Speaker 1: Pushkin as a happiness professor.
Speaker 2: Many people assume that I'm a beacon of optimism, that
Speaker 2: I always look on the bright side of life, to
Speaker 2: quote the Monty Python song. But some days I feel
Speaker 2: pretty down about things. Some days it feels easier to
Speaker 2: look on the bleak side of life.
Speaker 3: Good childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession
Speaker 3: with crowd.
Speaker 4: Size, Please stick to policy, don't get personal, they get
Speaker 4: any personal all night long of the.
Speaker 5: Wa limited narrow view of the world made him feel
Speaker 5: threatened by the.
Speaker 2: I mean, politics and all the polarization right now, bleak, climate,
Speaker 2: ridiculously bleak, racism, poverty, war bleak, bleak, super bleak. But
Speaker 2: thinking about all these problems doesn't just make me feel helpless.
Speaker 2: It also gets me super frustrated with the other members
Speaker 2: of my species. Sometimes I just want to be like
Speaker 2: fellow humans. Come on, might the only one who sees
Speaker 2: all these problems? Might the only one who wants everybody
Speaker 2: to stop yelling at each other on Twitter long enough
Speaker 2: to actually start fixing things. Even just saying it out
Speaker 2: loud makes me feel isolated and yucky and just blah.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that you may have felt something similar. On
Speaker 2: your worst days, like me, maybe you've wondered if there's
Speaker 2: any way to fight all the division and disillusionment and despair.
Speaker 2: This seems to have taken over our public conversation. Well,
Speaker 2: you're in luck, because over the next few shows, we'll
Speaker 2: see that the science gives us lots of reasons to
Speaker 2: be optimistic about stuff that scares us, from politics, to
Speaker 2: human nature to our capacity.
Speaker 1: To change society.
Speaker 2: We'll even learn how to transform our despair into positive action.
Speaker 2: So buckle up, Happiness Lab listener, because we're on a
Speaker 2: journey to find hope. Our minds are constantly telling us
Speaker 2: what to do to be happy. But what if our
Speaker 2: minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
Speaker 2: leading us away from what will really make us happy.
Speaker 2: The good news is that understanding the science of the
Speaker 2: mind can point us.
Speaker 1: All back in the right direction.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Lauriy Santos.
Speaker 2: I say, this is the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurry Santos.
Speaker 2: But since this is a whole season about finding hope,
Speaker 2: which I sometimes struggle with, I decided to ask someone
Speaker 2: to help us on our journey.
Speaker 1: Hey, Jamil how's it going.
Speaker 3: I'm good.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling better?
Speaker 2: I'm still sounding a little froggy, which hopefully won't come
Speaker 2: off too much in the interview. Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki
Speaker 2: is the go to guide if you want to learn
Speaker 2: why the world is kinder than the bleak vision we
Speaker 2: often bring to mind. Over the next four episodes, we'll
Speaker 2: be exploring some of the ideas he sets out in
Speaker 2: his new book, Hope Procinics, The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.
Speaker 2: Hope Prosonics is literally life changing. You should buy it
Speaker 2: and read it. But the cliff note summary is that
Speaker 2: we needn't surrender to the cynical view that humans are mean, selfish,
Speaker 2: and hostile, because a bunch of research shows that these
Speaker 2: notions are just plain mistaken. Now, Jimmil has been steeped
Speaker 2: in the science for a very long time, so you
Speaker 2: might assume that he'd be the most hopeful man alive.
Speaker 6: For the last twenty years, I've studied and written and
Speaker 6: spoken about human kindness and empathy, and I've sort of
Speaker 6: become an unofficial ambassador for humanity's better angels. People often
Speaker 6: bring me in to tell them about how great everybody
Speaker 6: is and I love that work and I believe it
Speaker 6: in my mind, but that doesn't mean that doesn't mean
Speaker 6: that it makes its way into the rest of me.
Speaker 6: And it's my job to think about and talk about
Speaker 6: how great everyone is. But oftentimes I feel the exact opposite.
Speaker 2: Any specific examples that have come up lately, like of
Speaker 2: just the opposite of the milk of human kindness as
Speaker 2: you look at that of.
Speaker 6: The world, I feel cynical and hopeless about I'd say
Speaker 6: six times a day thinking about current events. All I
Speaker 6: have to do to feel terrible about myself or humanity
Speaker 6: is just look at any of the screens in my life,
Speaker 6: my laptop, my TV, my phone, even my watch does
Speaker 6: the trick on occasion, and.
Speaker 2: You're not alone. But this is something that I can
Speaker 2: kind of reflect on a lot. As you know, I've
Speaker 2: been kind of sick lately. I've like had a cold
Speaker 2: and somehow like my main form of activity has just
Speaker 2: been like peeking at my phone or like I'll just
Speaker 2: go on Reddit, or I'll just see like what's you
Speaker 2: know on my favorite news channel, and it just makes
Speaker 2: me hate the world and hate other people.
Speaker 1: It just makes me feel really terrible.
Speaker 2: But it feels shocking that you could go through the
Speaker 2: same thing you're supposed to know better.
Speaker 6: I am supposed to know better, but so many of
Speaker 6: us who are psychologists or behavioral scientists, we live with this.
Speaker 6: We study part of the world. We try to understand it.
Speaker 6: But again, just understanding something isn't the same as feeling it.
Speaker 6: And I guess for me, over the last few years,
Speaker 6: I became really curious about this cynicism. I was experiencing
Speaker 6: feeling like the world was getting worse, like people were terrible.
Speaker 6: And I thought, Laurie, about you, and about the themes
Speaker 6: of the Happiness Lab and this idea that sometimes our
Speaker 6: minds played tricks on us, and I thought, well, maybe
Speaker 6: my mind is playing tricks on me as well. I
Speaker 6: decided to figure out whether my cynicism was warranted, or
Speaker 6: whether it might be wrong, whether it might be a
Speaker 6: story that I was telling myself, and what that might
Speaker 6: be doing to me and to the rest of us
Speaker 6: who might be feeling cynical. I guess I learned a
Speaker 6: lot in the process over the last few years that
Speaker 6: led me to write this book.
