes, now, last time, we also talked a bit about
Speaker 3: cynicism in literature, with my observation that really, like the
Speaker 3: most cynical writing I could find anywhere was all in
Speaker 3: the Bible, which I'm not sure exactly what to make
Speaker 3: of that, but that is kind of surprising and counterintuitive perhaps,
Speaker 3: But it's like, especially in the books of the prophets
Speaker 3: in the Hebrew Bible, like Micah and Jeremiah, full of
Speaker 3: just very eloquent, devastating condemnations of human nature. The heart
Speaker 3: is deceitful above all things. There is none that doeth good, No,
Speaker 3: not one, that sort of thing. We also discussed medical, psychological,
Speaker 3: and sociological research on the correlates of cynicism, with the
Speaker 3: overwhelming conclusion being that holding cynical beliefs about human nature
Speaker 3: and low trust in others is quite harmful to us
Speaker 3: in many different ways. It appears to be bad for
Speaker 3: our health, mental and physical health. It is correlated with
Speaker 3: all kinds of undesirable outcomes, including early death. We didn't
Speaker 3: really get into this research last time, but you probably
Speaker 3: won't be surprised to learn it is associated with low
Speaker 3: quality social relationships, and despite the archetype of the ruthless,
Speaker 3: cynical striver and achiever, it also tends, on average to
Speaker 3: make it harder for us to reach even our material
Speaker 3: goals like making money and attaining positions of leadership, at
Speaker 3: least in part because cynical people waste a lot of
Speaker 3: time and resources trying to avoid being made a sucker
Speaker 3: and miss out on opportunities to cooperate with others for
Speaker 3: mutual benefit. So I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 3: believing everyone is just in it for themselves and cannot
Speaker 3: be trusted is in so many ways bad, bad, bad
Speaker 3: for us. It's bad for our lives. But of course,
Speaker 3: the somewhat heartwarming implied inverse of all this is the
Speaker 3: evidence that it really does us good to cooperate and
Speaker 3: trust people.
Speaker 2: Definite silver lining there to all all of this research
Speaker 2: we've been doing here now.
Speaker 3: In the last episode, we also raised a number of
Speaker 3: questions that we weren't able to fully answer yet, and
Speaker 3: we'll come back to them throughout the series. I think
Speaker 3: we'll look at at least one study today that sheds
Speaker 3: some light on this. But these were questions like, do
Speaker 3: more cynical or less cynical people actually have a better
Speaker 3: predictive model of the world, who's model of how other
Speaker 3: people behave is more accurate? And in any given situation,
Speaker 3: how can we know if we're being too trusting, too cynical,
Speaker 3: or if we're striking just the most reasonable balance. And also,
Speaker 3: given that it comes with so many clear downsides, what
Speaker 3: if anything, is the benefit of cynicism.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not sure this will actually help us answer
Speaker 2: any of these questions, but then maybe it'll give us
Speaker 2: just a little more elbow room to work with the concept.
Speaker 2: Reading through Anscar Allen's cynicism book Mit that I reverenced
Speaker 2: in the last episode, and he covers several subsets of
Speaker 2: modern cynicism, and here are a few that I thought
Speaker 2: might help us out. So one category is insider cynics,
Speaker 2: So the cynicism of contemporary professionals who believe that people
Speaker 2: are ultimately selfish, and these individuals do their best to
Speaker 2: survive in their organizations by dealing with their colleagues on
Speaker 2: those terms. So we might think of it as a
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not here to make friends approach, but
Speaker 2: you know, only to work or specifically to work, with
Speaker 2: the idea being that maybe outside of that work environment
Speaker 2: they are less cynical.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well, I would certainly have questions about how
Speaker 3: skilled people are actually are at like turning cynicism on
Speaker 3: and off when switching between contexts. But you can certainly
Speaker 3: see how that would be useful, maybe because you know,
Speaker 3: it's quite reasonable to understand that, like, certain professional environments
Speaker 3: require a lot less trust, require you to be more
Speaker 3: doubting of people. Maybe if you are, I don't know,
Speaker 3: investigating murders or something like that, like you you really
Speaker 3: need to not just like trust people.
Speaker 2: There are so many movies about murder detectives being able
Speaker 2: to neatly separate their work life from their home life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so hopefully if you were in a job
Speaker 3: like that, or if you're in just in kind of
Speaker 3: a cutthrow business environment where everybody, you know, everybody's trying
Speaker 3: to edge other people out in deals, you would hope
Speaker 3: to be able to turn that off when you come
Speaker 3: out of that and get into your relationships in life.
Speaker 3: I guess it's questionable to what extent people can do
Speaker 3: that very well.
Speaker 2: I would agree with that. Yes, Another classification that he
Speaker 2: singles out are the master cynics, so rich and powerful
Speaker 2: contemporary cynics who hide their own cynicism by adopting the
Speaker 2: values and beliefs of people they hold power over. In
Speaker 2: a weird sense, system's kind of kind of a puzzle
Speaker 2: because a person who's really cynical about politics would no
Speaker 2: doubt assume that every politician is a master cynic, that
Speaker 2: they're just when they're glad handing and so forth, they're
Speaker 2: just pretending to take on these values where deep down
Speaker 2: they know the truth, like I know that people are
Speaker 2: just selfish and they're exploiting everyone as well.
Speaker 3: We're going to have to come back to the question
Speaker 3: of cynicism in politics and political participation because I think
Speaker 3: that raises all sorts of interesting questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's been a lot of research, a lot
Speaker 2: of writing just on that area alone. Now, the third
Speaker 2: of the categories that I'm going to reference here. There
Speaker 2: are some additional ones that I'm not getting into, but
Speaker 2: the third one I want to reference here is paternalistic cynicism,
Speaker 2: and in this one holds a cynical view of human
Speaker 2: motivations and seeks to capitalize on those motivations, but not
Speaker 2: for personal gain, but for the greater good. And that one,
Speaker 2: you know, made me think a little bit more and
Speaker 2: maybe gives us a little more room to play when
Speaker 2: considering the effectiveness or possible effectiveness of cynicism. I was thinking, like,
Speaker 2: let's say you wanted to encourage a certain behavior in
Speaker 2: the general public, and you're presented with two messaging options,
Speaker 2: one that works based on a cynical view of human motivations,
Speaker 2: you know, greed and self interest, while the other appeals
Speaker 2: to the higher angels of their nature. Well, which is
Speaker 2: more likely to work. It's going to depend on the messaging,
Speaker 2: of course, and the exact details of the target audience,
Speaker 2: you know, general audience versus you know, some narrow or audience.
