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Hidden Brain
You 2.0: Fighting Despair
00:49:08
Every morning, you wake up and face the world. What does it look like to you? Do you see a paradise of endless opportunities, where people are friendly and helpful? Or a world filled with injustice, where people cannot be trusted? In the final installment of this year's You 2.0 series, we talk with psychologist Jamil Zaki about how we become disillusioned and distrustful of the world, and how to balance realism with hope.
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- [00:01]
Shankar Vedantam
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. A few short years ago, if you needed to buy something, you would take a walk down to a corner shop or go to a mall. If you wanted to watch a movie, you went to a theater. On nights you didn't want to cook, you stepped out to a restaurant. Shopping, entertainment and dining brought us into contact with other people. Waiting in line at checkout or standing in a crowded bar, we encountered a wide spectrum of humanity. Nice people, mean people, boring people. Today, many of us choose convenience and comfort over connection. Need something from the grocery store? Plug your order into your phone. Want to see a movie? Fire up Netflix on your computer. Need to check in on friends? Hop on Instagram? You can pay someone to walk your dog or stand in line for you at a concert. Dating apps allow you to check out potential mates from the safety of your couch. Why go out when you can order in? Some time ago, the food delivery app Seamless launched an ad campaign plastering signs all over the New York City subway in bright colors with big yellow font. The ads read over 8 million people in New York City and we help you avoid them all. How did we get here? When did the world become a place where friendship meant liking a photo? This week on Hidden Brain, the source of the powerful vortex that warps the way we feel about the world and how to fight its gravitational pull. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Nordstrom. Looking for perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Ugg, Nike, Barefoot Dreams, Kate Spade, New York and more are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Find everything on their wish lists all in one place. Head to your Nordstrom Rack store to score great brands, great prices, the greatest gifts of all time. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Robert Half. Robert Half research indicates nine out of 10 hiring managers are having difficulty hiring. That's why you need Robert Half. Their specialized recruiting professionals engage their skills with their award winning AI to connect businesses of all sizes with highly skilled talent in finance and accounting, technology, marketing and creative, legal and administrative and customer support at Robert Half. They know talent. Visit roberthal.com today. Support for hidden Brain comes from Abbott. Let's talk about a small thing that can make a big difference if you have diabetes. The Freestyle Libre 3 sensor. The sensor gives you real time glucose readings so you can see the impact of every meal and activity to make better choices. This is progress. You can try the sensor at FreestyleLibre US. Terms and conditions apply for prescription only safety info found @freestylelibre us. We are all born with eyes filled with wonder. We play. We laugh. We seek out friends. But at some point, this changes. We erect defenses against the world. We pull back from strangers. We retreat into ourselves. What was that moment for you? Was it when you got bullied in middle school? When a friend betrayed your trust? When the grind of living paycheck to paycheck became too much? At Stanford University, psychologist Jamil Zakhi is interested in how our experiences shape our view of the world and how our view of the world shapes what we experience. Jameel Zaki, welcome to Hidden Brain.
- [04:07]
Jamil Zaki
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Jamil.
- [04:11]
Shankar Vedantam
Some time ago, you came across a story about a young Japanese artist. He said he had discovered something about himself on a New Year's Eve. Who was this young man and what was his story?
- [04:22]
Jamil Zaki
His name is Atsushi Watanabe. He's an artist living in Japan. And he, through a long series of events, had become quite isolated and in fact, was isolated entirely in his room for many months. He had begun his period of isolation during a day in July, which in Japan is known as Sea Day, or Umi no hi. And on New Year's Eve, he was on a streaming site and he saw somebody else on that site. Comment the last time I saw the sky was C Day, meaning that this person had been isolated and inside for nearly six months. And Watanabe realized with horror that that was true of him as well.
- [05:08]
Shankar Vedantam
Atsushi Watanabe grew up about 25 miles outside of Tokyo in a city called Yokohama. His life was chaotic. He fought with his sister, and according to Atsushi, his father did not get along with the people around him, and his mother didn't do much to alleviate the situation.
- [05:25]
Jamil Zaki
So he felt very embittered and disappointed towards them. He was very talented from a young age at art and crafts and sort of escaped into art and found that that became a career for him. He went to a specialized high school and then to Tokyo University of the Arts and really created beautiful works throughout his childhood and early adulthood.