Speaker 2: Jamil decided to call the book Hope for Cynics. I
Speaker 2: do sometimes feel scared about society and worry that there
Speaker 2: are people out there who don't exactly have my best
Speaker 2: interest at heart. But does that make me a cynic?
Speaker 2: It feels like a strong word. In his book, Jamil
Speaker 2: argues that is a disease of social health, a disease.
Speaker 2: Wasn't I just basing my ideas on realism?
Speaker 6: So cynicism is the theory that in general, humanity is greedy, selfish,
Speaker 6: and dishonest, And like any other theory, this guides what
Speaker 6: we do and what we don't do. So Cinics, for instance,
Speaker 6: if they see somebody act kindly, they'll suspect that maybe
Speaker 6: they're not genuine, maybe they're doing that for some ulterior motive.
Speaker 6: They also act differently. So this is especially true when
Speaker 6: it comes to trust. Trust is our willingness to be
Speaker 6: vulnerable to somebody else on the expectation that they'll do
Speaker 6: right by us. You are putting your well being in
Speaker 6: their hands. Loaning somebody money or let somebody babies ait
Speaker 6: your kids. It's a gamble, a social gamble, and cinics
Speaker 6: think it's for suckers, so they're much less likely to
Speaker 6: trust strangers, but even their own friends, families, and romantic partners.
Speaker 6: So Cynicism is a theory, but it doesn't stay in
Speaker 6: our minds. It leaks into the way that we live
Speaker 6: and the way that we treat other people.
Speaker 2: I know, when I first started thinking about cynicism, I
Speaker 2: often thought it was really synonymous with skepticism. But you've
Speaker 2: argue that these are actually really different. So what's the
Speaker 2: difference between cynicism and skepticism.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is really important because I think your sense
Speaker 6: that these two are the same is really common. A
Speaker 6: lot of people, I think, view these terms as interchangeable,
Speaker 6: but they are not at all. As I've said, cynicism
Speaker 6: is a theory that people aren't that great. Skepticism isn't
Speaker 6: a theory about the world or about people. It's a mindset,
Speaker 6: an openness to new ideas, and a kind of restlessness,
Speaker 6: an unwillingness to just sit with our assumptions. I often
Speaker 6: think that cynics are a little bit like lawyers in
Speaker 6: the Prosecution against Humanity, you know, the sort of they're
Speaker 6: really keen on whatever evidence supports their theory, whatever clues
Speaker 6: they can find that people are actually terrible, and they're
Speaker 6: really dismissive of any evidence to the contrary that people
Speaker 6: might be actually pretty great in some circumstances. Skeptics think
Speaker 6: less like lawyers and more like scientists. They test their assumptions,
Speaker 6: they look for data, and because of that, skepticism is
Speaker 6: a much more agile way of viewing the world and
Speaker 6: a much better way to learn about people and situations.
Speaker 2: And so in some ways they're almost more like opposites
Speaker 2: the way you describe it, right, the skeptics are really
Speaker 2: kind of questioning their assumptions, whereas the cynics are really
Speaker 2: set in their theories that, like, know, people are terrible.
Speaker 3: Actually, I think that's right.
Speaker 6: And in fact, if cynics have a lot in common
Speaker 6: with anybody, it's with the naive rubes that they love
Speaker 6: to make fun of. You know, Cynics think that if
Speaker 6: you are not like them, you must just naively believe
Speaker 6: that everybody's great, even if they betray you. And that's true.
Speaker 6: Some people do have rose colored glasses on. Some people
Speaker 6: do see only the best in others, even to their
Speaker 6: own detriment. Those people, I would say, are also thinking
Speaker 6: like lawyers. Lawyers in the defense for humanity's trials. So
Speaker 6: I think that cynics and naive trusters are really both
Speaker 6: thinking and looking at only one side of the evidence.
Speaker 6: And again, skeptics are really different than both of them
Speaker 6: because they don't trust their assumptions. They look for evidence.
Speaker 2: It feels like these days that a lot of us
Speaker 2: have joined the side of the prosecution. Like it seems
Speaker 2: like a lot of us are feeling pretty cynical about humanity.
Speaker 2: Are are there actually data about that? Do we know
Speaker 2: if cynicism is getting worse?
Speaker 6: There are, and cynicism has been skyrocketing over time. The
Speaker 6: best proxy that we have for it is how much
Speaker 6: people agree with the statement most people can be trusted.
Speaker 6: This is a question that scientists have been asking Americans
Speaker 6: and people around the world for many, many years, and
Speaker 6: the best data we have are from the US, and
Speaker 6: those data are pretty bleak. So in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 6: about fifty percent of Americans believed that most people can
Speaker 6: be trusted. By twenty eighteen, that had fallen to about
Speaker 6: a third of a Mayora Mrians. The size of that
Speaker 6: drop is comparable to the amount of money that the
Speaker 6: stock market lost in the financial collapse of two thousand
Speaker 6: and eight. So we are experiencing, in a real way
Speaker 6: a trust deficit and a cynicism boom. In our country
Speaker 6: and actually around the world as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's terrifying that as a huge drop. I
Speaker 2: mean the other questions like what's that deficit doing to us?
Speaker 2: Like how is it affecting us as individuals?
Speaker 6: So I went through decades of data on this and
Speaker 6: discovered that in essence, cynicism hurts us in every way
Speaker 6: psychologists and social scientists and even physicians can measure. Cynics
Speaker 6: tend to live much less healthy lives. They are more
Speaker 6: prone to depression, loneliness, and unhappiness. They're also much more
Speaker 6: likely to get physically sick, with everything from diabetes to
Speaker 6: cellular inflammation to heart disease. They even die younger than
Speaker 6: non cinics. Their relationships are also damaged by their cynicism.