Speaker 2: But yeah, which worldview is a better starting place? I
Speaker 2: feel like this might work as a good sort of
Speaker 2: practical thought experiment because it entails making a choice about
Speaker 2: how you're going to model the motivations of a given population.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, we kind of come back
Speaker 2: to that sliding scale of cynicism. If one is cynical
Speaker 2: enough about the intended audience, then would any messaging seem
Speaker 2: like it would work, like why are you even bothering?
Speaker 2: If you're just assuming that everyone out there is just selfish,
Speaker 2: you might not be able to get them to stop littering,
Speaker 2: or to recycle or to I don't know where seat belts.
Speaker 3: But maybe the paternalistic cynicism model is like, you must
Speaker 3: stop littering and you must be kind to your fellow
Speaker 3: human being or you will go to hell something you know,
Speaker 3: like appealing to your base personal interest in order to
Speaker 3: get you to do something that the messager sees as good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bring it back to fear right. Maybe I'm just
Speaker 2: muddying the waters. But there's so many different areas you
Speaker 2: can get into in discussion of modern cynicism. Rob.
Speaker 3: One thing you said in the last episode that I
Speaker 3: thought was really insightful and I have kept thinking about
Speaker 3: ever since we recorded that is that you said maybe
Speaker 3: one of the appeals of cynicism is that expressions of
Speaker 3: cynicism are cathartic statements, like people suck. They when you
Speaker 3: say things like that, or when somebody else says that
Speaker 3: and you get to agree with them, it feels like
Speaker 3: a psychological pressure release valve by like making a statement
Speaker 3: of that sort you're sort of blowing off steam. And
Speaker 3: of course this can be true even for people who
Speaker 3: are not especially cynical on average, having these little moments
Speaker 3: of situational cynicism. But I was thinking more about the
Speaker 3: Catharsis element, and I wonder if this association of cynicism
Speaker 3: with cathartic relief also tells us something about how people
Speaker 3: can acquire generalized dispositional cynicism. Like what if the person
Speaker 3: who is very cynical on average gets to be that
Speaker 3: way by creating by like habituating themselves to a desire
Speaker 3: for that momentary catharsis that you get from saying people suck?
Speaker 3: Does that make any sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you dip your hand into the cynicism cookie
Speaker 2: jar a few times too often and the crumbs begin
Speaker 2: to stick. Yeah. I was thinking about this when I
Speaker 2: was looking at some material related to cynicism in the workplace,
Speaker 2: which is its own huge area of consideration that we're
Speaker 2: not really going to get into in this episode per se.
Speaker 2: But I was just thinking about, Okay, if one's really
Speaker 2: cynical regarding one's employers, one's corporate overlords, you might excuse
Speaker 2: any amount of inaction or slacking based on the view that, well,
Speaker 2: they don't really care about me, they're not invested in me,
Speaker 2: they're not paying me enough, and so forth, all any
Speaker 2: grievance you might imagine. And maybe, just maybe in small doses,
Speaker 2: this gives you space to let things glide in ways
Speaker 2: that ease your work burden or create space for something
Speaker 2: else you want to do. And yeah, maybe it's a
Speaker 2: situation where if you stick your hand into that cookie
Speaker 2: jar too often, it does become your default view, at
Speaker 2: least of your work situation. And maybe it bleeds over
Speaker 2: into other areas as well.
Speaker 3: That is an interesting possibility. So you're in a kind
Speaker 3: of a pressure inducing scenario and you, for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: you can get little moments of relief from that pressure
Speaker 3: by resorting to cynical evaluations. And so does that create
Speaker 3: a kind of addiction, Like you associate the moment of
Speaker 3: cathartic cynicism with relaxation of the pain, or with pleasure
Speaker 3: even or something like that, and you just kind of
Speaker 3: keep pressing the pleasure button until that's just what your
Speaker 3: personality is. Yeah, I don't have research to back up
Speaker 3: that interpretation of where cynicism comes from, but I think
Speaker 3: that is an interesting possibility or if it ever sets
Speaker 3: in that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I also was thinking, you know, in terms
Speaker 2: of dealing with this a corporation or a company, like
Speaker 2: it's one thing to sort of initially think cynically about,
Speaker 2: like this faceless thing, this organization. But of course organizations
Speaker 2: are made up of people, and so I wonder how
Speaker 2: the cynicism might spread where you might generally have cynical
Speaker 2: ideas about a company, but then those cynical ideas end
Speaker 2: up applying to certain heads of that company. But then
Speaker 2: it could potentially trickle down and then where does it stop?
Speaker 2: Like who stops being the face of the company. I
Speaker 2: guess they have to be cynical enough. They have to
Speaker 2: share your cynicism in order to be like your your
Speaker 2: brothers in arms against the company, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, Actually this sort of gets a
Speaker 3: little bit into something I'm gonna talk about in the paper.
Speaker 3: I'm about to explain. But there are different environments. There
Speaker 3: are different sort of environments and contexts that encourage and
Speaker 3: or different levels of cynicism. And so there can be
Speaker 3: very like cynicism positive organizations, like if you are within
Speaker 3: a company that is very cruel and in which you
Speaker 3: know you don't do very well by placing trust in people,
Speaker 3: it can be quite reasonable to end up responding with
Speaker 3: the generalized cynicism about interactions within that company. Organizational culture
Speaker 3: is a thing. So anyway, So I want to turn
Speaker 3: to a concept in psychological research on cynicism that I
Speaker 3: found really interesting, and that is the so called cynical
Speaker 3: genius illusion. So I was reading about this in a
Speaker 3: paper by a couple of researchers that I cited in
Speaker 3: part one of the series. These scientists are Olga Stavrova,
Speaker 3: a professor of psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands,
Speaker 3: and Daniel Illbracht at the University of Cologne in Germany.
Speaker 3: These two published a paper in the year twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and the
Speaker 3: paper was called the Cynical Genius Illusion, Exploring and Debunking
Speaker 3: lay beliefs about cynicism and competence. Now they begin by
Speaker 3: acknowledging a lot of the things we talked about in
Speaker 3: the last episode. They define cynicism as you know, the
Speaker 3: main cognitive component of hostility. They're talking about it pretty
Speaker 3: much in the same terms we are a belief that
Speaker 3: other people you know, you should be suspicious of their motives,
Speaker 3: that they that they are primarily motivated by self interest,
Speaker 3: that they can't be trusted and will harm you. And
Speaker 3: then they run through the long list of ways that
Speaker 3: cynicism appears to be bad for us, bad for our
Speaker 3: lives in health, in relationships, and ability to attain goals
Speaker 3: and so forth. However, the authors complicate that picture by
Speaker 3: noting that if you just look at popular culture and
Speaker 3: literature and folk wisdom, cynicism does not not seem to
Speaker 3: have and on the whole negative reputation. To read from
Speaker 3: their introduction here quote, Among nineteenth and twentieth century writers
Speaker 3: in popular figures, cynicism has often been seen as a
Speaker 3: sign of intelligence and wit. American writers Ambrose Bierce and
Speaker 3: Lillian Hellman praised cynicism as an art of seeing the
Speaker 3: true nature of things. Bernard Shaw referred to cynicism as
Speaker 3: a quote power of accurate observation, and John Stuart Mill
Speaker 3: noticed that quote it is thought essential to a man
Speaker 3: who has any knowledge of the world to have an
Speaker 3: extremely bad opinion of it. And as for the other
Speaker 3: authors they named, I looked up some of the cynical quotes.
