November 3, 2025 • 38 mins
The world feels especially heavy these days, and it’s easy to feel cynical. So today, Maya is revisiting her conversation with psychologist Jamil Zaki, who offers an alternative to cynicism: a mindset he calls “hopeful skepticism.” Jamil explains why hopeful people are more resilient, more successful in accomplishing goals, and more willing to tackle societal problems head on.
For even more from Jamil, check out our other episode with him: “How to Build Empathy and Avoid Burnout.”
Don’t forget to pre-order Maya’s book, “The Other Side of Change,” at changewithmaya.com/book.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hey there, it's Maya. If you listen to the show,
you know that I'm fascinated by how people respond when
(00:36):
life doesn't go according to plan. My new book with
Penguin Random House, The Other Side of Change, comes out
January thirteenth, and it grew out of the same questions
we explore on this podcast. What do we hold on
to when life shifts, what do we let go of?
And how do we find meaning on the other side.
The Other Side of Change blends all new stories you
(00:59):
haven't heard on the podcast with new scientific insights on resilience.
My hope is that it gives you the tools you
need to navigate your own moments of disruption with a
greater sense of possibility about who you can become on
the Other Side of Change. You can learn more and
pre order now at the link in the show notes
or at Changewmaya dot com slash book. That's changed with
(01:21):
Maya dot com slash book, And if you'd like to
get more involved, I just launch an Ambassador's program, which
will give you exclusive content, free perks, and invitation to
a conversation with me and behind the scenes updates. You
can join this new community at changewmaya dot com slash join.
I can't wait to share this book with you. Okay,
(01:45):
so now about today's episode. I was at an event
the other night when I heard someone say, if you're
not feeling cynical right now, you're probably not paying attention.
It was hard to disagree with him. It feels like
we're living through a particularly dark moment in time, and
each news cycle seems to only affirm this. I'm certainly
(02:06):
feeling less hopeful about the fate of humanity these days.
But here's the thing. I also know that my cynicism
doesn't benefit me or any of the causes I care about.
My friend Jamil Zaki, a psychology professor at Stanford, is
the person who helped me understand this. So I re
listened to the conversation we had had on a slight
(02:26):
Change of Plans, in which Jamil makes the case against cynicism. Today,
I want to reshare that episode with all of you.
Jamil explains why hopeful people tend to be more resilient
during adversity, more successful in accomplishing their goals, and more
willing to tackle societal problems head on. For me, this
episode is the antidote to the despair that creeps in
(02:49):
so easily these days. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Cynics might see injustice just like the rest of us do,
but cynicism suggests that there's nothing really to be done
about it, because if a broken system reflects our broken nature,
if the worst of us is who we really are,
then any change, any attempt to improve the world or
the systems that we live in, is doomed from the outset.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Psychologist jimil Zaki studies the science of human connection, and
he believes that cynicism is holding us back. It's not
just harmful for health, it's also misguided. The alternative, he says,
is a mindset called hopeful skepticism.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
And the reason that I call it hopeful skepticism is
because our default tends to be negative. When you adopt
a skeptical perspective, you do tend to move towards a
slightly more hopeful and positive place because you're correcting for
the biases that we already have. People always say, what
you want me to put on a pair of rose
(03:55):
colored glasses, and I say, no, you're probably already wearing
a pair of glasses. That's like mud colored, so just
take those off right, so that I'm actually not asking
people to pay less attention, but to pay more attention
to the folk around them.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
On today's episode, The Life Changing Benefits of being a
Hopeful Skeptic, I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight
change of plans, a show about who we are and
who we'd become in the face of a big change.
(04:41):
Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University
and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. You
might remember him from his first appearance on this show,
when he talked about the power of empathy. Jamil has
spent the last twenty years studying the sunny side of
human nature, things like compassion, kindness, and togetherness. He says
(05:04):
he's widely known as a kind of ambassador for humanity's
better angels. But in his new book Hope for CENX,
The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Jamille talks about struggling
with this image. He begins the book with a confession.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
This entire time that I've been advocating for and talking
about human goodness, I myself have been pretty cynical. I
tend to suspect people and look at the worst sides
of lots of situations, becoming anxious, neurotic, pessimistic. And I
feel like that split between my outer persona on the
(05:41):
one hand and my deepest experiences on the other has
been a problem for me and did something that I
wanted to bring out into the light and address.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I'm curious if you can tell me a bit more
about that disconnect. Do you remember a story in which
you met with someone who were giving a group council
and then you went home and you were kind of like, oh, darn,
I don't actually think I'm buying what I'm saying. I'm
not internalizing this, oh.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
One of the most intense moments came after TED, the
global conference that has a lot of great speakers, asked
me to come and give a talk on optimism as
a path to positive social change.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I pulled out my notebook and.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I said, I'm going to start drafting this talk on
the first I think Wednesday of the year in twenty
twenty one, which happened to be January sixth, And I
remember I started drafting this talk about how you know
optimism is so important, and my friend texted me and said,
you have to turn on the television right now. And
I saw what the rest of the nation and world
(06:46):
saw with the insurrection at the Capitol Building, and I
thought to myself, am I full of shit? Is everything
that I talk about a lie? I know it's not
because I do the research, I see the data, but
there's sometimes such a huge distance between your head and
(07:08):
your heart, you know, And like I just couldn't believe
deeper inside myself that people were good as I watched
this tragedy unfold.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, what were the personal costs to being cynical for you?
I'm curious to hear how that played out.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
During that lockdown period late twenty twenty early twenty twenty one,
I really probably had the rock bottom of my own
personal cynicism, and it was extremely apparent to me that
entire time that it was not helping me, that it
was hurting me emotionally, it was diminishing my relationships. It
(07:46):
was it felt like a form of social depression, right.
Depression kind of casts this gray light over everything, and
especially over your sense of self and the world at large.
I felt like cynicism was doing that for my vision
of other people.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
You know, sort of.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It made it extremely difficult for me to see people
in a positive light, and I started exploring the science
of cynicism because I wanted to figure out what was
happening inside me and whether there was anything that I
could do for myself to dig out of this trap
that I felt my mind was in. And it's only
(08:25):
then that I discovered how common this sense of hopelessness, exhaustion,
and cynicism really is, which first of all made me
feel better because I was like, well, at least I'm
not alone, but then made me feel as I learned
more and more about how harmful cynicism is, and not
only how harmful, but how unnecessary it is, I thought, Wow,
(08:45):
this could actually help a lot of people who feel
like I.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Do.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
You know when you say the word cynicism, Jimille, so
many images come to mind. What is your definition of cynicism?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Cynicism can be defined as a theory about the world
and about people in particular. It's the theory that humanity
in general is selfish, greedy, and dishonest. That is not
to say that a cynic will doubt that anybody will
ever do a kind thing in their lives. They just
think that at our core, who we are is defined
(09:22):
by self interest. Now, if you have that theory, you
might notice a bunch of things happening inside you and
a bunch of things in your behavior. Right first, you
might find yourself suspecting other people's motives, even when they
do things that appear positive. You might find yourself very
quick to judge others based on the harms that they produce,
(09:43):
not on the best things that they do.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
It might also change what you do and what you
don't do.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
One place that we see cynicism play out very strongly
is in trust. Trust is our willingness to be vulnerable
to other people on the belief that they have our
best interest in mind. Loaning somebody money, letting somebody babysit
your kid, giving somebody more responsibility at work, on your team.