Speaker 6: So if you can't trust people, it's harder to connect
Speaker 6: deeply with them, and you end up more isolated. It's
Speaker 6: really tragic. If cynicism were appeal, it'd be a poison.
Speaker 6: And Thomas Hobbes, one of the most famous cynical philosophers
Speaker 6: in history, wrote that we needed laws to rain us
Speaker 6: in because left to our own devices, human nature is nasty, brutish,
Speaker 6: and short. I think that's the best cynical encapsulation. That's
Speaker 6: like cynicism in one sentence, But ironically that phrase, that
Speaker 6: sentence really captures the lives of cynics themselves better than
Speaker 6: anybody else.
Speaker 1: That's horrifying.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds like it's terrible for individuals, but
Speaker 2: my guess is it's also probably bad for society if
Speaker 2: we're all going around thinking that everybody is, you know,
Speaker 2: nasty and brutish.
Speaker 1: Are their data there too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's tons of data showing that at the level
Speaker 6: of communities, whether those communities are families, companies, counties, or countries,
Speaker 6: at all of these levels, a lack of trust a
Speaker 6: general sense of disconnection and suspicion and harms the ability
Speaker 6: of that unit large, small, enormous, whatever to thrive. So
Speaker 6: I'll give you the example at the national level. So
Speaker 6: countries that are higher in trust tend to grow economically,
Speaker 6: Their people tend to be more civically engaged, voting more
Speaker 6: for instance, they tend to donate more to charity and
Speaker 6: help strangers more, and they tend to be less politically
Speaker 6: polarized as well. If that's what trusting nations do, you
Speaker 6: see where we're going what cynical nations do is exactly
Speaker 6: the opposite. They shrink or stagnate economically, people bow out
Speaker 6: or leave civic engagement and civic duties, and they're less
Speaker 6: likely to engage with one another in pro social ways
Speaker 6: as well. If you think of trust as a kind
Speaker 6: of glue that bonds communities together, cynicism erodes that glue
Speaker 6: and leaves us all feeling more alone.
Speaker 2: And it also seems like that alienation must become a
Speaker 2: vicious cycle, right. You know, if you live in a
Speaker 2: cynical society, then you're getting more data that everybody's cynical.
Speaker 2: It becomes easier to believe that everybody's brutish and hates you,
Speaker 2: and that you shouldn't trust them. So these things must
Speaker 2: get worse for communities over time too.
Speaker 3: I totally agree.
Speaker 6: And you see this self fulfilling prophecy all over the place.
Speaker 6: It's not just at the level of large communities, but
Speaker 6: even you see this in individuals' lives. So, for instance, cynics,
Speaker 6: because they don't trust people, they'll treat them in all
Speaker 6: sorts of ways that show that mistrust. For instance, if
Speaker 6: they loan somebody money, they'll call them every day and
Speaker 6: follow up with them or if they interact with friends,
Speaker 6: they'll worry that their friends will disrespect them, so they'll
Speaker 6: disrespect their friends preemptively. And these actions that cynics take
Speaker 6: end up basically pissing other people off and making other
Speaker 6: people feel angry and disrespected, and because of that actually
Speaker 6: bring out the worst in other people. They say, I
Speaker 6: bet these other folks will be selfish. I'll treat them
Speaker 6: like their selfish. Then other people act selfishly and cynics
Speaker 6: decide they were right all along.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing you agree that this sounds awful. A lot
Speaker 2: of us just assume we're approaching the world with a
Speaker 2: healthy amount of suspicion, making sure people don't take advantage
Speaker 2: of us. I never considered that I could be poisoning
Speaker 2: myself or those around me. Why are we attracted to
Speaker 2: cynicism and why are we so very blind to its dangers.
Speaker 2: We'll explore these questions when the Happiness Lab returns in
Speaker 2: a moment. Doctor jimil Zaki has likened cynicism to a
Speaker 2: harmful disease. And what's worse, cynicism is spreading like a pandemic.
Speaker 6: We've got this experience that is growing and it's creating
Speaker 6: like this fractal of pain and dysfunction across our lives.
Speaker 3: And as I.
Speaker 6: Researched this subject, I found that they there are really
Speaker 6: three myths about cynicism that I think promoted and propagated
Speaker 6: things that we believe that make us think we have
Speaker 6: to be cynical if we want to succeed in life
Speaker 6: that turn out in many cases to be exactly the
Speaker 6: opposite of the truth.
Speaker 1: You're totally speaking my language at this, you know.
Speaker 2: On the Happiness Lab, we love any case where our
Speaker 2: minds are lying to us, and it seems like that's what's.
Speaker 1: Going on too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yes.
Speaker 6: So the first of these myths is that cynicism is smart.
Speaker 6: So a lot of people I've talked with since working
Speaker 6: on this project will tell me that they are cynics,
Speaker 6: and they'll tell me this with a sort of bitter pride.
Speaker 6: They say, well, yeah, I'm cynical and it might not
Speaker 6: be fun, but hey, that's the price of being right,
Speaker 6: you know. I don't get to just believe whatever I
Speaker 6: feel like. I have to be a realist. And there's
Speaker 6: this sense that in essence, by having this dim view
Speaker 6: of other people, cynics are expressing a sort of hard
Speaker 6: fought wisdom.
Speaker 2: And it sounds like you're going to argue that this
Speaker 2: hard fought wisdom is wrong.
Speaker 6: Yes, But before that, I think it's worth saying that
Speaker 6: cynics are not the only ones who think cynics are smart.