Speaker 3: I can't believe I didn't think of Ambrose Bierce as
Speaker 3: a good source of literary cynicism in the last episode.
Speaker 3: But in The Devil's Dictionary, Bierce defines a cynic as
Speaker 3: someone quote whose faulty vision sees things as they are,
Speaker 3: not as they ought to be. They all so cided
Speaker 3: Lillian Hellman. Her version of this was, quote, cynicism is
Speaker 3: an unpleasant way of saying the truth. And I do
Speaker 3: think there's something interesting in Hellman's phrasing here, because of
Speaker 3: the emphasis on tone. It is an unpleasant way of
Speaker 3: saying what is true. So what is the difference between
Speaker 3: somebody just quote being real and somebody being cynical. It
Speaker 3: might be in the substance of what they say and
Speaker 3: how they think. It might be like you know, material
Speaker 3: substantive differences. But I think sometimes we make that distinction
Speaker 3: based on whether there is negative emotion in their expression,
Speaker 3: Like if they are counseling us against trust, did they
Speaker 3: deliver that council with anger or contempt? But anyway, so
Speaker 3: you've got all this literature that equates cynicism with the
Speaker 3: kind of wisdom and you know, like the power to
Speaker 3: see what is really going on. Also, the authors here
Speaker 3: point out that if you draw up a list of
Speaker 3: like cynical characters in popular culture, they don't tend to
Speaker 3: be pitiable wretches dealing with setbacks imposed by their lack
Speaker 3: of faith in humankind. More often, cynicism in fictional characters
Speaker 3: is presented as gruff hard one realism and wisdom. The
Speaker 3: cynical character has knowledge, insights, and powers of deduction not
Speaker 3: available to their more trusting peers. So think of Sherlock
Speaker 3: Holmes or the authors give the example of House from
Speaker 3: how simd. I'm not a watcher of House, but I'm
Speaker 3: familiar with the character.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could do a full stop after Sherlock,
Speaker 2: because Sherlock, of course influences so many different similar characters
Speaker 2: and cast a long shadow across across the English language
Speaker 2: and fiction and other languages, but cast a long shadow
Speaker 2: across our media. Yeah, and yet at this and it
Speaker 2: is interesting to think about Sherlock Holmes in these terms,
Speaker 2: because yes, Sherlock Holmes is presented as being, you know,
Speaker 2: somewhat emotionally detached, but not you know, certainly he's fighting
Speaker 2: the good fight. He is on the side of the
Speaker 2: good guy, and will sometimes even you know, break the
Speaker 2: rules a little bit or bend them in order to
Speaker 2: make sure that justice is served. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: I think if you, if you look closely enough at Sherlock,
Speaker 2: I mean he's also a character who at times admits
Speaker 2: that he's never loved anyone or has certainly never had
Speaker 2: a romantic love in his life. He also struggles horribly
Speaker 2: with addiction at one point. You know, so you know,
Speaker 2: he's he's not an angel. But again, I guess this
Speaker 2: part of his presentation, he's he's hard boiled. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's it's hard one cynicism that he uses in order
Speaker 2: to solve the crimes that he's presented with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that is actually generally true.
Speaker 3: Cynical characters are often presented as suffering as a result
Speaker 3: of their own cynicism, but not wrong because of it,
Speaker 3: Like that their cynicism is something that hurts them and
Speaker 3: it makes them sad and lonely, but it also gives
Speaker 3: them cognitive superiority. It gives them intelligence and wisdom and
Speaker 3: power to see through the facade and see what's really happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so based on this background of the cynical
Speaker 3: geniuses in fiction, and the sort of cynical wit and
Speaker 3: wisdom from literature. The author is conducted a number of
Speaker 3: different studies. They did four studies to explore common beliefs
Speaker 3: about the link between cynicism and cognitive superiority and competence,
Speaker 3: and then three more studies to look at whether there
Speaker 3: actually is a link. So, do people in general think
Speaker 3: that cynicism is a sign of knowledge, intellect, and competence.
Speaker 3: Do cynics actually seem smarter? And are they actually smarter
Speaker 3: and more competent than the rest of us?
Speaker 2: Well Sherlock is above reproach, but I'm curious to hear
Speaker 2: how it lights to real people.
Speaker 3: So the authors begin by acknowledging some existing research that
Speaker 3: touches on these questions. For example, there was a study
Speaker 3: by Evans and Venda Caalceda published in Personality and Social
Speaker 3: Psychology Bulletin in twenty eighteen called the Reputational Consequences of
Speaker 3: Generalized Trust. And this study looked at what we was
Speaker 3: just sort of a survey of what we tend to
Speaker 3: think of people when we know that they are high
Speaker 3: in trust or low in cynicism. The findings were that
Speaker 3: high trust, individuals are seen as moral and seen as sociable,
Speaker 3: but also seen as less competent. And this kind of
Speaker 3: makes sense as a familiar personality archetype, right like, Johnny
Speaker 3: is so trusting, he's a good guy, he's friendly, but
Speaker 3: he doesn't know what he's doing. So, if showing generalized
Speaker 3: trust makes people think we're less competent, does that imply
Speaker 3: that showing generalized distrust makes people think we're more competent. Perhaps? However,
Speaker 3: the authors also found here that people see you as
Speaker 3: more competent if you display what they call discriminate ability,
Speaker 3: which is the ability to tell the difference between a
Speaker 3: situation in which you should trust and situations in which
Speaker 3: you should not. And this takes us back to the
Speaker 3: question we mentioned in part one. Obviously, nobody either trusts
Speaker 3: or distrusts in every situation, So how do you determine
Speaker 3: how cynical it is reasonable to be in this situation?