All of these are types of trust. And trust is
(10:11):
a social gamble. We can't know what the outcome will be.
We need to count on other people. And if you're cynical,
that gamble feels like it's for suckers. It feels like
a losing bet. So cynics tend to trust a lot
less often than non cynics.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
You have a very people focused definition, So is that
intentional and does it exclude those who just think irrespective
of human involvement, you know, an asteroid might hit us, Like,
how do you bucket those folks?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I think that what you're describing is pessimism, the idea
that the future will unfold in ways that we don't want.
And I think that pessimism and cynicism are quite related
because a lot of what we expect about the future
has to do with who's around us right now. But
I do think of cynicism as generally a social theory.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Okay, okay, that's very helpful. Would you call cynicism the
default state of the human or like, is that what
you see in the data or do you think that
it's somewhat acquired. I'm just curious to know what we're
running up against.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
So there are some defaults in the human brain and
mind that tip us towards cynicism. Psychologists talk about negativity bias,
the idea that it's often much easier to pay attention to,
to remember, and much more tempting to talk about negative
events and people than positive events in people. And you
(11:38):
can see why that would be evolutionarily adaptive, right, you know,
if you're thinking back one hundred thousand years, the people
who paid lots of attention to threats in their environment
might be more likely to survive. And so that's I
think one thing that makes fighting cynicism an uphill battle.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
You've already alluded to some of the negative impacts of
cynicism on our well being in relationships. Are there any
other studies or research that you would want to share?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah? I mean so one is that.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Unfortunately live far less healthy lives, even at a physical level,
so they tend to show greater signs of cellular aging
and inflammation, they tend to develop heart disease more than
non synics, and even die younger than non cynics. And
I think this comes from the fact that cynics have
a harder time tapping into one of the things that
(12:31):
destresses and nourishes us, the most connection to other people.
There's one really fascinating study where researchers brought people in
the lab and asked them to give an extemporaneous speech
on a topic they didn't know very well, which of
course is not pleasant for anybody. And in some cases
people had a cheerleader, a friendly stranger who was with
(12:53):
them while they prepared and said, you've got this. I
believe in you. And in other cases they were alone. Now,
for non cnics, their blood pressure went up when they
were preparing this speech, that would happen for any of us.
But when they had a supportive stranger there, their blood
pressure went up a lot less. For cynics, having a
supportive person there didn't make a difference at all. So
(13:14):
their blood pressure increased just as much if they were
alone or if somebody was there to help them. That
is so telling to me. It almost strikes me that
if you're cynical, if you don't believe in people, then
you kind of can't digest or metabolize the social nourishment
of connection. And I think that that's just such a
tragic way to live.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, so much of your book I see as mythbusting cynicism.
And so what are some common misconceptions that people have
about cynicism.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, this was one of the things that was most
surprising for me when I started doing this research, because
I thought to myself, Wow, cynicism feels terrible. It's awful
for our health and relationships, it's not very good for
our communities. Why are so many people adopting this as
a view of life and as a view of humanity.
And there are three myths that I realized our culture
(14:12):
propagates about cynicism. The first is that it's wise. Now,
over the last three years since starting this project, I've
talked to so many self proclaimed cynics, and one thing
that they have in common, besides hostility and a little
bit of contempt, is a sort of bitter pride. A
lot of cynics will say, I'm actually a realist. You
(14:33):
know that if you don't think in cynical terms, you're
a naive roube or a chump. That if you pay
close enough attention and become wise enough, then you will
realize that people are really terrible. And in fact, it's
not just cynics who think this. Surveys find that seventy
percent of people think that cynics are smarter than non cynics,
(14:57):
and eighty five percent of people think that cynics are
more socially smart, for instance, that they'll be better at
picking out liars than nonsnics. It turns out that that's
not true. So there's from hundreds of thousands of people,
lots of national surveys that finds that cynics actually perform
less well on cognitive tests than non cynics, And there
(15:18):
is other research that finds that cynics are worse at
spotting liars than non cynics. So it's important to know
that that perception of cynicism as a type of intelligence
is clearly at odds with the data.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Let's talk a bit more about some of the other
misconceptions we have about cynicism.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, I think that another misconception that I think people
have about cynicism is that it's safe.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I think a lot of us who feel cynical about
others feel that way because we've been hurt, betrayed, disappointed,
you know. I know for me, my cynicism comes from
a lot of early parts of my life where I
didn't feel like I could really count on people. And
so it's not something that I feel because I think
I'm superior to others, or because I want to have
(16:07):
a negative attitude of a response to pain, and one
response that we might have to pain is to put
our guard up to feel like well, I never want
to experience that again. I don't want to be betrayed
or heard again. And the only way I can guarantee
my own safety moving forward is to shut off any
type of social risk. And that's why I think you
(16:29):
often see cynics not willing to trust people because they
don't want to risk betrayal, They don't want to risk
being taken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
No. I totally appreciate that. Why don't we cover jmial
the third misconception that people have when it comes to cynicism.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, the third misconception around cynicism is the idea that
cynicism is moral, that that really it's so important to
be aware of injustice, corruption and harm, and that cynics
are the only ones who are adequately responsive to all
the terrible things that happen in the world, and as
(17:08):
a result, that being hopeful or positive is kind of
an abandonment of our species and our problems, that it's
a pair of rose colored glasses. You know, when I
talk about hope and overcoming cynicism, a lot of people say, well,
that's rich coming from you, an ultra privileged professor at
an elite university. You know, a lot of us don't
(17:29):
have the luxury of feeling good about humanity. We have
to speak truth to power and challenge injustice. And first
of all, I think cynics might see injustice just like
the rest of us do. But cynicism suggests that there's
nothing really to be done about it. Because if a
broken system reflects our broken nature, if the worst of
(17:53):
us is who we really are, than any change, any
attempt to improve the world or the systems that we
live in is doomed from the outset. And so you
actually see more cynical people are less likely to take
part in social moved, they're less likely to vote, They're
more willing to do things like spread conspiracy theories. And
(18:14):
in fact, I think that autocrats and authoritarians often benefit
from cynicism and use it as a way of promoting
the status quo. I mean, a population that doesn't trust
itself is an easy one to manipulate.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, yeah, do you think there's an element of guilt?