Speaker 6: There's a bunch of research that finds that if you
Speaker 6: ask people who do you think would do better on
Speaker 6: a bunch of different tasks a cynic or a non cnic,
Speaker 6: about seventy percent of people believe that cynics are smarter
Speaker 6: than non cynics in general, that they would do better
Speaker 6: at analytic tasks, for instance, and about eighty five percent
Speaker 6: of people think that cynics would be socially smart, for instance,
Speaker 6: better at spotting liars. So most people put a lot
Speaker 6: of faith in people who don't have a lot of
Speaker 6: faith in people. Say that three times fast, but it's true,
Speaker 6: and it turns out that most people are wrong. Cnics
Speaker 6: in fact, do less well on cognitive tests than noncnics,
Speaker 6: and they're also worse at spotting liars. It turns out
Speaker 6: that if you think everybody is on the take, you
Speaker 6: don't engage in skepticism, you don't take the energy and
Speaker 6: time to actually learn about people. So you end up
Speaker 6: with blunt and often incorrect, black and white views of humanity.
Speaker 6: So cynicism ends up being way less smart and wise
Speaker 6: than we think it is.
Speaker 2: And so that's kind of the first myth about cynicism.
Speaker 2: It's not nearly as smart as we think. What's the
Speaker 2: second one.
Speaker 6: The second is that cynicism is a way of staying safe.
Speaker 6: Is a quote from the comedian George Carlin that I love,
Speaker 6: where he said, scratch a cynic, and you'll find a
Speaker 6: disappointed idealist. I think a lot of cynics, whether they
Speaker 6: seem like they have a lot of bluster in their
Speaker 6: sneering attitude or not, actually are in recovery from some
Speaker 6: type of hurt or betrayal.
Speaker 3: I understand that.
Speaker 6: I feel like, if people are cynical and they're listening
Speaker 6: to this, I don't want them to feel like I'm
Speaker 6: calling them out. I think a lot of us have
Speaker 6: been disappointed and hurt in our lives, and it's actually
Speaker 6: pretty natural to say, well, gosh, I was really hurt
Speaker 6: before because I trusted somebody. I don't want to get
Speaker 6: hurt again. The only way that I can avoid that
Speaker 6: further pain is to close myself off to stop trusting others.
Speaker 2: But you've argued that this isn't the right approach. You've
Speaker 2: argued that this winds up causing a term that I love,
Speaker 2: which is pre disappointment.
Speaker 1: What's pre disappointment?
Speaker 6: So if you think of disappointment as somebody hurt me,
Speaker 6: and so my expectations of that person are now lowered,
Speaker 6: pre disappointment is somebody hurt me, so my expectations of
Speaker 6: the entire world are now lowered. It's like a sort
Speaker 6: of psychological armor, or at least people believe it's a
Speaker 6: psychological armor. They say, if I have no faith in anybody,
Speaker 6: then they can't possibly hurt me. It's like a thick
Speaker 6: skin of sorts. But I actually think that predisappointment is
Speaker 6: less like armor that protects us and more kind of
Speaker 6: like armor that suffocates us. Because when you don't have
Speaker 6: any openness to other people, yeah, you probably won't get
Speaker 6: hurt again, but you also won't be able to connect
Speaker 6: with people. You'll miss out on so many opportunities for friendship, love, collaboration,
Speaker 6: you name it. That all depend on our willingness to
Speaker 6: be open. So I feel like cynicism and pre disappointment
Speaker 6: are safe kind of in the way that house arrest
Speaker 6: is safe. You probably won't get hurt, you won't get
Speaker 6: run over by a truck, but you also won't ever
Speaker 6: experience so many things that you might want to if
Speaker 6: you just stay at home trying to be safe in
Speaker 6: this really shallow way.
Speaker 2: And this act of being safe seems like it's contributing
Speaker 2: to this self fulfilling prophecy. If I'm cynical and I'm
Speaker 2: kind of disappointed in everybody, and I assume that that's safe,
Speaker 2: maybe it's safe, but it winds up never giving me
Speaker 2: any opportunities to learn that that, hey, this is a myth.
Speaker 2: People won't disappoint you as much as you think. You're
Speaker 2: kind of prevented from any learning opportunities that might change
Speaker 2: your mind.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 6: I mean, in nerdy terms. In the world of learning science,
Speaker 6: this is called a wicked learning environment, where we expose
Speaker 6: ourselves to evidence that supports one perspective, but don't ever
Speaker 6: or get chances to see the evidence that would go
Speaker 6: the other way. And I think that our minds also
Speaker 6: are built to focus a lot on negative things that
Speaker 6: have happened to us. There's all this work that I
Speaker 6: think you all have talked about on what's known as
Speaker 6: negativity bias. Bad events, bad people take up a lot
Speaker 6: of our attention and we remember them more clearly as well.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you feel this, Lorie. I feel
Speaker 6: like any time that somebody's betrayed me or hurt me,
Speaker 6: I can come up with a list of those events
Speaker 6: from my teenage years at the.
Speaker 3: Drop of a hat.
Speaker 6: But if you ask me to tell you all the
Speaker 6: nice things that people did for me when I was ten, twelve, fourteen,
Speaker 6: I draw completely.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Mine is always course evaluations, right, like you know you
Speaker 2: did class with you know, over thousand students. A lot
Speaker 2: of people say nice things, but the class, right, But
Speaker 2: those two kids who said really terrible things. I could
Speaker 2: quote it right now. I choose not to, but I
Speaker 2: could quote it right now. Yah Know, the negative stuff
Speaker 2: sticks in your brain in this terrible way.
Speaker 3: I have the same thing.
Speaker 6: It's always like one person out of five hundred his
Speaker 6: that shirt was too much. But it's natural, it's really understandable,
Speaker 6: and it's tragic.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: So again, I really feel for and resonate with people
Speaker 6: who have been hurt and don't want to get hurt again.