Speaker 3: And how do we know if we're off balance?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: The authors also discuss reasons that people might think it
Speaker 3: is wise to be cynical. One is pretty familiar better
Speaker 3: safe than sorry reasoning. They write, quote in many domains,
Speaker 3: the consequences of false negative errors e g. Believing that
Speaker 3: someone is trustworthy when they really are not have often
Speaker 3: been more costly than false positive errors e g. Believing
Speaker 3: that someone is untrustworthy when they really are trustworthy. Over
Speaker 3: human evolutionary history, making the cognitive system of modern humans
Speaker 3: biased toward false alarms, which is hard to argue with, right, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 3: in this series, we are showing lots of evidence that
Speaker 3: it is bad for you to be highly chronically cynical,
Speaker 3: and yet it's true that more often if you distrust
Speaker 3: a trustworthy person, the immediate consequences are fairly limited, but
Speaker 3: if you trust an untrustworthy person, the consequences can be disastrous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked about this a little bit in the
Speaker 2: last episode. Type one Eras and Cognition. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like you've got to make your way across an open field,
Speaker 2: and you know there's going to be a time cost
Speaker 2: and probably like you know, an anxiety cost to checking
Speaker 2: every bush along the way to make sure there's not
Speaker 2: a tiger in there to jump out and get you.
Speaker 2: But you know, the way our brains work and the
Speaker 2: way we're hardwired, it's like we know that that's one
Speaker 2: sort of risk I'm going to lose some time, and
Speaker 2: I might you know, feel horrible the whole way versus
Speaker 2: getting eaten by a tiger. Yeah, like one of those
Speaker 2: is like a mutt like looms far larger in our
Speaker 2: short term threat analysis.
Speaker 3: One side of the balance has an infinite cost on it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like kind of hard to outbalance that, even though,
Speaker 3: like wasting all your time and resources checking every bush
Speaker 3: that really does matter, like over time, that hugely impacts
Speaker 3: your quality of life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, especially of course, you know when you get
Speaker 2: into not only real tigers, but all the paper tigers
Speaker 2: in one's life, you know.
Speaker 3: So anyway, they say that a general appreciation for the
Speaker 3: merits of the better safe than sorry framework could lead
Speaker 3: to the widespread notion that cynics are smarter people. They're
Speaker 3: more knowledgeable and more competent. Now, continuing the background review,
Speaker 3: the authors also get into existing research on whether there
Speaker 3: is an actual link between cynicism and competence. So now
Speaker 3: we're asking not about how cynics are perceived, but about
Speaker 3: what their relative competence level actually is. And this, I
Speaker 3: guess comes back to another question we brought up in
Speaker 3: Part one. Do cynics or nonsnics have a better predictive
Speaker 3: model of the world. And one very interesting way of
Speaker 3: studying this is the so called trust game. So here's
Speaker 3: an example of a type of trust game. This was
Speaker 3: described in a paper called why so cynical asymmetric feedback
Speaker 3: underlies misguided skepticism regarding the trustworthiness of others. This was
Speaker 3: by Debt Left, Fetchenhawer, and David Dunning in the journal
Speaker 3: Psychological Science in twenty ten and it describes this what
Speaker 3: is sometimes called an investing game. They call it a
Speaker 3: trust game, and it goes like this quote. In the game,
Speaker 3: the trust is given money that can be kept or
Speaker 3: handed to a completely random and anonymous stranger, the trustee.
Speaker 3: If the trust hands his or her money over, the
Speaker 3: amount of money is quadrupled eg. Five dollars becomes twenty dollars,
Speaker 3: and trustees have two options. They can either split the
Speaker 3: money evenly between themselves and the truster, eg. Give ten
Speaker 3: dollars back and keep ten dollars for themselves, or they
Speaker 3: can keep all the money for themselves. So the way
Speaker 3: the game works is I'm the truster. I'm the person
Speaker 3: who gets to make the first decision. If I trust
Speaker 3: you and you are trustworthy, we both benefit and I
Speaker 3: double my money. If I trust you and you are
Speaker 3: not trustworthy, I get nothing. So the authors did this
Speaker 3: experiment lots of times and some interesting patterns came out.
Speaker 3: They found that trusters estimate the rate of trustworthiness of
Speaker 3: anonymous strangers in the game. They estimate it will be
Speaker 3: between four forty five and sixty percent. So it seems
Speaker 3: that most people think it's a little better than a
Speaker 3: coin flip chance that the other person will honor their
Speaker 3: trust and split the money for mutual benefit. In reality,
Speaker 3: the trustees honored the trust and split the money around
Speaker 3: eighty to ninety percent of the time. So people in
Speaker 3: this game massively underestimated how trustworthy random strangers would be.
Speaker 3: At least in the context of this game, anonymous strangers
Speaker 3: were something like twenty to fifty percent more trustworthy and
Speaker 3: cooperative than people expected them to be. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 3: That's crazy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, eighty to ninety percent of the time. That's higher
Speaker 2: than I would have guessed. But then again, it's like,
Speaker 2: I'd like to think that if someone offered me the
Speaker 2: scenario and I was not too cynical and trusted that
Speaker 2: it was not some sort of a scam, I would
Speaker 2: be as trustworthy.
Speaker 3: Can I offer. I think maybe one thing that could
Speaker 3: be working in this particular scenario is that it makes
Speaker 3: sense to be wary of people who are offering to
Speaker 3: double your money in financial transactions. But I think that
Speaker 3: makes sense when like people come to you and they
Speaker 3: say like, hey, you know, you give me some money
Speaker 3: and I'll double it, you should. I mean, if somebody
Speaker 3: says that they're not telling you the truth, almost always,
Speaker 3: so like there's a good reason to be wary there.
Speaker 3: This is a different thing because the trustee in this
Speaker 3: game is not somebody who is coming out of nowhere
Speaker 3: to offer you money if you just give them some first.
Speaker 3: They're a random stranger who is who has been pulled
Speaker 3: into this experiment designed by somebody else. And so I
Speaker 3: think what this shows is most of the time, if
Speaker 3: given the opportunity to be trustworthy and cooperate, most people will.
Speaker 3: But also it makes sense to be wary of people
Speaker 3: who are claiming they're trying to help you cooperate, you know,
Speaker 3: from mutual benefit. If they're coming out of nowhere with this,
Speaker 3: you know, that's often going to be a scam. Does
Speaker 3: that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: But anyway. So yeah, in the trust game, most people
Speaker 3: are very trustworthy and players are on average way too
Speaker 3: cynical about their fellow human being. They are missing out
Speaker 3: on lots of opportunities to double their money. And this
Speaker 3: is consistent with research by Miller in nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 3: and ninety nine finding that people just tend to grossly
Speaker 3: overestimate the selfishness and underestimate the trustworthiness of strangers. In
Speaker 3: this particular paper, the authors note that cynicism might grow
Speaker 3: from what they call asymmetric feedback. And the way that
Speaker 3: works is this, when you trust somebody and you get betrayed,
Speaker 3: you get very clear feedback that it was wrong to trust.