Like do people feel guilty when they express optimism? Because
it just feels jarring when you see all the pain
and suffering around you.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
This is such a deep question, and I do want
to separate optimism from hope here. Yeah, optimism is the
idea that things will turn out well. Hope is the
idea that they could turn out well. And I think
that's a huge distinction, because optimism can lead a little
bit to complacency. You know, if things are going to
(19:05):
go great, then I don't really have to do anything
to make a difference. And in fact, I think that
what you could call toxic optimism is not that different
from cynicism. If cynics think, well, things are going to
go terribly no matter what I do, they can also
be complacent.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah, an optimists are like, things are going to go
great no matter what I do, so I'm not going
to do anything.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
So you've got two groups of people who have fundamentally
different beliefs, but neither one of them might be inspired
to do much. Hope takes the deep uncertainty that we
have about the future as the place where our actions matter,
and so hopeful people tend to focus on their agency
(19:45):
and they think, well, there's a vision of the world
where things could be better. I'm not saying that's what
will happen, but it's a possibility, and in order for
that possibility to become more likely, I need to take action.
Hopeful individuals, for instance, tend to be more resilient during adversity.
Lower socio economic and underrepresented minority students who have hope
(20:08):
are more like likely to pursue their academic goals and
socially as well. Hopeful people are more willing to engage
in protests. Right, A protest is not a complacent, rose
colored glasses type of thing to do. It's taking major
problems head on. But why do we take those problems
head on? Because we think that there's a difference to
(20:29):
be made.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
You advocate in your book for quote Unlearning cynicism, and
you introduce this concept of hopeful skepticism. You've already explained
how hope is different from optimism. Can you explain what
you mean by hopeful skepticism.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
One of the most important things that I learned in
doing research for this project was the difference between cynicism
and skepticism. As we've talked about, cynicism is a theory
about the world.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Well, as you know.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
As a scientist, once you have a theory, you start
to kind of see it everywhere and even want to
support it, and so there can be some confirmation bias
around theories often have a biased way of looking at
the world. They almost look at it like lawyers right
and the prosecution against humanity. They really pay lots of
attention to the terrible things that people do, or they
(21:20):
might explain away the others' kindness and trustworthiness. Skepticism is
not thinking like a lawyer, but thinking like a scientist.
Skeptics don't necessarily have some huge assumption or theory about
what people are like. Instead, they look for evidence. They're
unwilling to rest on early and easy judgments. And because
(21:43):
of that, skepticism is really different from cynicism, and skeptics,
unlike cinics, can learn really quickly, can adapt to new situations,
and become much more accurate about people than cynics do.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
One of the quotes that I really enjoyed from your book,
and I thought articulated the point well, is that hope
is not a naive way of approaching the world. It's
an act, your response to the best data available.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
It's really a point I want to drive home because
a lot of people when they hear hope, they think
of somebody with their head in the sand. They think
of somebody ignoring data as opposed to approaching data. One
of the important points though, and the reason that I
call it hopeful skepticism is because our default tends to
(22:32):
be negative. When you adopt a skeptical perspective, you do
tend to move towards a slightly more hopeful and positive
place because you're correcting for the biases that we already have.
People always say, what you want me to put on
a pair of rose colored glasses, and I say, no,
you're probably already wearing a pair of glasses that's like
(22:54):
mud colored, So just take those off right, so that
I'm actually not asking people to pay less attention, but
to pay more attention to the folks around them.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
After the break, Jamille teaches us how to practice hopeful skepticism.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans, Jimille. The hopeful part of all this is
(23:26):
that hopeful skepticism is in fact a skill that we
can build. So why don't we talk a bit about
how it is that we can build that muscle. In
your book, you have this, you know, wonderful practical guide,
and I'm hoping that we can share with listeners a
few examples of some of these overarching strategies. The first
you say is to connect with your core values. Tell
(23:50):
me what that looks.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Like, yeah, you know, it's interesting. It turns out that
although cynics have a lot of judgment and contempt for
other people, they also tend to say that they rely
on other people more for their sense of self worth
than the non cynics. So there's a sense that when
we can't trust ourselves very deeply, it's hard to trust others.
(24:14):
It turns out that one of the best ways to
start overcoming cynicism is to connect in new ways to ourselves.
My colleague at Stanford, Jeff Cohen, has a lot of
work on this through what he calls values affirmation. So
values affirmation is where you consider what matters most to
(24:34):
you in life. You'll see a list of, for instance,
twenty things that people often say they care a lot about,
and you'll be asked, well, what are your top three
or what's your top one, And then you're asked to
write about, well, why does it matter to you and
what are some ways that you express that value in
your life.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And it turns out that.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
This simple exercise, just ten fifteen minutes of writing about
what really matters to you and how you live your values,
instills a kind of deep confidence in people.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I'm not talking.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
About braggadocious arrogance, but rather a sense of sturdiness, a
sense of solid foundation. And when we have that sense
of stirtiness internally, we're more willing to be open to others.
Jeff finds that when people affirm their own values, they
feel less threatened by information that conflicts with their beliefs
(25:22):
and more open minded. And that's why I think it
might tap us in also to a sense of skepticism
and hopeful skepticism about other people.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You talk about this in terms of, you know, better
connecting to ourselves, and I wonder I'm just thinking out loud.
I mean, here's one way in which I think increasing
self compassion could be a vehicle through which we have
more hope. So when we do fail or we make
some sort of mistake, we can overconclude from that incident. Right,
So rather than saying I made a mistake, it's I'm
(25:54):
a mistake. There's no redemption.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And if I have more self compassion and I believe, okay,
well I made a mistake, I myself not a mistake,
I might be more willing to assume that posture with
other people in my life, like, oh, that person hurt me,
But they might not be like a hurtful person, like
someone who loves hurting others. They might just have aired
(26:16):
in a particular way.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
That's beautifully put.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I love that, And I think there's a lot of
evidence that when we judge people in a trait based way,
we see an action that they take and we decide
that action defines them. That closes us off not just
to compassion for that person, but it makes it very
easy for us to think cynically about that individual. In fact,
(26:40):
cynicism is a sort of fixed view of humanity.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Right exactly. That's what I'm trying to get at. It's like, yeah, yeah,
there is actually hope for this person to change because
I think I can change.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
I love that. Yeah, No, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Let's go to the second strategy for building hopeful skepticism,
and you say that is to be skeptical of your cynicism.
So tell me a bit more about what that process
can look like.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
This is something that I drew in trying to overcome
my own cynicism from tools in cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT.
So when I started CBT in my twenties, my therapist
told me, Okay, what are your beliefs about yourself and
about the world. Write them down and then try to
(27:24):
think about them scientifically. What evidence do you have to
support them? And I wrote down some of my very
negative beliefs at the time. At the time, I really
felt like if I am not positive all the time,
people won't like me. That I need to entertain or
provide people with good vibes in order for them to
(27:46):
stay in my life. I felt like expressing that true
self when my true self was unattractive or gloomy, would
lead people to flee. But I had no evidence for
it because I had never really tried. I had never
been open with other people about what I was going
through or feeling. And so my therapist then said, Okay,
(28:07):
you've got this belief, you don't have any other for it.
