September 18, 2024 • 12 mins
George Noory and psychologist Dr. Jamil Zaki explore his research into cynicism and how it shapes your view of the world, if cynics are naturally unhappy people, and how to disagree better to lower the amount of anger in modern society.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Man, Welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Nori with you.
Doctor Jamil Zaki with us for the first time. Professor
of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the
Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He trained at Columbia and Harvard,
studying empathy and kindness in the human brain. He is
interested in how we can learn to connect better. His
book is called Hope for Cynics. Hey, doctor Jamiel, welcome
(00:28):
to the program.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Thanks George, it's a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
How did you get involved in this kind of psychology.
It's fascinating, you know.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
It's a long story. In psychology, they say that research
is research. That is, we start studying stuff that is
personally relevant to us, and for me, that comes from
my family. My parents are immigrants, my father from Pakistan
and my mother from Peru, and as far as I
can remember, I don't think they ever got along that way.
(00:59):
So a lot of my childhood was navigating the very
different realities of two people totally different parts of the
world who saw life in really different ways, which a
made me super interested in how we connect and especially
how we can connect with people who are different from us,
and B made it a little hard for me to
(01:19):
trust people because of the chaos in the home where
I grew up. So both my interests in empathy and
kindness and then my secret interest in cynicism and mistrust,
I think came from that early life experience.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I was watching the debates last week with former President
Trump and Kamala Harris a couple of weeks ago, and
a argument broke out with two people who were watching
the debate there too, And I watched this while they
were shouting at each other, not talking, not discussing, but
shouting at each other because of the different views of
(01:56):
the candidates. What's happening to people.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Doctor Well, I think that we are shouting a lot
more where in part because we're more threatened. One of
the things that can raise our internal alarm systems and
put us in fight or flight mode is just the
sense that other people are endangering us. And that sense,
(02:19):
to me, seems to be more pervasive in our everyday experience.
You know, forty fifty years ago, Americans disagreed with one another,
but we didn't let those disagreements become as personal as
they've become now. So In nineteen eighty, for instance, Republicans
and Democrats said that they liked members of their own
party and they felt neutral about members of the of
(02:43):
the other party. By twenty twenty, that pattern had shifted completely.
We now disliked people we disagreed with more than we
liked the people on our own side. I think a
lot of this also comes from the way that we
interact or don't interact with one another. We have fallen
there are fewer conversations with people we disagree with in
(03:03):
the course of our everyday lives. We've sorted such that
we don't get to talk about another weather or sports,
or our dreams and hopes with people who are different
from us. Where we do see those people is through
social media and the news, where we are given a
representation of the other side that is way more extreme, hateful,
(03:24):
anti democratic, and even violent than people on the other
side truly are. So we end up fighting phantoms. We
end up fearing that other people on the other side
don't just disagree with us, but want to kill us.
And if you feel that way, then it makes perfect
sense to yell and scream instead of having a conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I'm in Saint Louis right now, doctor, and they arrested
a young youngster today with a gun who was threatening
to go into a school to do some harm. He
was arrested because his friends picked up on social media
that this kid was about to do something bad. How
important has social media been plus or minus to what
(04:09):
you've just talked about.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I mean, I think that there's the obvious benefit of
having information travel quickly is that we can do things
like stop people who are about to commit violence the right.
So in that case, social media was a was a
force that saved likely saved lives, and that's that's wonderful. Now,
(04:33):
it's also true that many people are radicalized and induced
to commit violence through communication that occurs on social media.
So I think that there's more information, which in a
vacuum sounds like a good thing, but we have to
ask ourselves how good is the information that we're getting,
What is it doing to us? And the way I
see it, online platforms are not built to make people
(04:57):
happy or healthy or in formed, and this is I
think really important. They're created to keep us online by
feeding us whatever will keep us engaged, and oftentimes that's
feeding us the things that make us frightened and outraged.
And so there's a lot of evidence that people who spend,
for instance, a lot of time on social media more
(05:20):
than usual, they think that in general, people are worse
than people who than if you spend less time on
social media. In other words, when we are online, we
receive this systematically negative information about other people, and that
can induce us again to feel more fear, more, hatred,
and even induce us to behaviors like violence.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
The title of your book is called Hope for Cynics.
Tell us about the title and tell us what exactly
a cynic might be.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, So, as you mentioned, George, I've been studying empathy
and kindness my entire career for twenty years now, and
this has made me a sort of ambassador for humanity
is better Angels. People like to ask me to speak
or write for them when they want to feel better
about our species. But this whole time I've had a secret,
(06:13):
which is that in private, I'm a pretty cynical person.