Speaker 6: I live that way. I have in the past. The
Speaker 6: problem is that it's so easy to remember betrayals and
Speaker 6: allow them to shape our lives. And when we do that,
Speaker 6: we're actually letting the people who betrayed us retain their
Speaker 6: power over us. We're kind of letting those negative experiences
Speaker 6: win in a way. And again, I understand why that happens,
Speaker 6: but I feel terrible when it happens to me, and
Speaker 6: especially when it happens to other people.
Speaker 1: So that's myth number two.
Speaker 2: We assume cynicism is kind of safe, but it's the
Speaker 2: sort of false safety that winds up hurting us.
Speaker 1: What's myth number three.
Speaker 6: Myth number three is the idea that cynicism is moral.
Speaker 6: And I get this all the time. When I tell
Speaker 6: people that I'm writing a book about hope, they often
Speaker 6: have this knee jerk response, which is some version of, well, yeah,
Speaker 6: you can write that you're this privileged professor at this
Speaker 6: fancy university. You have this charmed life, which is, first
Speaker 6: of all, you don't know me, but you have all
Speaker 6: this privilege. And that's what hope is. Hope is a
Speaker 6: privilege that is only reserved for people who are very lucky,
Speaker 6: and in fact, that the world is pretty rough, especially
Speaker 6: for people, for instance, who come from marginalized backgrounds or communities,
Speaker 6: and that those people have to see the world for
Speaker 6: what it is. They don't have the luxury of being
Speaker 6: hopeful because they're affected by all of these larger structural
Speaker 6: forces and positive thinking isn't going to fix any of that.
Speaker 6: And in fact, there's this term hopewashing that when we
Speaker 6: even talk about hope, we are telling individuals, through the
Speaker 6: work of their own minds, to fix the world, even
Speaker 6: though the world has historically hurt them in all of
Speaker 6: these different ways.
Speaker 2: But in your research you found that there's actually work
Speaker 2: on this, like whether or not cynicism can help us
Speaker 2: overcome it? You know, what does this work find.
Speaker 6: That again, cinics see in real ways problems with the world.
Speaker 6: I think if cinics, for instance, mistrust politicians, Gosh, that
Speaker 6: actually seems pretty reasonable, right, if they think of things
Speaker 6: like inequality or climate change and feel cynical about our species,
Speaker 6: that's completely understandable. But the issue is that cynicism doesn't
Speaker 6: inspire us to do anything about these problems. In fact, cinics,
Speaker 6: for instance, are less likely to take part in social
Speaker 6: movements or protests. They're less likely to engage civically than
Speaker 6: non cynics, and I think because of this, cynicism actually
Speaker 6: is a tool of the status quo. People like propagandists
Speaker 6: and authoritarian leaders love it when people don't trust because
Speaker 6: sure they might not trust me, the authoritarian leader, but
Speaker 6: they also don't trust each other enough to get together
Speaker 6: and do anything about it. This, so I think cynicism
Speaker 6: might be moral in the sense that cinics see the
Speaker 6: harm that is being done, but it's not helpful in
Speaker 6: addressing any of those problems.
Speaker 2: So it seems like we're getting cynicism all wrong, and
Speaker 2: the fact that we have all these misperceptions about cynicism
Speaker 2: winds up hurting us a lot. But yet cynicism does
Speaker 2: seem to still be going up. Everybody is going through
Speaker 2: this right now, and so what's the alternative? How can
Speaker 2: we break out of this?
Speaker 6: I've been asking myself that for this entire decade, I
Speaker 6: feel like the twenty twenties, between COVID and so many
Speaker 6: terrible events around the world, conflicts, and now this election season,
Speaker 6: I feel like cynicism is like the mood of the
Speaker 6: decade so far, and I've been wondering can we.
Speaker 3: Do anything about it?
Speaker 6: And it turns out that we can that there are
Speaker 6: lots of tools at our disposal when we think more
Speaker 6: carefully and act differently to beat back cynicism. And in particular,
Speaker 6: there's an e idea that I've been trying to work
Speaker 6: on in my own life and that I want to
Speaker 6: suggest to people who are struggling with cynicism, which I
Speaker 6: call hopeful skepticism.
Speaker 2: And so what's hopeful skepticism? It seems like it starts
Speaker 2: with hope, So maybe we should start there. You know,
Speaker 2: what is hope? And how does it differ from cynicism,
Speaker 2: or maybe even how does it differ from something like optimism.
Speaker 6: This is another great distinction. So a lot of people
Speaker 6: think that hope and optimism are the same thing.
Speaker 3: They're not.
Speaker 6: Optimism is the idea that things will work out well.
Speaker 6: It can lead sometimes to complacency. You know, if I
Speaker 6: think that things are going to turn out great, I
Speaker 6: don't have to do anything. That's actually pretty similar, by
Speaker 6: the way, to cynical hopelessness. If I think things are
Speaker 6: going to turn out terribly, I don't need to do
Speaker 6: anything either.
Speaker 3: Hope is different.
Speaker 6: It's the idea that things could go well, that even
Speaker 6: in the face of terrible problems, there is a version
Speaker 6: of the world where things improve, and it's a sense
Speaker 6: that I can do something about it. It's a sense
Speaker 6: of a agency that there's meaning to our actions. So
Speaker 6: hope is not optimism because hope is uncertain, just like
Speaker 6: the future actually is, and in that uncertainty lives our
Speaker 6: opportunities to act and live differently in ways that make
Speaker 6: positive change.
Speaker 2: I forget if you're a Marvel fan, Jamil, but it
Speaker 2: makes me think of Doctor Strange, who's this like Marvel
Speaker 2: character who can like do this thing where he like
Speaker 2: simulates all the possible worlds and he's like, there's like
Speaker 2: seven billion worlds where everything's really terrible, but there's one
Speaker 2: world in which would you do the right thing, like
Speaker 2: things are going to be okay. It feels like hope
Speaker 2: is kind of like pulling a Doctor Strange, where you
Speaker 2: like at least find some worlds where through your own
Speaker 2: agency you can like fix stuff.