Why don't you collect some data, Why don't you try
to test your hypotheses? And both of these steps understanding
what our beliefs are and whether we have evidence for
them and then testing them could be tools for being
skeptical of our own cynicism.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah. I wonder how that played out for you, because
I know in your book you said people used to
call you Guy Smiley, so you were definitely battling a
pretty strong reputation. So what steps did you take to
test out this theory that you had to be a
certain way in order to be liked.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
One example from more recently, a few years ago now,
a couple of new faculty members joined my department and
we went out for drinks and they said, well, what's
it like to be a professor here at Stanford? And
you know, I had my guy smiley response already, you know,
it's the best job in the world.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
I can't believe it.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
But instead I decided to answer honestly, and I said,
it's terrifying. You know, you never feel like you deserve
this job, because nobody really deserves it. You have to
be so lucky to get here, and it's incredibly easy
to feel like an impostor and to feel like any
mistake you make is just proof that the university made
(29:29):
a mistake in hiring you. And I still remember the
seconds of silence that followed this, you know, rant that
these people had not asked for at our first time
hanging out, and they felt like ours to me. And
I also remember the relief that poured out of these.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
New faculty members.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
They said, Wow, it means so much to hear somebody
who we see as succeeding open up about this. And
we ended up becoming really fast friends. And even now
years later, we get together about once a quarter and
we have something called beer and wine where we drink
beer and wine but with an h you know, we
complain and vent and open up. And but again, so
(30:09):
for me, being positive was inauthentic. Sometimes it was a
defense mechanism, and being honest about my struggles showed that
I believed in the people around me. I believed that
they would have my back, and more often than not
they did. So the experiments that I did in my life,
(30:31):
the data came back shockingly positive.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah. So the final strategy is to practice what you
call social saving. Tell me more.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Savoring is generally the practice of appreciating good things as
they happen, and it's related to, but distinct from gratitude,
which is generally appreciating the good things.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
That have happened.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
So I practice savoring a lot with my kids. We
will do things like ice cream eating class or sunset
watching class, where we will enjoy something, but we'll enjoy
it very carefully. You know, I'll say, well, what do
you like about how this tastes or the texture of
the ice cream? What do you want to remember about
this moment? Just pointing our awareness towards the good things
(31:18):
in our lives, and social savoring is in essence, taking
that same general strategy, but pointing it towards other people.
And so for me, social savoring has two parts. One
is paying attention to and looking for examples of people
doing good in the world. And I'm not talking about
heroics that you see in the news. I'm talking about
(31:39):
walking around a city and seeing people pick up litter
or helping somebody who's in need, for instance. The second
part of social savoring is not just to notice the
goodness that's all around us all the time, but to
share it. When you socially savor with others, you help
fight their cynicism. But you also in changing what you say,
(32:00):
change the way that you think, your habits of speech
become habits of mind, and help kind of pop up
an antenna in your own mind for the goodness of others,
which of course is not that hard to find once
you start to look for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah. One lesson I internalized early for my mom is
especially when engaging with people in the service industry is
they're always hearing complaints, and so her goal is always
to counteract that by every time she has a really
positive experience, making sure she calls in the manager and says,
you know, so and so is so amazing and so
excellent and so. Just the other day, I was flying
back from New York and our flight attendant was just
(32:36):
so kind, and I just called her over and I
was like, Hey, I just need you to know you
are such a kind, cheerful presence, and it's made my
day and it's made this flight so much better. And
I thought in that moment about the impact that sharing
that with her would have on her. But I didn't
think in that moment about what you're sharing with me now,
which is what impact it probably had on me and
my view of humanity.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I love that. It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
I mean, our culture is so full of people giving
life one star reviews on yelcha you and giving all
the people around them one star review use. But if
that's all we do, if the loudest conversations we have
are about the worst things that happen, yeah, then we
will end up with a skewed view of the world
and of each other.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
I'm curious to know how writing this book and engaging
with the research on hope and cynicism has transformed your
own outlook on life. Right, So you came into this saying, Okay,
I'm going to confess that I am a cynic. How
has it changed the way that you live your life?
How has it changed your relationship with some of your
big fears? Yeah, share with me any reflections you have.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I don't consider myself an ex cynic. I consider myself
a recovering cynic.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Right, In that I work on this all the time,
I still have the same defaults. I still have the
same instincts. I think that one of the things that
this project has changed in me is that I'm more
aware that when I'm thinking in gloomy or cynical terms,
that that doesn't mean that I'm right. So I guess
I trust my sin. This is less I'm more skeptical
(34:11):
of it. That is something that I can say I've achieved.
And then this project has changed how I parent. I'm
much more aware of how, even if I'm taking risks,
even if I'm trusting people, my default is to stop
my kids from taking any risks and to protect them
from all sorts of harm, and especially from harmful people.
(34:34):
I stand by that instinct one thousand percent, but I
think oftentimes as a parent, my default has been protection
over freedom, protection over exploration, and protection over learning, and
so I've been trying to balance that. And so one
of our daughters is eight years old, and we live
in the middle of a big city here in San Francisco,
(34:56):
and she really wants to be able to go buy
something on her own, right. She wants to be able
to go a couple of blocks and pick something up.
And we've gone back and forth on this for for
a year now, and I won't say that she's done
it yet, but we're on the cusp of doing it.
I got her some walkie talkies so that she can
(35:17):
be in contact if she needs us. But you know,
before working on this project, I would have thought, no way,
I'm letting her go even two blocks. You know, there's
just too many people out there who could try to
harm her. And of course, I want, above and beyond
anything in the world for my daughter to be safe.
But I also think now that her going a block
or two is actually a pretty safe thing to do.
(35:39):
Is something that children have done for generations, and that
keeping her from doing that isn't actually keeping her safe.
It's in fact keeping her from learning about the world
and how to interact with it.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Jimille can feel like a huge shift to move from
cynicisms to hopeful skepticism, especially during the time we live in.
I mean, I'm thinking about areas of life that I'm
very cynical about, and it seems like a herculean effort
to do that, and so I do wonder you can
talk just a bit about that.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
This is a process of small steps, right, I mean,
nobody changes fundamentally how they view the world overnight, really
change fundamental deep change is a process of building new habits,
little things that we do slightly differently each day. Another
thing that I'll say is that cynicism is really most
(36:30):
powerful in the abstract. If you ask people what are
people like, they're pretty gloomy. But if you ask them
what are the people in your life like? And I'm
not saying your friends and family, but the strangers you
interact with, your grosser, your neighbor, the person you sit
next to on the bus.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
If you ask people.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
About their actual communities, they're much more bullish. They think
that those people are very trustworthy, are kind, They think
that those communities are generally pretty good. And so I
think it's important to remember that hope oftentimes isn't out
there in the ether, It's right here all around us,
(37:11):
in the communities that we live in.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you liked this
episode and want to hear more about Jamille's research, we
recorded another episode with him about how to cultivate different
kinds of empathy and reduce burnout. You can find a
link to it in the show notes. We'll be back
soon with a new episode of A Slight Change of Plans.