Speaker 3: The downside of granting your trust is very apparent to you.
Speaker 3: They walk away with the money, you get nothing, and
Speaker 3: you know it's clear to you happened. But when you
Speaker 3: refrain from trusting people, the downsides are often invisible to
Speaker 3: you because you don't actually see the lost opportunity as
Speaker 3: a scenario that plays out in front of you. You
Speaker 3: have to like imagine it as a counterfactual. It's not
Speaker 3: concrete and in your face, like being betrayed is, so
Speaker 3: you don't really get conditioned by feedback from instances where
Speaker 3: you harmed yourself by withholding trust. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of like ive, like, here's a scenario.
Speaker 2: Let's imagine that you're just really pedantic when looking at
Speaker 2: the checks when you go out to eat with friends.
Speaker 2: You know, you're like, all right, I want to see
Speaker 2: everybody's work. I got to make one hundred percent sure
Speaker 2: this is fair. And maybe it's because at some point
Speaker 2: someone really did stick you, yeah, over one of these situations,
Speaker 2: and so it maybe that is more apparent. You like,
Speaker 2: you're never going to forget that that you were wronged
Speaker 2: in this way. But if you're if you're just overly
Speaker 2: pedantic when it comes to the bills, eventually people might
Speaker 2: stop asking you to join them for dinner. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: that might be very invisible to you that that's happening.
Speaker 3: Yes, you don't realize. Yeah, it's just like things are
Speaker 3: not as good now, and I don't know why I'm
Speaker 3: feeling lonely. Yeah, Or is a more direct comparison, If
Speaker 3: you're not looking at the checks all the time, you
Speaker 3: might not notice the times when somebody made a mistake
Speaker 3: in your favor that just passed You never even noticed
Speaker 3: that it just goes right by you. That is a
Speaker 3: good comparison. But anyway, what the study found is that
Speaker 3: if you give subjects symmetric feedback about the trustworthiness of others,
Speaker 3: it tended to reduce the subject's cynicism. So, like, let's
Speaker 3: say you play the trust game, symmetric feedback would be
Speaker 3: rob whether or not you decide to hand somebody the
Speaker 3: five dollars and try to cooperate to quadruple it. You
Speaker 3: get to find out what they would have done either way,
Speaker 3: so you know, you get to keep playing the game
Speaker 3: that way, And it turns out if you play it
Speaker 3: that way, where people keep seeing, oh, I kept the money,
Speaker 3: but they I saw that they would have doubled my
Speaker 3: money if I just trusted them, and you get to
Speaker 3: see that happen over and over. That actually does decrease
Speaker 3: people's cynicism, which also is interesting and that it gives
Speaker 3: you at least a little bit of an idea where
Speaker 3: some elements of cynicism could be coming from. It could
Speaker 3: be related in part to this asymmetric build up of information.
Speaker 3: We get to see where trust fails very clearly, but
Speaker 3: the opportunities we lose out on by not granting trust
Speaker 3: are often just like, we don't even realize what's happened.
Speaker 3: We don't even realize anything. We don't even know what
Speaker 3: we're missing. Yeah, so this research does not give us
Speaker 3: a complete picture. But I think some evidence is starting
Speaker 3: to accumulate that the cynic does not have a highly
Speaker 3: accurate internal model of the world. They might in some scenarios,
Speaker 3: but generalized cynicism is not like as some of these
Speaker 3: writers were saying, seeing things as they really are. In fact,
Speaker 3: cynicism often causes us to incorrectly predict the behavior of
Speaker 3: other people, assuming they will be more selfish and treacherous
Speaker 3: than they really are. Now coming back to the main
Speaker 3: paper I was talking about, but Stavrova and elibract they
Speaker 3: note some other research on the link between cynicism and competence. Again,
Speaker 3: contrary to the cynical genius archetype, the authors are able
Speaker 3: to cite a long list of studies looking at links
Speaker 3: between cynicism and various types of cognitive performance and ability,
Speaker 3: and they find it's exactly the opposite of what you
Speaker 3: might guess from the Sherlock Holmes example. Higher performance on
Speaker 3: various types of cognitive academic and IQ tests is negatively
Speaker 3: correlated with cynicism. It is instead positively correlated with increased
Speaker 3: tendency to trust. There are a few confounding results here.
Speaker 3: It's not like every single study has found this, but
Speaker 3: the vast majority have. Some of the confounding results are
Speaker 3: For example, they cite a twenty thirteen study that found
Speaker 3: that higher IQ does not, on average improve a person's
Speaker 3: ability to correctly predict who will be trustworthy and who
Speaker 3: will not. So like you do better on cognitive tests,
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean that if we pair you up with,
Speaker 3: you know, Johnny and Billy in the in the Trust
Speaker 3: Game experiment, you can predict whether Johnny or Billy you'll
Speaker 3: be more likely to help you out. It just it
Speaker 3: doesn't help us in that regard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the compass is already pulling you in
Speaker 2: one direction or another, and however higher IQ is, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just that's just the kind of mental energy that
Speaker 2: ends up being wrapped around the initial impulse.
Speaker 3: Another thing to keep in mind here is that, of course,
Speaker 3: while like various cognitive and IQ and academic tests can
Speaker 3: tell you, they can tell you a lot of things
Speaker 3: about cognitive ability, they don't tell you everything. So you know,
Speaker 3: they can tell you about certain kinds of skills with
Speaker 3: reasoning certain kinds of intelligence, but there are always going
Speaker 3: to be elements of intelligence that are not perfectly captured
Speaker 3: by these sorts of tests. So the authors begin to
Speaker 3: develop a possible hypothetical model to explain what's going on here.
Speaker 3: They say, what if intelligence, knowledge and competence don't really
Speaker 3: help you very much in identifying who to trust in
Speaker 3: a given scenario. They don't tell you really if Johnny
Speaker 3: or Billy, both of whom you've just met, is more trustworthy,
Speaker 3: But instead they help you evaluate the scenario itself to
Speaker 3: decide whether to deploy a more cynical or a more
Speaker 3: trusting framework given the environment and the circumstances. The authors
Speaker 3: rit quote high levels of competence might allow individuals to
Speaker 3: correctly identify the corruptness of their environment and adjust their
Speaker 3: level of cynicism to match it. Following this reasoning, high
Speaker 3: competence individuals might hold adapt attitudes and recur to cynicism
Speaker 3: only when it seems warranted, while they're less competent. Counterparts
Speaker 3: might show more cognitive rigidity and relying on the better
Speaker 3: safe than sorry heuristic tend to endorse cynicism indiscriminately. So
Speaker 3: if this model is correct, they're saying it can be
Speaker 3: efficient to just remain in better safe than sorry mode
Speaker 3: when you lack the ability to tell whether you're dealing
Speaker 3: with a corrupt, untrustworthy environment or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this makes sense. We can all think of
Speaker 2: examples where the scenario is very clear, like, Okay, even
Speaker 2: if someone is out to get me, this is not
Speaker 2: the environment where they can just really take me for
Speaker 2: all I'm worth. I'm literally handing somebody a five dollar bill.