So Hope for Cynics is actually began as a journey
to see if I could understand and maybe try to
treat my own cynical worldview, and through that I gained
a deep understanding of what cynicism is. So you asked
for a definition, and I think that we need to separate.
(06:36):
When I talk about cynicism. I'm not talking about the
ancient Greek school of philosophy headed by Antistines and Diogenes,
although I'm happy to chat about that just as a
philosophy nerd. But I mean the modern psychological definition of cynicism,
which is the belief that in general, people are selfish, greedy,
(06:56):
and dishonest. Now this is not to say that a
cynic would be shocked if somebody donated to charity or
helped the stranger, but they would wonder about that person's motive.
They would say, well, maybe they're looking for a tax break,
where they're trying to look good in front of others.
Icism is not a theory about what we do. It's
a theory about who we are.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Is it negativity?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I mean, I think it certainly trades in negativity. You
might be cynical and not feel that negative. You might say, hey,
we're just a selfish species and that's fine with me.
But in general, cynicism is accompanied by a great deal
of contempt and hostility towards other people.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Does the cynics say it's partly cloudy as opposed to
partly sunny.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
It's partly cloudy, the glasses half empty. In general, they
reinterpret things more negatively, but it's not things not everything right.
So we should separate cynicism from pessimism. Pessimism is the
idea of the future is going to turn out poorly.
Is not a view about the future or the natural world.
(08:04):
It's really a view about other people. Now, it stands
to reason if you don't have any faith in other people,
you probably don't think the future is going to turn
out very well either, because the future, of course, is
what we collectively decide to make it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Now, the subtitle of your book, Hope FORENX is the
surprising science of human goodness that fascinates me. Tell me
about that.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, it fascinates me too, And I think that so.
As I said, I started this book as a journey
to see if I could understand my own cynicism. And
I spent years marinating myself in the science of mistrust, suspicion,
and hopelessness. And you might think that would have made
for a gloomy twenty twenties. The fact was it was
(08:52):
incredibly uplifting. I've learned over the course of these years
that in general, people don't realize how trustworthy, generous, open minded,
and warm other people are. Now, this is not to
say that there aren't jerks out there or people who
do terrible things every day, but the average person underestimates
(09:15):
the average person. And what that means is that when
you pay closer attention, when you look at the data
instead of relying on our negative assumptions about other people,
pleasant surprises are everywhere. And so what I try to
argue for in the book is a data driven, skeptical
type of hope, not being a Pollyanna, not trusting people unthinkingly,
(09:39):
but also not mistrusting people unthinkingly, instead trying to treat
our lives more like a scientific experiment. And when we
do that, there's a lot of hope to be found.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Is the cynic internally unhappy?
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yes, there is decades of evidence that point out and
find that cynics and to live really diminished lives compared
to less cynical people, so they are more prone to depression, loneliness,
but also things like substance abuse, heart disease and even
early mortality. So it turns out that cynics die younger
(10:20):
than non cynics, and it's to me really sad and ironic.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
One of the most famous descriptions of cynicism comes from
Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher who said, we need government to
restrict us because, left to our own defight devices, human
life is nasty, brutish, and short. But ironically that might
best describe the lives of cynics themselves, right, And I
say this not in a judgmental way. I want to
(10:44):
remind you that I myself identified as a cynic for
a long time, so these are experiences that I am
deeply familiar with. But the evidence is pretty clear that
cynical thinking hurts us at almost every level that scientists
can measure.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
We turn around the cynic.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I sure, hope, though for my own sake, But no,
it turns out that you can. Cynicism is not a
It's partially genetic, but really that's a minority share. Most
of our cynicism comes from our experiences, and by changing
our experiences and the way that we interact with the world,
(11:24):
we can systematically try to overturn our cynicism again, not
by being a Pollyanna, not by becoming naive, but rather
by trying to pay closer attention to the evidence.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Well, Doctor jamil Zaki's book is called Hope for Cynics,
The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. After the break, we'll
come back and talk about skepticism and how you can
change that. But there is hope, you believe for these
kinds of folks, Doctor.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Of course, I think there is, Otherwise I would not
have written this book. I think that a lot of
the hope here comes from the idea that we can
change our minds. We have a lot of control over
who we become, much more than most people realize. And
I'm really thrilled to talk more about that as well.