Speaker 6: I was literally thinking about Doctor Strange, and I thought,
Speaker 6: should I say Doctor Strange. No, it's too nerdy. It's
Speaker 6: too nerdy. So thank you Laurie for this validation I can.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but it's like it's like just like coming
Speaker 2: up with some possible worlds in which things will be okay,
Speaker 2: but then realizing that you can contribute to that, not
Speaker 2: just like, well if I just sit on my but
Speaker 2: that wonderful possible world will come up. It's like you
Speaker 2: got to say, take some action to go there.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 6: I think of hope as this magnet where there are
Speaker 6: billions of possible worlds. I hope, unlike the Avengers, we
Speaker 6: have more than a one in seven billion chance of
Speaker 6: achieving a positive outcome. But you see this panoply of
Speaker 6: worlds and possible futures, and hope sort of attracts you
Speaker 6: to the ones that you want and pulls you and
Speaker 6: your actions towards those positive outcomes. Right, And again, I
Speaker 6: think that because of this, hope isn't just something that
Speaker 6: we can turn to when things are going well. In fact,
Speaker 6: research shows that hope is especially useful for people who
Speaker 6: are dealing with major problems. Cancer patients, people towards the
Speaker 6: end of their lives, students in lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In
Speaker 6: all of these cases, hope pulls people toward the future
Speaker 6: that they want and helps them live happier and healthier lives.
Speaker 2: And you've advocated not just for hope, but a particular
Speaker 2: brand of hope that you've called hopeful skepticism. Why does
Speaker 2: the skepticism part need to be there too well?
Speaker 6: I think that as we've talked about, skepticism is this
Speaker 6: scientific perspective on the world. And as we've talked about,
Speaker 6: there's this pervasive negativity bias that lives in our minds
Speaker 6: that means that most of us pay much more attention
Speaker 6: to cruelty than kindness, selfishness than generosity, and because of that,
Speaker 6: we have this systematically warped view where we underestimate how trustworthy,
Speaker 6: open minded, warm, and compassionate people are. What that means
Speaker 6: to me is that when we are skeptical, when we
Speaker 6: instead leave behind our assumptions and give people a chance
Speaker 6: to show us who they are, then naturally we might
Speaker 6: become more hopeful because we'll find pleasant surprises everywhere. We'll
Speaker 6: realize that most people are better than most people think
Speaker 6: they are.
Speaker 3: Right in that, I think is a natural source of hope.
Speaker 2: Later in this season, you'll get to meet some very
Speaker 2: hopeful folks, people actively working to make their communities and
Speaker 2: workplaces better. They'll share what they've learned about rejecting cynicism,
Speaker 2: and they'll have plenty of ideas about how you can
Speaker 2: become skeptically hopeful too. But when we get back from
Speaker 2: the break, we'll talk to a scholar who's inspired plenty
Speaker 2: of people to work towards a better common future.
Speaker 4: I grew up when America was the maximum of we
Speaker 4: society that we've ever seen, and my whole life has
Speaker 4: been going downhill, and I really wish I could figure
Speaker 4: out a way to reverse that, or at least pause it.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 6: The book that I have on my desk in my
Speaker 6: office remains bowling alone like me.
Speaker 2: Jamil is a big fan of the political scientist Robert Putnam.
Speaker 6: It's one of the books that affected me the most
Speaker 6: over the course of my career, and I think captured
Speaker 6: this massive trend in our society to feel more alone
Speaker 6: and to lose our sense of connection.
Speaker 2: We spoke to Robert in our season about the importance
Speaker 2: of connecting better. Robert grew up in Port Clinton, Ohio.
Speaker 2: We're in the years after World War Two. People's lives
Speaker 2: crossed and intercrossed every day. The richest and poorest people
Speaker 2: in his town ate at the same diner, and teenage
Speaker 2: Robert joined a bowling team with members from every neighborhood
Speaker 2: in his community.
Speaker 7: We did pretty well, we were not great. And there's
Speaker 7: a picture that shows the team three white guys, one tall,
Speaker 7: gangly guy in the middle, which was me, and two
Speaker 7: black guys. And we did not think that was strange.
Speaker 2: But when Robert grew up and began studying politics, he
Speaker 2: realized the way of life he'd taken for granted in
Speaker 2: Port Clinton was disappearing.
Speaker 4: I didn't know it was special, and I don't think
Speaker 4: it was all that special in America.
Speaker 3: In the middle of nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: Robert discovered that many of the spaces where people regularly
Speaker 2: met were closing. People were no longer taking part in
Speaker 2: bowling leagues as he had. They were, as the title
Speaker 2: of his book explained, bowling alone. Robert's book painted a
Speaker 2: bleak picture of communal life in the late nineties. It
Speaker 2: argued that if we continued to shun social contact, we'd
Speaker 2: become sadder, lonelier, and less trust it.
Speaker 6: It's a book that I keep on my desk that
Speaker 6: also makes me depressed all the time.
Speaker 1: But are we destined for this depressing? Lonelier?
Speaker 3: Path.
Speaker 2: That's the question Robert explored in his most recent book,
Speaker 2: The Upswing, How America came together a century ago and
Speaker 2: how we can do it again. The Upswing argues that
Speaker 2: America in the eighteen nineties looks a lot like it
Speaker 2: did today. Think inequality, conflict, and division. But people back
Speaker 2: then hated feeling so divided, so they joined the very charities,
Speaker 2: clubs and societies that peaked in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: Things in America were getting better and better.
Speaker 4: We were economically growing, we were equal, we were taking
Speaker 4: care of each other, we were attending PGA meetings, we
Speaker 4: were focused on the Wii.
Speaker 3: We were like this amazing country.
Speaker 2: The Upswing was a revelation for Jamil. It showed him
Speaker 2: that hope could prevail.