I'll see you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,
(38:06):
and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change
family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Luvin, and
our sound engineer Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries.
(38:30):
So big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a
slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
See you next week.
Pushkin. Hey there, it's Maya. If you listen to the show,
you know that I'm fascinated by how people respond when
(00:36):
life doesn't go according to plan. My new book with
Penguin Random House, The Other Side of Change, comes out
January thirteenth, and it grew out of the same questions
we explore on this podcast. What do we hold on
to when life shifts, what do we let go of?
And how do we find meaning on the other side.
The Other Side of Change blends all new stories you
(00:59):
haven't heard on the podcast with new scientific insights on resilience.
My hope is that it gives you the tools you
need to navigate your own moments of disruption with a
greater sense of possibility about who you can become on
the Other Side of Change. You can learn more and
pre order now at the link in the show notes
or at Changewmaya dot com slash book. That's changed with
(01:21):
Maya dot com slash book, And if you'd like to
get more involved, I just launch an Ambassador's program, which
will give you exclusive content, free perks, and invitation to
a conversation with me and behind the scenes updates. You
can join this new community at changewmaya dot com slash join.
I can't wait to share this book with you. Okay,
(01:45):
so now about today's episode. I was at an event
the other night when I heard someone say, if you're
not feeling cynical right now, you're probably not paying attention.
It was hard to disagree with him. It feels like
we're living through a particularly dark moment in time, and
each news cycle seems to only affirm this. I'm certainly
(02:06):
feeling less hopeful about the fate of humanity these days.
But here's the thing. I also know that my cynicism
doesn't benefit me or any of the causes I care about.
My friend Jamil Zaki, a psychology professor at Stanford, is
the person who helped me understand this. So I re
listened to the conversation we had had on a slight
(02:26):
Change of Plans, in which Jamil makes the case against cynicism. Today,
I want to reshare that episode with all of you.
Jamil explains why hopeful people tend to be more resilient
during adversity, more successful in accomplishing their goals, and more
willing to tackle societal problems head on. For me, this
episode is the antidote to the despair that creeps in
(02:49):
so easily these days. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Cynics might see injustice just like the rest of us do,
but cynicism suggests that there's nothing really to be done
about it, because if a broken system reflects our broken nature,
if the worst of us is who we really are,
then any change, any attempt to improve the world or
the systems that we live in, is doomed from the outset.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Psychologist jimil Zaki studies the science of human connection, and
he believes that cynicism is holding us back. It's not
just harmful for health, it's also misguided. The alternative, he says,
is a mindset called hopeful skepticism.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
And the reason that I call it hopeful skepticism is
because our default tends to be negative. When you adopt
a skeptical perspective, you do tend to move towards a
slightly more hopeful and positive place because you're correcting for
the biases that we already have. People always say, what
you want me to put on a pair of rose
(03:55):
colored glasses, and I say, no, you're probably already wearing
a pair of glasses. That's like mud colored, so just
take those off right, so that I'm actually not asking
people to pay less attention, but to pay more attention
to the folk around them.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
On today's episode, The Life Changing Benefits of being a
Hopeful Skeptic, I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight
change of plans, a show about who we are and
who we'd become in the face of a big change.
(04:41):
Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University
and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. You
might remember him from his first appearance on this show,
when he talked about the power of empathy. Jamil has
spent the last twenty years studying the sunny side of
human nature, things like compassion, kindness, and togetherness. He says
(05:04):
he's widely known as a kind of ambassador for humanity's
better angels. But in his new book Hope for CENX,
The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Jamille talks about struggling
with this image. He begins the book with a confession.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
This entire time that I've been advocating for and talking
about human goodness, I myself have been pretty cynical. I
tend to suspect people and look at the worst sides
of lots of situations, becoming anxious, neurotic, pessimistic. And I
feel like that split between my outer persona on the
(05:41):
one hand and my deepest experiences on the other has
been a problem for me and did something that I
wanted to bring out into the light and address.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I'm curious if you can tell me a bit more
about that disconnect. Do you remember a story in which
you met with someone who were giving a group council
and then you went home and you were kind of like, oh, darn,
I don't actually think I'm buying what I'm saying. I'm
not internalizing this, oh.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
One of the most intense moments came after TED, the
global conference that has a lot of great speakers, asked
me to come and give a talk on optimism as
a path to positive social change.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I pulled out my notebook and.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I said, I'm going to start drafting this talk on
the first I think Wednesday of the year in twenty
twenty one, which happened to be January sixth, And I
remember I started drafting this talk about how you know
optimism is so important, and my friend texted me and said,
you have to turn on the television right now. And
I saw what the rest of the nation and world
(06:46):
saw with the insurrection at the Capitol Building, and I
thought to myself, am I full of shit? Is everything
that I talk about a lie? I know it's not
because I do the research, I see the data, but
there's sometimes such a huge distance between your head and
(07:08):
your heart, you know, And like I just couldn't believe
deeper inside myself that people were good as I watched
this tragedy unfold.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, what were the personal costs to being cynical for you?
I'm curious to hear how that played out.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
During that lockdown period late twenty twenty early twenty twenty one,
I really probably had the rock bottom of my own
personal cynicism, and it was extremely apparent to me that
entire time that it was not helping me, that it
was hurting me emotionally, it was diminishing my relationships. It
(07:46):
was it felt like a form of social depression, right.
Depression kind of casts this gray light over everything, and
especially over your sense of self and the world at large.
I felt like cynicism was doing that for my vision
of other people.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
You know, sort of.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It made it extremely difficult for me to see people
in a positive light, and I started exploring the science
of cynicism because I wanted to figure out what was
happening inside me and whether there was anything that I
could do for myself to dig out of this trap
that I felt my mind was in. And it's only
(08:25):
then that I discovered how common this sense of hopelessness, exhaustion,
and cynicism really is, which first of all made me
feel better because I was like, well, at least I'm
not alone, but then made me feel as I learned
more and more about how harmful cynicism is, and not
only how harmful, but how unnecessary it is, I thought, Wow,
(08:45):
this could actually help a lot of people who feel
like I.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Do.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
You know when you say the word cynicism, Jimille, so
many images come to mind. What is your definition of cynicism?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Cynicism can be defined as a theory about the world
and about people in particular. It's the theory that humanity
in general is selfish, greedy, and dishonest. That is not
to say that a cynic will doubt that anybody will
ever do a kind thing in their lives. They just
think that at our core, who we are is defined
(09:22):
by self interest. Now, if you have that theory, you
might notice a bunch of things happening inside you and
a bunch of things in your behavior. Right first, you
might find yourself suspecting other people's motives, even when they
do things that appear positive. You might find yourself very
quick to judge others based on the harms that they produce,
(09:43):
not on the best things that they do.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
It might also change what you do and what you
don't do.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
One place that we see cynicism play out very strongly
is in trust. Trust is our willingness to be vulnerable
to other people on the belief that they have our
best interest in mind. Loaning somebody money, letting somebody babysit
your kid, giving somebody more responsibility at work, on your team.