But were when you look at the psychology of the
(12:15):
human mind, you've realized that we can be empowered because
a lot of who we are and who we become
is actually up to us.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Man, Welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Nori with you.
Doctor Jamil Zaki with us for the first time. Professor
of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the
Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He trained at Columbia and Harvard,
studying empathy and kindness in the human brain. He is
interested in how we can learn to connect better. His
book is called Hope for Cynics. Hey, doctor Jamiel, welcome
(00:28):
to the program.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Thanks George, it's a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
How did you get involved in this kind of psychology.
It's fascinating, you know.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
It's a long story. In psychology, they say that research
is research. That is, we start studying stuff that is
personally relevant to us, and for me, that comes from
my family. My parents are immigrants, my father from Pakistan
and my mother from Peru, and as far as I
can remember, I don't think they ever got along that way.
(00:59):
So a lot of my childhood was navigating the very
different realities of two people totally different parts of the
world who saw life in really different ways, which a
made me super interested in how we connect and especially
how we can connect with people who are different from us,
and B made it a little hard for me to
(01:19):
trust people because of the chaos in the home where
I grew up. So both my interests in empathy and
kindness and then my secret interest in cynicism and mistrust,
I think came from that early life experience.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I was watching the debates last week with former President
Trump and Kamala Harris a couple of weeks ago, and
a argument broke out with two people who were watching
the debate there too, And I watched this while they
were shouting at each other, not talking, not discussing, but
shouting at each other because of the different views of
(01:56):
the candidates. What's happening to people.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Doctor Well, I think that we are shouting a lot
more where in part because we're more threatened. One of
the things that can raise our internal alarm systems and
put us in fight or flight mode is just the
sense that other people are endangering us. And that sense,
(02:19):
to me, seems to be more pervasive in our everyday experience.
You know, forty fifty years ago, Americans disagreed with one another,
but we didn't let those disagreements become as personal as
they've become now. So In nineteen eighty, for instance, Republicans
and Democrats said that they liked members of their own
party and they felt neutral about members of the of
(02:43):
the other party. By twenty twenty, that pattern had shifted completely.
We now disliked people we disagreed with more than we
liked the people on our own side. I think a
lot of this also comes from the way that we
interact or don't interact with one another. We have fallen
there are fewer conversations with people we disagree with in
(03:03):
the course of our everyday lives. We've sorted such that
we don't get to talk about another weather or sports,
or our dreams and hopes with people who are different
from us. Where we do see those people is through
social media and the news, where we are given a
representation of the other side that is way more extreme, hateful,
(03:24):
anti democratic, and even violent than people on the other
side truly are. So we end up fighting phantoms. We
end up fearing that other people on the other side
don't just disagree with us, but want to kill us.
And if you feel that way, then it makes perfect
sense to yell and scream instead of having a conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I'm in Saint Louis right now, doctor, and they arrested
a young youngster today with a gun who was threatening
to go into a school to do some harm. He
was arrested because his friends picked up on social media
that this kid was about to do something bad. How
important has social media been plus or minus to what
(04:09):
you've just talked about.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I mean, I think that there's the obvious benefit of
having information travel quickly is that we can do things
like stop people who are about to commit violence the right.
So in that case, social media was a was a
force that saved likely saved lives, and that's that's wonderful. Now,
(04:33):
it's also true that many people are radicalized and induced
to commit violence through communication that occurs on social media.
So I think that there's more information, which in a
vacuum sounds like a good thing, but we have to
ask ourselves how good is the information that we're getting,
What is it doing to us? And the way I
see it, online platforms are not built to make people
(04:57):
happy or healthy or in formed, and this is I
think really important. They're created to keep us online by
feeding us whatever will keep us engaged, and oftentimes that's
feeding us the things that make us frightened and outraged.
And so there's a lot of evidence that people who spend,
for instance, a lot of time on social media more
(05:20):
than usual, they think that in general, people are worse
than people who than if you spend less time on
social media. In other words, when we are online, we
receive this systematically negative information about other people, and that
can induce us again to feel more fear, more, hatred,
and even induce us to behaviors like violence.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
The title of your book is called Hope for Cynics.
Tell us about the title and tell us what exactly
a cynic might be.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, So, as you mentioned, George, I've been studying empathy
and kindness my entire career for twenty years now, and
this has made me a sort of ambassador for humanity
is better Angels. People like to ask me to speak
or write for them when they want to feel better
about our species. But this whole time I've had a secret,
(06:13):
which is that in private, I'm a pretty cynical person.