Speaker 2: What are they going to do. They're going to run
Speaker 2: away into the woods and keep my dollar fifty and
Speaker 2: change that the risks seem low.
Speaker 3: So onto Stevrova and Illebrect's actual experiments, and I'll start
Speaker 3: with the very short version of their findings. First of all,
Speaker 3: they find yes on average across multiple experiments. Regular people
Speaker 3: tend to believe that cynicism is a sign of cognitive
Speaker 3: superiority in others, if you think people are bad, you
Speaker 3: think people are selfish and morals are fake. On balance,
Speaker 3: people will tend to assume you are smarter and more competent,
Speaker 3: especially at certain types of cognitive tasks. Things involving logic
Speaker 3: and numbers and stuff. They're more likely to assign you
Speaker 3: important cognitive tasks like doing mathematical calculations and logical analysis
Speaker 3: of documents if they think you're cynical. And on the
Speaker 3: other hand, the authors found in their experiments no, on average,
Speaker 3: cynicism is not associated with cognitive superiority or greater competence.
Speaker 3: They had three studies based on data from about two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand subjects across thirty different countries and showed that
Speaker 3: on average, cynicism was negatively correlated with tests of cognitive
Speaker 3: ability and tests of academic nolede and competency. So this
Speaker 3: included all kinds of things like reading, comprehension, mathematical skills,
Speaker 3: scientific literacy, technological literacy, and so forth. And this negative
Speaker 3: association between cynicism and cognitive tests was true even after
Speaker 3: controlling for confounding variables like age, gender, household income, wealth, test,
Speaker 3: language proficiency, and Big five personality traits. Now, one major
Speaker 3: distinction here is that they found that people who tested
Speaker 3: higher incompetence tended to have attitudes of contingent trust. They
Speaker 3: might be trusting by default, but we're not rigid in
Speaker 3: that regard and would become more cynical if it was
Speaker 3: warranted situationally or based on the environment and cultural context,
Speaker 3: whereas people scoring lower incompetence tended to accept an unconditionally
Speaker 3: cynical worldview. In the words of the authors quote suggesting
Speaker 3: that at low leane levels of competence, holding a cynical
Speaker 3: worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the
Speaker 3: potential costs of falling prey to others cunning. Now, I
Speaker 3: wanted to expand on these findings with a few notes.
Speaker 3: One of the things about the early tests of people's
Speaker 3: perceptions of cynicism a control they had here, is that
Speaker 3: the authors didn't just ask about cognitive competence. They also
Speaker 3: asked about social and moral competence, and quite along the
Speaker 3: lines you might expect. People tended to think that low
Speaker 3: trust individuals would be better at cognitive things like math, logic,
Speaker 3: and critical thinking, but they thought that high trust individuals
Speaker 3: would be better at social tasks like cheering up a
Speaker 3: depressed friend or taking care of a stray animal. So
Speaker 3: it wasn't just like across the board we think cynics
Speaker 3: are great. We think cynics are better at everything. It's
Speaker 3: that people tend to think cynics are better at certain
Speaker 3: types of intelligence based skills, things like math and logic
Speaker 3: and so forth.
Speaker 2: This this is sounding kind of like when you see
Speaker 2: somebody smoking a cigarette. You know, they can look pretty cool,
Speaker 2: especially in movies, like but we all we know deep
Speaker 2: down that like, well, the smoking a cigarette doesn't actually
Speaker 2: make you cool, but we can't help it. And likewise
Speaker 2: you might think, well who you know. You might say, okay,
Speaker 2: doctor smoking a cigarette. I have questions. Maybe this is
Speaker 2: not the doctor for me, but private detective smoking a cigarette, Well,
Speaker 2: obviously that's the guy I want looking after my interests.
Speaker 3: Oh do you mean like the smoking of the cigarette
Speaker 3: implies like a rejection of the consensus about the health
Speaker 3: effects of it, or just that it I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess that often is suggested. It's like, I don't think
Speaker 3: it's hurting me. I don't care what people say. I
Speaker 3: guess there are two ways of going It's like it
Speaker 3: would be cynical. I think it's part of a cynical
Speaker 3: worldview to say, like, ah, these doctors who say it
Speaker 3: causes cancer or heart disease, they don't know what they're
Speaker 3: talking about. I can just smoke it's fine. Or there's
Speaker 3: the version that's like I don't care what happens to me,
Speaker 3: which I think is a little bit different than cynicism.
Speaker 3: Maybe though could go along with cynicism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: I follow you in general because yeah, there's like, apart
Speaker 3: from thinking that cynical people are smart, there is also
Speaker 3: a tendency to think that cynical people are cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's in fact, I've got a section where maybe we'll
Speaker 3: get more into that in just a minute.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 2: Scientific analysis of the coolness.
Speaker 3: Of another thing here is that they tried different like
Speaker 3: wordings and types of questions across multiple replication attempts to
Speaker 3: make sure that like the cynical genius effect was robust,
Speaker 3: And it was robust, but the effects were modulated a
Speaker 3: little bit by changes in phrasing, such as whether you
Speaker 3: describe the opposite of cynicism as an idealistic versus a
Speaker 3: positive view of human nature. Apparently people think being idealistic
Speaker 3: about human nature is a little bit dumber than being
Speaker 3: positive about human nature. It's always funny how just changing
Speaker 3: the swapping a word out can have some effects there.