All of these are types of trust. And trust is
(10:11):
a social gamble. We can't know what the outcome will be.
We need to count on other people. And if you're cynical,
that gamble feels like it's for suckers. It feels like
a losing bet. So cynics tend to trust a lot
less often than non cynics.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
You have a very people focused definition, So is that
intentional and does it exclude those who just think irrespective
of human involvement, you know, an asteroid might hit us, Like,
how do you bucket those folks?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I think that what you're describing is pessimism, the idea
that the future will unfold in ways that we don't want.
And I think that pessimism and cynicism are quite related
because a lot of what we expect about the future
has to do with who's around us right now. But
I do think of cynicism as generally a social theory.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Okay, okay, that's very helpful. Would you call cynicism the
default state of the human or like, is that what
you see in the data or do you think that
it's somewhat acquired. I'm just curious to know what we're
running up against.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
So there are some defaults in the human brain and
mind that tip us towards cynicism. Psychologists talk about negativity bias,
the idea that it's often much easier to pay attention to,
to remember, and much more tempting to talk about negative
events and people than positive events in people. And you
(11:38):
can see why that would be evolutionarily adaptive, right, you know,
if you're thinking back one hundred thousand years, the people
who paid lots of attention to threats in their environment
might be more likely to survive. And so that's I
think one thing that makes fighting cynicism an uphill battle.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
You've already alluded to some of the negative impacts of
cynicism on our well being in relationships. Are there any
other studies or research that you would want to share?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah? I mean so one is that.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Unfortunately live far less healthy lives, even at a physical level,
so they tend to show greater signs of cellular aging
and inflammation, they tend to develop heart disease more than
non synics, and even die younger than non cynics. And
I think this comes from the fact that cynics have
a harder time tapping into one of the things that
(12:31):
destresses and nourishes us, the most connection to other people.
There's one really fascinating study where researchers brought people in
the lab and asked them to give an extemporaneous speech
on a topic they didn't know very well, which of
course is not pleasant for anybody. And in some cases
people had a cheerleader, a friendly stranger who was with
(12:53):
them while they prepared and said, you've got this. I
believe in you. And in other cases they were alone. Now,
for non cnics, their blood pressure went up when they
were preparing this speech, that would happen for any of us.
But when they had a supportive stranger there, their blood
pressure went up a lot less. For cynics, having a
supportive person there didn't make a difference at all. So
(13:14):
their blood pressure increased just as much if they were
alone or if somebody was there to help them. That
is so telling to me. It almost strikes me that
if you're cynical, if you don't believe in people, then
you kind of can't digest or metabolize the social nourishment
of connection. And I think that that's just such a
tragic way to live.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, so much of your book I see as mythbusting cynicism.
And so what are some common misconceptions that people have
about cynicism.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, this was one of the things that was most
surprising for me when I started doing this research, because
I thought to myself, Wow, cynicism feels terrible. It's awful
for our health and relationships, it's not very good for
our communities. Why are so many people adopting this as
a view of life and as a view of humanity.
And there are three myths that I realized our culture
(14:12):
propagates about cynicism. The first is that it's wise. Now,
over the last three years since starting this project, I've
talked to so many self proclaimed cynics, and one thing
that they have in common, besides hostility and a little
bit of contempt, is a sort of bitter pride. A
lot of cynics will say, I'm actually a realist. You
(14:33):
know that if you don't think in cynical terms, you're
a naive roube or a chump. That if you pay
close enough attention and become wise enough, then you will
realize that people are really terrible. And in fact, it's
not just cynics who think this. Surveys find that seventy
percent of people think that cynics are smarter than non cynics,
(14:57):
and eighty five percent of people think that cynics are
more socially smart, for instance, that they'll be better at
picking out liars than nonsnics. It turns out that that's
not true. So there's from hundreds of thousands of people,
lots of national surveys that finds that cynics actually perform
less well on cognitive tests than non cynics, And there
(15:18):
is other research that finds that cynics are worse at
spotting liars than non cynics. So it's important to know
that that perception of cynicism as a type of intelligence
is clearly at odds with the data.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Let's talk a bit more about some of the other
misconceptions we have about cynicism.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, I think that another misconception that I think people
have about cynicism is that it's safe.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I think a lot of us who feel cynical about
others feel that way because we've been hurt, betrayed, disappointed,
you know. I know for me, my cynicism comes from
a lot of early parts of my life where I
didn't feel like I could really count on people. And
so it's not something that I feel because I think
I'm superior to others, or because I want to have
(16:07):
a negative attitude of a response to pain, and one
response that we might have to pain is to put
our guard up to feel like well, I never want
to experience that again. I don't want to be betrayed
or heard again. And the only way I can guarantee
my own safety moving forward is to shut off any
type of social risk. And that's why I think you
(16:29):
often see cynics not willing to trust people because they
don't want to risk betrayal, They don't want to risk
being taken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
No. I totally appreciate that. Why don't we cover jmial
the third misconception that people have when it comes to cynicism.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, the third misconception around cynicism is the idea that
cynicism is moral, that that really it's so important to
be aware of injustice, corruption and harm, and that cynics
are the only ones who are adequately responsive to all
the terrible things that happen in the world, and as
(17:08):
a result, that being hopeful or positive is kind of
an abandonment of our species and our problems, that it's
a pair of rose colored glasses. You know, when I
talk about hope and overcoming cynicism, a lot of people say, well,
that's rich coming from you, an ultra privileged professor at
an elite university. You know, a lot of us don't
(17:29):
have the luxury of feeling good about humanity. We have
to speak truth to power and challenge injustice. And first
of all, I think cynics might see injustice just like
the rest of us do. But cynicism suggests that there's
nothing really to be done about it. Because if a
broken system reflects our broken nature, if the worst of
(17:53):
us is who we really are, than any change, any
attempt to improve the world or the systems that we
live in is doomed from the outset. And so you
actually see more cynical people are less likely to take
part in social moved, they're less likely to vote, They're
more willing to do things like spread conspiracy theories. And
(18:14):
in fact, I think that autocrats and authoritarians often benefit
from cynicism and use it as a way of promoting
the status quo. I mean, a population that doesn't trust
itself is an easy one to manipulate.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, yeah, do you think there's an element of guilt?
Like do people feel guilty when they express optimism? Because
it just feels jarring when you see all the pain
and suffering around you.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
This is such a deep question, and I do want
to separate optimism from hope here. Yeah, optimism is the
idea that things will turn out well. Hope is the
idea that they could turn out well. And I think
that's a huge distinction, because optimism can lead a little
bit to complacency. You know, if things are going to
(19:05):
go great, then I don't really have to do anything
to make a difference. And in fact, I think that
what you could call toxic optimism is not that different
from cynicism. If cynics think, well, things are going to
go terribly no matter what I do, they can also
be complacent.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah, an optimists are like, things are going to go
great no matter what I do, so I'm not going
to do anything.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
So you've got two groups of people who have fundamentally
different beliefs, but neither one of them might be inspired
to do much. Hope takes the deep uncertainty that we
have about the future as the place where our actions matter,
and so hopeful people tend to focus on their agency
(19:45):
and they think, well, there's a vision of the world
where things could be better. I'm not saying that's what
will happen, but it's a possibility, and in order for
that possibility to become more likely, I need to take action.