Speaker 6: When I started working on Hope for cynics, I was
Speaker 6: talking with a mentor of mine and bemoaning the rise
Speaker 6: in cynicism and how it's hurting all of us. And
Speaker 6: he challenged me, He said, you know what you need
Speaker 6: to find is figure out is there any place in
Speaker 6: the world, or any time in history where things have
Speaker 6: gone the opposite way where trust has increased instead of decreased,
Speaker 6: where people were able to form more coalitions and better,
Speaker 6: stronger communities than they had in the past. And I thought, oh, gosh,
Speaker 6: that's going to be hard, but I'll try. And when
Speaker 6: I read the Upswing, I had this sort of epiphany
Speaker 6: that wait a minute, that did happen. It happened right
Speaker 6: here in the US. It just happened before I was born.
Speaker 6: The first half of the twentieth century was this tectonic
Speaker 6: shift where the country, because of all these progressive social movements,
Speaker 6: became more interconnected, and trust rose to ritible levels, way
Speaker 6: higher than they have been at any other time that
Speaker 6: we've been measuring.
Speaker 2: And so with that, hope you've put together this kind
Speaker 2: of three part idea for how we can do it again,
Speaker 2: for how we can reduce our cynicism and get back
Speaker 2: to this hopeful skepticism that allows us to trust one another.
Speaker 1: What are those three steps?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: The first step is to think differently, to try and
Speaker 6: adopt this mindset of hopeful skepticism. And I think of
Speaker 6: that as happening in a couple of different ways. By
Speaker 6: the way, I work on this all the time myself.
Speaker 6: I try to do this through some tools that are
Speaker 6: drawn from cognitive behavioral therapy. So one of them is
Speaker 6: known as reality testing, but I just think of it
Speaker 6: as fact checking my cynical feelings. Right, I personally often
Speaker 6: find myself thinking things that are very uncharitable, you know,
Speaker 6: about people who cut me off in traffic, or influencers,
Speaker 6: not you, Lori, but other influencers. No, not you, of course,
Speaker 6: and just people in general. And oftentimes that type of
Speaker 6: chatter just goes on unchecked and drives our lives. And
Speaker 6: lately I've tried to hit the pause button on it
Speaker 6: much more frequently and ask myself, wait a minute, you're
Speaker 6: having this thought, You're having these contemptuous feelings. Where are
Speaker 6: they coming from? What do they mean? And I try
Speaker 6: to basically use my life as a scientist in this way.
Speaker 6: I say, well, if this was a hypothesis and you
Speaker 6: had to defend it in a scientific paper or at
Speaker 6: a conference, what is the evidence that you would marshal
Speaker 6: in defense for this terrible thought that you're having about humanity?
Speaker 6: And oftentimes I realized, wait a minute, I don't have
Speaker 6: good evidence for this at all. So I try to
Speaker 6: be more open minded, and I guess skeptical of my
Speaker 6: own cynicism when.
Speaker 1: I can a different thought pattern.
Speaker 2: You've encouraged is one that you've called a reciprocity mindset.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 6: So we talked about these self fulfilling phes that when
Speaker 6: I'm cynical, I treat other people in cynical ways, which
Speaker 6: then brings out the worst from them, makes them more
Speaker 6: selfish and untrustworthy. Well, it turns out that we often
Speaker 6: don't realize that when other people act badly, it's because
Speaker 6: of how we've treated them, right, We don't realize how
Speaker 6: influential we are on other people. So a reciprocity mindset
Speaker 6: is teaching people about the power that they have over others.
Speaker 6: In fact, in my lab, we've tried to adopt this approach.
Speaker 6: We taught some people in a set of studies that hey,
Speaker 6: you know, if you trust others, they'll act more trustworthy,
Speaker 6: and if you don't trust them, they'll act more selfishly.
Speaker 6: And we find that when we teach people that they
Speaker 6: think differently about others, they talk and write about more
Speaker 6: of their responsibility in social settings to treat people the
Speaker 6: way that they would want to be treated, and then
Speaker 6: they do it more so. For instance, in our studies,
Speaker 6: when we teach people about this cerprosity mindset, they're more
Speaker 6: willing to trust strangers. And when people trust strangers, strangers
Speaker 6: act in more trustworthy ways, for instance, paying back investments
Speaker 6: more than if they're not trusted. So we find that
Speaker 6: teaching people about their own power causes them to wield
Speaker 6: it more responsibly in ways that are kinder and less cynical,
Speaker 6: and that turns these sort of vicious, self fulfilling prophecies
Speaker 6: into more virtuous ones.
Speaker 2: And so that's a nice transition to the second step
Speaker 2: that you've advocated, which is to act differently. Right, once
Speaker 2: we start thinking differently, we can start doing stuff differently.
Speaker 2: Any specific strategies you have for people to start acting
Speaker 2: differently to engage their hopeful skepticism, Yeah, I think.
Speaker 6: There's a bunch of ways to do this. So if
Speaker 6: thinking like a hopeful skeptic means having to consider your
Speaker 6: beliefs as hypotheses almost scientific predictions, then acting differently is
Speaker 6: a matter of testing those predictions out in the real
Speaker 6: world world. And there's a couple of ways to do this.
Speaker 6: One that I've tried to do a lot more is
Speaker 6: what I call leaps of faith, that is, taking small,
Speaker 6: calculated risks on other people. Ernest Hemingway once wrote the
Speaker 6: best way to find out if you can trust somebody
Speaker 6: is to trust them, and I think that that's a
Speaker 6: really powerful idea. I often, in situations where normally I
Speaker 6: would be really guarded, have tried to be more open,
Speaker 6: whether that's trusting somebody with a task in my lab
Speaker 6: that maybe you know is a challenge for them, or
Speaker 6: just opening up to somebody I don't know that well
Speaker 6: about a struggle that I'm going through, And my cynical
Speaker 6: mind often screams at me while I'm doing this, what
Speaker 6: the hell are you thinking you're doing?