So Hope for Cynics is actually began as a journey
to see if I could understand and maybe try to
treat my own cynical worldview, and through that I gained
a deep understanding of what cynicism is. So you asked
for a definition, and I think that we need to separate.
(06:36):
When I talk about cynicism. I'm not talking about the
ancient Greek school of philosophy headed by Antistines and Diogenes,
although I'm happy to chat about that just as a
philosophy nerd. But I mean the modern psychological definition of cynicism,
which is the belief that in general, people are selfish, greedy,
(06:56):
and dishonest. Now this is not to say that a
cynic would be shocked if somebody donated to charity or
helped the stranger, but they would wonder about that person's motive.
They would say, well, maybe they're looking for a tax break,
where they're trying to look good in front of others.
Icism is not a theory about what we do. It's
a theory about who we are.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Is it negativity?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I mean, I think it certainly trades in negativity. You
might be cynical and not feel that negative. You might say, hey,
we're just a selfish species and that's fine with me.
But in general, cynicism is accompanied by a great deal
of contempt and hostility towards other people.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Does the cynics say it's partly cloudy as opposed to
partly sunny.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
It's partly cloudy, the glasses half empty. In general, they
reinterpret things more negatively, but it's not things not everything right.
So we should separate cynicism from pessimism. Pessimism is the
idea of the future is going to turn out poorly.
Is not a view about the future or the natural world.
(08:04):
It's really a view about other people. Now, it stands
to reason if you don't have any faith in other people,
you probably don't think the future is going to turn
out very well either, because the future, of course, is
what we collectively decide to make it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Now, the subtitle of your book, Hope FORENX is the
surprising science of human goodness that fascinates me. Tell me
about that.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, it fascinates me too, And I think that so.
As I said, I started this book as a journey
to see if I could understand my own cynicism. And
I spent years marinating myself in the science of mistrust, suspicion,
and hopelessness. And you might think that would have made
for a gloomy twenty twenties. The fact was it was
(08:52):
incredibly uplifting. I've learned over the course of these years
that in general, people don't realize how trustworthy, generous, open minded,
and warm other people are. Now, this is not to
say that there aren't jerks out there or people who
do terrible things every day, but the average person underestimates
(09:15):
the average person. And what that means is that when
you pay closer attention, when you look at the data
instead of relying on our negative assumptions about other people,
pleasant surprises are everywhere. And so what I try to
argue for in the book is a data driven, skeptical
type of hope, not being a Pollyanna, not trusting people unthinkingly,
(09:39):
but also not mistrusting people unthinkingly, instead trying to treat
our lives more like a scientific experiment. And when we
do that, there's a lot of hope to be found.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Is the cynic internally unhappy?
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yes, there is decades of evidence that point out and
find that cynics and to live really diminished lives compared
to less cynical people, so they are more prone to depression, loneliness,
but also things like substance abuse, heart disease and even
early mortality. So it turns out that cynics die younger
(10:20):
than non cynics, and it's to me really sad and ironic.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
One of the most famous descriptions of cynicism comes from
Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher who said, we need government to
restrict us because, left to our own defight devices, human
life is nasty, brutish, and short. But ironically that might
best describe the lives of cynics themselves, right, And I
say this not in a judgmental way. I want to
(10:44):
remind you that I myself identified as a cynic for
a long time, so these are experiences that I am
deeply familiar with. But the evidence is pretty clear that
cynical thinking hurts us at almost every level that scientists
can measure.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
We turn around the cynic.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I sure, hope, though for my own sake, But no,
it turns out that you can. Cynicism is not a
It's partially genetic, but really that's a minority share. Most
of our cynicism comes from our experiences, and by changing
our experiences and the way that we interact with the world,
(11:24):
we can systematically try to overturn our cynicism again, not
by being a Pollyanna, not by becoming naive, but rather
by trying to pay closer attention to the evidence.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Well, Doctor jamil Zaki's book is called Hope for Cynics,
The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. After the break, we'll
come back and talk about skepticism and how you can
change that. But there is hope, you believe for these
kinds of folks, Doctor.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Of course, I think there is, Otherwise I would not
have written this book. I think that a lot of
the hope here comes from the idea that we can
change our minds. We have a lot of control over
who we become, much more than most people realize. And
I'm really thrilled to talk more about that as well.
But were when you look at the psychology of the
(12:15):
human mind, you've realized that we can be empowered because
a lot of who we are and who we become
is actually up to us.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
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