Hopeful individuals, for instance, tend to be more resilient during adversity.
Lower socio economic and underrepresented minority students who have hope
(20:08):
are more like likely to pursue their academic goals and
socially as well. Hopeful people are more willing to engage
in protests. Right, A protest is not a complacent, rose
colored glasses type of thing to do. It's taking major
problems head on. But why do we take those problems
head on? Because we think that there's a difference to
(20:29):
be made.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
You advocate in your book for quote Unlearning cynicism, and
you introduce this concept of hopeful skepticism. You've already explained
how hope is different from optimism. Can you explain what
you mean by hopeful skepticism.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
One of the most important things that I learned in
doing research for this project was the difference between cynicism
and skepticism. As we've talked about, cynicism is a theory
about the world.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Well, as you know.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
As a scientist, once you have a theory, you start
to kind of see it everywhere and even want to
support it, and so there can be some confirmation bias
around theories often have a biased way of looking at
the world. They almost look at it like lawyers right
and the prosecution against humanity. They really pay lots of
attention to the terrible things that people do, or they
(21:20):
might explain away the others' kindness and trustworthiness. Skepticism is
not thinking like a lawyer, but thinking like a scientist.
Skeptics don't necessarily have some huge assumption or theory about
what people are like. Instead, they look for evidence. They're
unwilling to rest on early and easy judgments. And because
(21:43):
of that, skepticism is really different from cynicism, and skeptics,
unlike cinics, can learn really quickly, can adapt to new situations,
and become much more accurate about people than cynics do.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
One of the quotes that I really enjoyed from your book,
and I thought articulated the point well, is that hope
is not a naive way of approaching the world. It's
an act, your response to the best data available.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
It's really a point I want to drive home because
a lot of people when they hear hope, they think
of somebody with their head in the sand. They think
of somebody ignoring data as opposed to approaching data. One
of the important points though, and the reason that I
call it hopeful skepticism is because our default tends to
(22:32):
be negative. When you adopt a skeptical perspective, you do
tend to move towards a slightly more hopeful and positive
place because you're correcting for the biases that we already have.
People always say, what you want me to put on
a pair of rose colored glasses, and I say, no,
you're probably already wearing a pair of glasses that's like
(22:54):
mud colored, So just take those off right, so that
I'm actually not asking people to pay less attention, but
to pay more attention to the folks around them.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
After the break, Jamille teaches us how to practice hopeful skepticism.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans, Jimille. The hopeful part of all this is
(23:26):
that hopeful skepticism is in fact a skill that we
can build. So why don't we talk a bit about
how it is that we can build that muscle. In
your book, you have this, you know, wonderful practical guide,
and I'm hoping that we can share with listeners a
few examples of some of these overarching strategies. The first
you say is to connect with your core values. Tell
(23:50):
me what that looks.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Like, yeah, you know, it's interesting. It turns out that
although cynics have a lot of judgment and contempt for
other people, they also tend to say that they rely
on other people more for their sense of self worth
than the non cynics. So there's a sense that when
we can't trust ourselves very deeply, it's hard to trust others.
(24:14):
It turns out that one of the best ways to
start overcoming cynicism is to connect in new ways to ourselves.
My colleague at Stanford, Jeff Cohen, has a lot of
work on this through what he calls values affirmation. So
values affirmation is where you consider what matters most to
(24:34):
you in life. You'll see a list of, for instance,
twenty things that people often say they care a lot about,
and you'll be asked, well, what are your top three
or what's your top one, And then you're asked to
write about, well, why does it matter to you and
what are some ways that you express that value in
your life.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And it turns out that.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
This simple exercise, just ten fifteen minutes of writing about
what really matters to you and how you live your values,
instills a kind of deep confidence in people.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I'm not talking.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
About braggadocious arrogance, but rather a sense of sturdiness, a
sense of solid foundation. And when we have that sense
of stirtiness internally, we're more willing to be open to others.
Jeff finds that when people affirm their own values, they
feel less threatened by information that conflicts with their beliefs
(25:22):
and more open minded. And that's why I think it
might tap us in also to a sense of skepticism
and hopeful skepticism about other people.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You talk about this in terms of, you know, better
connecting to ourselves, and I wonder I'm just thinking out loud.
I mean, here's one way in which I think increasing
self compassion could be a vehicle through which we have
more hope. So when we do fail or we make
some sort of mistake, we can overconclude from that incident. Right,
So rather than saying I made a mistake, it's I'm
(25:54):
a mistake. There's no redemption.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And if I have more self compassion and I believe, okay,
well I made a mistake, I myself not a mistake,
I might be more willing to assume that posture with
other people in my life, like, oh, that person hurt me,
But they might not be like a hurtful person, like
someone who loves hurting others. They might just have aired
(26:16):
in a particular way.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
That's beautifully put.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I love that, And I think there's a lot of
evidence that when we judge people in a trait based way,
we see an action that they take and we decide
that action defines them. That closes us off not just
to compassion for that person, but it makes it very
easy for us to think cynically about that individual. In fact,
(26:40):
cynicism is a sort of fixed view of humanity.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Right exactly. That's what I'm trying to get at. It's like, yeah, yeah,
there is actually hope for this person to change because
I think I can change.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
I love that. Yeah, No, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Let's go to the second strategy for building hopeful skepticism,
and you say that is to be skeptical of your cynicism.
So tell me a bit more about what that process
can look like.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
This is something that I drew in trying to overcome
my own cynicism from tools in cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT.
So when I started CBT in my twenties, my therapist
told me, Okay, what are your beliefs about yourself and
about the world. Write them down and then try to
(27:24):
think about them scientifically. What evidence do you have to
support them? And I wrote down some of my very
negative beliefs at the time. At the time, I really
felt like if I am not positive all the time,
people won't like me. That I need to entertain or
provide people with good vibes in order for them to
(27:46):
stay in my life. I felt like expressing that true
self when my true self was unattractive or gloomy, would
lead people to flee. But I had no evidence for
it because I had never really tried. I had never
been open with other people about what I was going
through or feeling. And so my therapist then said, Okay,
(28:07):
you've got this belief, you don't have any other for it.