Speaker 3: You're about to.
Speaker 6: Be betrayed, And basically I just try to say, shut
Speaker 6: up for a second.
Speaker 3: I need to do this.
Speaker 6: And I'm often shocked by the results by how much
Speaker 6: people are honored when you trust them, how much it
Speaker 6: strengthens relationships, how it's a fast track to a more
Speaker 6: connected life. And I guess it's shocking to me how
Speaker 6: shocking this is to me, given that I study this,
Speaker 6: But I think that that's I'm trying to do it
Speaker 6: more so that it can come more naturally. Because in science,
Speaker 6: of course, when we test a hypothesis and find something out,
Speaker 6: it updates our beliefs and our theories, so we can
Speaker 6: use this real world social data to slowly incrementally update
Speaker 6: our theories about the world away from cynicism.
Speaker 2: And a final way to update our theories about the
Speaker 2: world is to help other people update their theories about
Speaker 2: the world. And that gets to your third step, which
Speaker 2: is to share differently.
Speaker 1: What do you mean there?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's again important to understand our influence
Speaker 6: on other people. We can do that in understanding that
Speaker 6: when we trust others, they're more likely to step up.
Speaker 6: But we can also do that in understanding that what
Speaker 6: we talk about also influences the way that other people
Speaker 6: see the world. And if we talk in cynical ways,
Speaker 6: if we only share information about the worst people doing
Speaker 6: the worst things, we're sort of like the news. We're
Speaker 6: giving people all the material they need to become more cynical.
Speaker 6: It's a real instinct, just like we think so much
Speaker 6: about bad things in the world to talk about those things,
Speaker 6: and it's again an instinct that we can fight. I've
Speaker 6: tried to do this, especially with my kids. I sort
Speaker 6: of noticed that, even though I try to be positive
Speaker 6: around them, when my wife and I are talking about,
Speaker 6: you know, some corporation or something in the news or
Speaker 6: even inconveniences that we face in our day to day lives,
Speaker 6: we end up being pretty negative. And so I started
Speaker 6: trying to do this thing with my kids that I
Speaker 6: call social savoring. That is, if I notice somebody doing
Speaker 6: something positive, I try to pause and recognize it and
Speaker 6: then tell them, hey, look, did you see that this
Speaker 6: person helped a stranger who was struggling? Can you see
Speaker 6: these people picking up litter on the streets? And in
Speaker 6: all of these cases, social savoring has a I hope,
Speaker 6: helped them plug into this more positive view of people.
Speaker 6: But it's also helped me, because of course, what you
Speaker 6: say to other people changes what you think about. In
Speaker 6: looking for examples of positivity that I could share with
Speaker 6: them in this sort of positive gossip, that sort of
Speaker 6: popped an antenna out of my mind that caused me
Speaker 6: to look for and really quite easily find many people
Speaker 6: acting in positive ways myself.
Speaker 1: And so have all of these things helped you?
Speaker 2: I mean it sounds like you're putting all this stuff
Speaker 2: into practice, which is awesome, Like has it actually changed
Speaker 2: your level of cynicism?
Speaker 1: Has it changed how happy you feel? Generally?
Speaker 6: I think of this as really quite connected to how
Speaker 6: you have experienced a lot of these happiness interventions. I
Speaker 6: know you do a lot of these things to try
Speaker 6: to tap into the science, and I know for you
Speaker 6: it works a lot of the times. And that doesn't
Speaker 6: mean that it's perfect.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's helped a lot, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: I'm like happy all the time. Right, I'm guessing that's
Speaker 2: exactly what's happening with cynicism for you, that less an
Speaker 2: isth goal but not a perfect hopeful skeptic just.
Speaker 3: Yet you're guessing correctly. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 6: I mean I think of myself as a recovering cynic
Speaker 6: you know. I don't think of myself as some person
Speaker 6: who's figured it all out and here to share. I'm
Speaker 6: in the struggle with so many other people, and these
Speaker 6: are instincts there, knee jerk responses, and we need to
Speaker 6: fight them actively.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: I think of cynicism as a sort of being on
Speaker 6: a treadmill. If you stand still, you're going to get
Speaker 6: pulled backwards. So it's this kind of constant effort to
Speaker 6: move forward against the grain of what our minds tend
Speaker 6: to do. It's a struggle. It's something that I work
Speaker 6: on all the time and probably will for the rest
Speaker 6: of my life.
Speaker 1: But it's such an important struggle.
Speaker 2: I feel like, especially right now, everything we see in
Speaker 2: the news is something that just like pulls me into
Speaker 2: this like hopelessness spiral because it just feels like the
Speaker 2: kind of ad that we all need so much right now.
Speaker 2: So would you be willing to help us out even more?
Speaker 2: Maybe we could take a hopeful Skeptics lens to so
Speaker 2: much of what's going on on the planet right now.
Speaker 1: Would it be gamed to come along?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: I thought you'd never ask. Of course I would love
Speaker 3: that awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, on the next episode of the Happiness Lab, we
Speaker 2: will continue tackling what we can do to reduce our
Speaker 2: painful cynicism and develop a hopeful skeptics Lens. We're going
Speaker 2: to be doing a deeper dive across three more episodes
Speaker 2: where we'll be talking about this and all that will
Speaker 2: happen next time on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor
Speaker 2: Lauriy Santos.
Speaker 3: And me doctor Jamal Zaki.
Speaker 1: You sounded kind of skeptical.
Speaker 3: Oh really, okay, let me do it again. Let me
Speaker 3: do it again.
Speaker 2: All that next time on the Happiness Lab would be
Speaker 2: doctor Lauriy Santos.
Speaker 3: And me doctor Jamial Zaki. Okay, okay, that was better.
Speaker 1: No no, we did we did it. We did it,
Speaker 1: we did it. Yeah,