Speaker 3: They also replicated these findings in different samples, so they
Speaker 3: did some online surveys, international online surveys, and they did
Speaker 3: some in person tests of university students in Germany. They
Speaker 3: did some with British adults, and the cynical genius effect
Speaker 3: appeared to varying degrees in all the groups tested here. However,
Speaker 3: in some of these experiments, respondents got to rate essentially
Speaker 3: how cynical they would like a person assigned to a
Speaker 3: cognitive task to be, and the breakdown, to be clear,
Speaker 3: was not toward a preference for extreme cynicism, but for
Speaker 3: higher than average cynicism. So one example here is that
Speaker 3: in a group of British adults selecting between hypothetical candidates
Speaker 3: to solve intellectual problems, participants quote desired mix of cynical
Speaker 3: and non cynical tendencies was fifty six percent cynical to
Speaker 3: forty four percent non cynical. So on average, the group
Speaker 3: they thought, we need somebody smart. We want somebody who
Speaker 3: is a little bit more cynical than the median.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, you know, if you were able to
Speaker 2: move the slider on your so like your android doctor,
Speaker 2: your android lawyer, or whatever it happens to be. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want the right mix of cynicism. A little more
Speaker 2: than the average person, but not not too much. This
Speaker 2: will be interesting to get into later when we start
Speaker 2: talking about like absolute cynicism and what what that is
Speaker 2: and where we stand in relation to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, as for the actual inverse link between cynicism
Speaker 3: and competence, when broken down by test domain, I was
Speaker 3: interested to see that the effect was strongest in reading
Speaker 3: skills and weakest in information processing speed. So in these tests,
Speaker 3: apparently highly cynical people holding up relatively okay with speed
Speaker 3: of reasoning, doing a lot worse in like reading comprehension,
Speaker 3: and finally getting to the element of the paper comparing cynicism, competence,
Speaker 3: and environment. The author's tested levels of cynicism cross referenced
Speaker 3: with these cognitive tests in subjects across thirty different countries,
Speaker 3: and they found that in countries that scored low in
Speaker 3: corruption and high in rule of law according to an
Speaker 3: international database called the World Governance Indicators, the effect we've
Speaker 3: been talking about did hold true, but in countries with
Speaker 3: high corruption and eroded rule of law, the effect was
Speaker 3: greatly diminished.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: The harsher the social climate, the more these high competence
Speaker 3: people embraced a cynical worldview. So kind of along the
Speaker 3: lines of results we talked about in the last episode,
Speaker 3: it hurts you materially to hold cynical views unless those
Speaker 3: views are correct in the environment where you operate. Along
Speaker 3: these lines, the authors discuss ways that cynicism might be
Speaker 3: learned directly from personal experience. Despite the fact that they
Speaker 3: tried to control for the influence of variables like age, gender,
Speaker 3: and wealth, it's still possible that quote higher levels of
Speaker 3: cognitive ability, academic competence, and education might protect from adverse
Speaker 3: life experiences, not only as they allow discovering potential fraud,
Speaker 3: but also as they increase the chances of living in
Speaker 3: a safe and friendly environment, providing more evidence for a
Speaker 3: positive than for a negative view of human nature, and
Speaker 3: consequently preventing cynicism development. So that's talking about the idea that,
Speaker 3: like that education and cognitive skills, they might not just
Speaker 3: be about how accurately you're seeing the world around you.
Speaker 3: They might actually, over time, influence what the world around
Speaker 3: you is like. On the other hand, since cynicism entails
Speaker 3: generalized distrust quote cynical versus less cynical, individuals might be
Speaker 3: more distrustful of the opinions and knowledge of others, a
Speaker 3: behavior that can eventually prevent them from expanding their knowledge
Speaker 3: and understanding.
Speaker 2: Well, that that seems like it tracks the idea that
Speaker 2: if you're cynical about about potential information sources, and you're
Speaker 2: more likely to sort of back your way into a
Speaker 2: corner where you have very few informational sources coming in
Speaker 2: and they're the only the only ones you're going to
Speaker 2: accept are the ones that back up your existing cynicism.
Speaker 3: Yes, but they say, of course, there is more work
Speaker 3: to do exploring the different possible causal mechanisms here. So
Speaker 3: this paper does find good robust evidence for the cynical
Speaker 3: genius illusion, that the illusion is widely present, and it
Speaker 3: is in fact an illusion, but the questions about why
Speaker 3: are still largely open. One thing, I wonder about a
Speaker 3: lot of the cognitive tasks that subjects said they would
Speaker 3: entrust to a cynical person more than a non cynical person.
Speaker 3: I was looking through the inventory, and a lot of
Speaker 3: these tasks involved screwy of details, like crunching numbers, following
Speaker 3: complex logic, analyzing scientific results, things like that, And I
Speaker 3: wonder if the same pattern would hold for cognitive tasks
Speaker 3: that people associate less with scrutiny of details and instead
Speaker 3: with things like creativity and imagination. And to be clear,
Speaker 3: the cynical genius effect would be an illusion even if
Speaker 3: it were only applied to scrutinizing cognition. But I wonder
Speaker 3: if the illusion is actually more specific to certain kinds
Speaker 3: of cognition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that very much, that Sherlock Holmes scenario.
Speaker 3: But also coming back to this question, we've asked several
Speaker 3: times now, are there any benefits to generalize cynicism. It
Speaker 3: comes with tons of harms for the cynic it hurts
Speaker 3: you to be cynical, But are there any benefits? Well,
Speaker 3: first of all, this paper does find if you're in
Speaker 3: a really corrupt, untrustworthy environment, obviously it does make more
Speaker 3: sense to be more cynical. That's just like a correct
Speaker 3: understanding of how your environment operates. Number Two, even if
Speaker 3: you're not in a more corrupt, untrustworthy environment, if you
Speaker 3: don't understand your environment and you're basically out of your depth,
Speaker 3: cynicism may protect you from catastrophic outcomes. It's like, I
Speaker 3: don't really know what's going on here, don't know if
Speaker 3: I can trust or not, so by default I'm not
Speaker 3: going to trust. That's better safe than sorry. And then third,
Speaker 3: I think this is going to be mainly related to
Speaker 3: the cynical genius illusion. Having a reputation for cynicism may
Speaker 3: have the effect of convincing people around you that you
Speaker 3: are very smart and intellectually savvy, even though on average
Speaker 3: the opposite is more likely to be true. So there's
Speaker 3: a kind of social premium incentive to appear to be cynical.
Speaker 3: It's in a lot of cases it's going to make
Speaker 3: people think that you know something they don't, and you're
Speaker 3: a wise and world weary and intelligent person.
Speaker 2: Yes, is often kind of a safe gambole at, like
Speaker 2: a cocktail party or a mixer. Right if politics should
Speaker 2: come up, which of course is bad manners anyway, but
Speaker 2: if it were to come up, you might say something
Speaker 2: that is just kind of a you know, a blanket
Speaker 2: statement of cynicism, like aoh, well, politicians are all the same.
Speaker 2: And then what people are gonna have to double down.