Why don't you collect some data, Why don't you try
to test your hypotheses? And both of these steps understanding
what our beliefs are and whether we have evidence for
them and then testing them could be tools for being
skeptical of our own cynicism.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah. I wonder how that played out for you, because
I know in your book you said people used to
call you Guy Smiley, so you were definitely battling a
pretty strong reputation. So what steps did you take to
test out this theory that you had to be a
certain way in order to be liked.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
One example from more recently, a few years ago now,
a couple of new faculty members joined my department and
we went out for drinks and they said, well, what's
it like to be a professor here at Stanford? And
you know, I had my guy smiley response already, you know,
it's the best job in the world.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
I can't believe it.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
But instead I decided to answer honestly, and I said,
it's terrifying. You know, you never feel like you deserve
this job, because nobody really deserves it. You have to
be so lucky to get here, and it's incredibly easy
to feel like an impostor and to feel like any
mistake you make is just proof that the university made
(29:29):
a mistake in hiring you. And I still remember the
seconds of silence that followed this, you know, rant that
these people had not asked for at our first time
hanging out, and they felt like ours to me. And
I also remember the relief that poured out of these.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
New faculty members.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
They said, Wow, it means so much to hear somebody
who we see as succeeding open up about this. And
we ended up becoming really fast friends. And even now
years later, we get together about once a quarter and
we have something called beer and wine where we drink
beer and wine but with an h you know, we
complain and vent and open up. And but again, so
(30:09):
for me, being positive was inauthentic. Sometimes it was a
defense mechanism, and being honest about my struggles showed that
I believed in the people around me. I believed that
they would have my back, and more often than not
they did. So the experiments that I did in my life,
(30:31):
the data came back shockingly positive.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah. So the final strategy is to practice what you
call social saving. Tell me more.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Savoring is generally the practice of appreciating good things as
they happen, and it's related to, but distinct from gratitude,
which is generally appreciating the good things.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
That have happened.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
So I practice savoring a lot with my kids. We
will do things like ice cream eating class or sunset
watching class, where we will enjoy something, but we'll enjoy
it very carefully. You know, I'll say, well, what do
you like about how this tastes or the texture of
the ice cream? What do you want to remember about
this moment? Just pointing our awareness towards the good things
(31:18):
in our lives, and social savoring is in essence, taking
that same general strategy, but pointing it towards other people.
And so for me, social savoring has two parts. One
is paying attention to and looking for examples of people
doing good in the world. And I'm not talking about
heroics that you see in the news. I'm talking about
(31:39):
walking around a city and seeing people pick up litter
or helping somebody who's in need, for instance. The second
part of social savoring is not just to notice the
goodness that's all around us all the time, but to
share it. When you socially savor with others, you help
fight their cynicism. But you also in changing what you say,
(32:00):
change the way that you think, your habits of speech
become habits of mind, and help kind of pop up
an antenna in your own mind for the goodness of others,
which of course is not that hard to find once
you start to look for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah. One lesson I internalized early for my mom is
especially when engaging with people in the service industry is
they're always hearing complaints, and so her goal is always
to counteract that by every time she has a really
positive experience, making sure she calls in the manager and says,
you know, so and so is so amazing and so
excellent and so. Just the other day, I was flying
back from New York and our flight attendant was just
(32:36):
so kind, and I just called her over and I
was like, Hey, I just need you to know you
are such a kind, cheerful presence, and it's made my
day and it's made this flight so much better. And
I thought in that moment about the impact that sharing
that with her would have on her. But I didn't
think in that moment about what you're sharing with me now,
which is what impact it probably had on me and
my view of humanity.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I love that. It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
I mean, our culture is so full of people giving
life one star reviews on yelcha you and giving all
the people around them one star review use. But if
that's all we do, if the loudest conversations we have
are about the worst things that happen, yeah, then we
will end up with a skewed view of the world
and of each other.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
I'm curious to know how writing this book and engaging
with the research on hope and cynicism has transformed your
own outlook on life. Right, So you came into this saying, Okay,
I'm going to confess that I am a cynic. How
has it changed the way that you live your life?
How has it changed your relationship with some of your
big fears? Yeah, share with me any reflections you have.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I don't consider myself an ex cynic. I consider myself
a recovering cynic.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Right, In that I work on this all the time,
I still have the same defaults. I still have the
same instincts. I think that one of the things that
this project has changed in me is that I'm more
aware that when I'm thinking in gloomy or cynical terms,
that that doesn't mean that I'm right. So I guess
I trust my sin. This is less I'm more skeptical
(34:11):
of it. That is something that I can say I've achieved.
And then this project has changed how I parent. I'm
much more aware of how, even if I'm taking risks,
even if I'm trusting people, my default is to stop
my kids from taking any risks and to protect them
from all sorts of harm, and especially from harmful people.
(34:34):
I stand by that instinct one thousand percent, but I
think oftentimes as a parent, my default has been protection
over freedom, protection over exploration, and protection over learning, and
so I've been trying to balance that. And so one
of our daughters is eight years old, and we live
in the middle of a big city here in San Francisco,
(34:56):
and she really wants to be able to go buy
something on her own, right. She wants to be able
to go a couple of blocks and pick something up.
And we've gone back and forth on this for for
a year now, and I won't say that she's done
it yet, but we're on the cusp of doing it.
I got her some walkie talkies so that she can
(35:17):
be in contact if she needs us. But you know,
before working on this project, I would have thought, no way,
I'm letting her go even two blocks. You know, there's
just too many people out there who could try to
harm her. And of course, I want, above and beyond
anything in the world for my daughter to be safe.
But I also think now that her going a block
or two is actually a pretty safe thing to do.
(35:39):
Is something that children have done for generations, and that
keeping her from doing that isn't actually keeping her safe.
It's in fact keeping her from learning about the world
and how to interact with it.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Jimille can feel like a huge shift to move from
cynicisms to hopeful skepticism, especially during the time we live in.
I mean, I'm thinking about areas of life that I'm
very cynical about, and it seems like a herculean effort
to do that, and so I do wonder you can
talk just a bit about that.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
This is a process of small steps, right, I mean,
nobody changes fundamentally how they view the world overnight, really
change fundamental deep change is a process of building new habits,
little things that we do slightly differently each day. Another
thing that I'll say is that cynicism is really most
(36:30):
powerful in the abstract. If you ask people what are
people like, they're pretty gloomy. But if you ask them
what are the people in your life like? And I'm
not saying your friends and family, but the strangers you
interact with, your grosser, your neighbor, the person you sit
next to on the bus.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
If you ask people.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
About their actual communities, they're much more bullish. They think
that those people are very trustworthy, are kind, They think
that those communities are generally pretty good. And so I
think it's important to remember that hope oftentimes isn't out
there in the ether, It's right here all around us,
(37:11):
in the communities that we live in.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you liked this
episode and want to hear more about Jamille's research, we
recorded another episode with him about how to cultivate different
kinds of empathy and reduce burnout. You can find a
link to it in the show notes. We'll be back
soon with a new episode of A Slight Change of Plans.
I'll see you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,
(38:06):
and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change
family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Luvin, and
our sound engineer Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries.
(38:30):
So big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a
slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
See you next week.
Host
Dr. Maya Shankar
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