Speaker 2: They're gonna have to come back and try to convince
Speaker 2: you no, no, not all politicians. Some are great, and
Speaker 2: they're going to look like the person who's naive where
Speaker 2: you've already you know, mounted your cynicism high horse.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this before. Yeah, the the like all
Speaker 3: politicians are the same as the kind of statement that
Speaker 3: I think is just facially untrue. It could not be true,
Speaker 3: obviously wrong, but you feel foolish trying to argue with it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think that goes beyond politics. I mean, just
Speaker 3: generally trying to argue with the cynic is so difficult.
Speaker 3: Statements of cynicism often come with this a priori tech
Speaker 3: mixture of factuality just feels self evidently true with it,
Speaker 3: even when it's obviously wrong, when it would be absurd
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 4: To be true.
Speaker 3: One more thing before I wrap up from the Stavrovia
Speaker 3: and Ilbrect study here talking about in their discussion, they
Speaker 3: talk about why do we tend to assume highly cynical
Speaker 3: people are smarter than the rest of us, even though
Speaker 3: this is usually not the case. We touched on this earlier,
Speaker 3: but the authors do offer a few ideas based on
Speaker 3: common cognitive biases. In particular, they call out negativity bias
Speaker 3: and loss aversion. Negativity bias is the observation that we
Speaker 3: are more psychologically affected by negative things than we are
Speaker 3: by positive things of equal intensity and loss a version
Speaker 3: is very similar. It's the finding that we're more strong
Speaker 3: motivated to avoid a loss than we are to achieve
Speaker 3: a gain of the same value. So here's an example.
Speaker 3: I find a five dollar bill on the sidewalk. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's nice, quickly forget about it, Versus I drop a
Speaker 3: five dollar bill down a storm drain or you know
Speaker 3: why me, ah, I hate this. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: the dollar value is exactly the same, but the loss
Speaker 3: is more memorable, it's more salient and will cause a
Speaker 3: greater emotional reaction. And I think for those reasons, like
Speaker 3: we are more likely to learn something from it, to
Speaker 3: try to draw a general inference that we will take
Speaker 3: and apply to the rest of life from these moments
Speaker 3: of loss than from gains of the exact same value.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'd go as far as to
Speaker 2: say that at the very least, you're more likely to
Speaker 2: remember dropping that five than finding a ten. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 2: there's probably been an interesting thought experiment to be had,
Speaker 2: and just trying to determine which point the find value
Speaker 2: would be equal to a much lesser loss value, I think.
Speaker 3: I think work on that exact question has been done.
Speaker 3: I don't have it pulled up in front of me,
Speaker 3: but I think we've looked at that before. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: sure for some reason seeing the exact numbers is going
Speaker 3: to be really funny. But anyway, so you apply this
Speaker 3: these biases negativity, bias, and loss aversion to the domain
Speaker 3: of trust and cynicism, and they could mean that the
Speaker 3: pain of being betrayed is much greater than the pleasure
Speaker 3: of having our trust rewarded, even given the exact same
Speaker 3: original act of trust. And this is back to the
Speaker 3: mental cherry picking that you mentioned last time.
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 3: You know, you can always like think of these really
Speaker 3: sticky examples of times when you shouldn't have trusted someone
Speaker 3: or something. We may trust somebody twenty times, it works
Speaker 3: out great nineteen times, but the one time it did
Speaker 3: not work out is shocking and painful and we feel
Speaker 3: so hurt. And so from this we form an idea
Speaker 3: that people who do not trust easily have learned a
Speaker 3: lot of valuable lessons. Therefore they are generally knowledgeable, wise,
Speaker 3: and smart. Another explanation comes back to that study from
Speaker 3: the background section that we talked about briefly about the
Speaker 3: the invisibility of consequences in situations where we refrain from
Speaker 3: from giving trust to our detriment. So again you get
Speaker 3: to see what happens when you trust and that trust
Speaker 3: is betrayed. But when you withhold trust and you just
Speaker 3: miss out on an opportunity to gain, you don't really
Speaker 3: get to see that loss made concrete. It's just like
Speaker 3: it's another path you could have taken. You can even
Speaker 3: go without thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Unless you're visited by you know, Christmas
Speaker 2: spirits or something, You're just not going to have any
Speaker 2: alternate views.
Speaker 3: That's a really you know what. I think a Christmas
Speaker 3: Carol is a great example here. That is something the
Speaker 3: ghost of Christmas past has to come and make the
Speaker 3: lost oportunities concrete. And then one last point the authors
Speaker 3: make that I thought was a very interesting point. They raise,
Speaker 3: what if the cynical genius illusion arises in part from
Speaker 3: biases of storytelling. We fill our lives with fictional stories.
Speaker 3: Fictional stories need to be entertaining. Stories are usually more
Speaker 3: entertaining if danger and conflict are heightened, if villains are
Speaker 3: meaner and more dangerous, if the stakes are high, if
Speaker 3: no one can be trusted, you can you can hear
Speaker 3: all these phrases in the Don la Fontaine movie trailer voice,
Speaker 3: can't you you know? It's like that's what stories are
Speaker 3: made out of. Fictional storytelling selects for narratives about the
Speaker 3: dangers of trust and the risk of betrayal because stories
Speaker 3: like that are captivating to our attention and we want
Speaker 3: to know what happens next. So hostile and treacherous worlds
Speaker 3: may be more entertaining and narrative. But it's possible that
Speaker 3: we draw incorrect inferences from those fictional worlds. We learn
Speaker 3: too much about how life works from unrealities that are
Speaker 3: specifically crafted to hack our attention. And who are the smart,
Speaker 3: savvy characters in these worlds. I think very often they
Speaker 3: are cynics who are very reluctant to trust.
Speaker 2: That's right, That's a great point.
Speaker 3: So anyway, that's all I've got in the study for now.
Speaker 3: But I think the cynical genius illusion is so interesting.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be thinking about this a lot in
Speaker 3: the days and weeks to come.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this will be an interesting one to bring into
Speaker 2: our weird house cinema discussions as we inevitably come around
Speaker 2: to a film that has a cynic genius in it,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure if I was to go back and
Speaker 2: look at some of the titles we've covered, we've probably
Speaker 2: encountered these sorts of characters before, probably played by someone
Speaker 2: like Christopher Lee. Yes, all right, well, on that note,
Speaker 2: we're going to go ahead and close out this episode,
Speaker 2: but we're going to come back with at least one
Speaker 2: more episode on cynicism. Again, this is a huge topic.
Speaker 2: In the next episode, I believe we're going to get
Speaker 2: into cynicism, politics, and social media, so that should be
Speaker 2: fun discussion either way. Tune in. We're looking forward to
Speaker 2: getting into it. In the meantime, I'd like to remind
Speaker 2: everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: We have a short form episode on Wednesdays, and on
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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