- [05:50]
Shankar Vedantam
I mean, that sounds wonderful. I mean, he was pursuing a career as an artist.
- [05:54]
Jamil Zaki
It sounds wonderful. I agree. For him, it was more complicated than that. Watanabe really wanted his art to help people. He wanted to use it as social commentary. And he thought that others in the art world would likewise be driven by these values of connection and altruism. Instead, he found that art, like any other career, is full of careerists, people who are often quite competitive and compare themselves to each other. Watanabe, like so many of us, suffered from depression and Anxiety and being put in this pressure cooker of an industry just made it worse and worse, and eventually it became unbearable for him. At one point, after seeing so many of his peers posting about their awards, he ended up breaking his phone and retreating to his parents home, a place that he wanted to use as an escape, but which really wasn't that comforting for him because his relationship with his parents was still so strained.
- [07:02]
Shankar Vedantam
So at what point did he withdraw to his room and become essentially a recluse?
- [07:09]
Jamil Zaki
I believe it was in 2010. And he again started feeling more and more alienated, first from the art world, and then more and more from even his family. I think of his life, and this is from an outsider's perspective, as shrinking like the circumference of a circle, becoming smaller and smaller, until the only place that he felt safe and comfortable was in this tiny few square feet of his room. He had joined what could be thought of as a community, really having an experience known as hikikomori, a Japanese term for total social isolation. It's almost like being in a jail cell, except it's a cell of your own creation, as opposed to something imposed on you by the state.
- [08:01]
Shankar Vedantam
How does the story unfold, Jamil? What happens next?
- [08:05]
Jamil Zaki
Well, he stayed in isolation for months after that. And again, from an outsider's perspective, it seems like the circumference of your mind shrinks as well. Watanabe began to fear that maybe he and the world would never reconnect again, that maybe he would live the rest of his life in that one room.
- [08:23]
Shankar Vedantam
At some point, his family decided to launch something of an intervention. Tell me what happened.
- [08:29]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah. His father, who he had never gotten along with, decided he had had enough. And he contracted with a service in Japan that specializes in involuntarily pulling recluses out of their homes. And Watanabe, upon learning about this from his mother, was infuriated. He broke down his door and set out to confront his family, but there was no one there. They were out for the day. What he did find surprised him. He found in the living room a lot of books that he had never seen. And paging through them, he realized that his mother had bought all these books about social isolation in an attempt to understand and and support her son. And that moment of realizing that in her own way, she was trying her best to be there for him really broke down his defenses. She came home and they sat and talked for hours, opening up about the pain that they had been through and how they might move forward. He had not spoken in so long that his throat dried up in trying to speak, and he had to drink lots of water even to be able to have this conversation. But he said that at that moment, the captivity of his heart went away for good.
- [09:58]
Shankar Vedantam
What happened to Atsushi over the ensuing months? How has he turned out since then?
- [10:03]
Jamil Zaki
Jamila Atsushi is to me an absolute inspiration and a redemption story. He went to a clinic to rehabilitate his body and mind for several months, and then he turned his period of isolation into art. In one of his first pieces, he built a concrete structure and isolated himself in it for seven days. And then at the end of the seven days, with a hammer, broke himself out of his captivity. And what I find so beautiful about this is that he was mimicking the experience of isolation, but owning it, transmuting it into something that other people could understand. And this time, instead of opening the door into his living room, when he escaped his captivity, there were photographers and an audience, and his art has inspired so many. He's made lots of pieces like this, bringing awareness to the pain of isolation, and has become an extremely successful and in demand artist in Japan.
- [11:15]
Shankar Vedantam
So about 300 miles from where Atsushi lived in Tokyo is the city of Kobe. You talk about two Japanese neighborhoods in Kobe. They were only a few miles apart, but they were also very different. How so? Jamil?
- [11:29]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, so these are two neighborhoods known as Mano and Mikura. On paper, pretty similar. Both working class neighborhoods with lots of factories, for instance, but they had different histories. Mano had a lot of family businesses and a lot of local trade between people who were also neighbors. It also had a history of activism. People in Mano had fought for environmental protection, for instance, together, and that had bonded them in common cause over the decades. So you can think of Mano as a very tight knit, trusting, and interdependent community. Mikura had less of that history, and people were less connected, less interdependent, and potentially less trusting of one another as well.
- [12:18]
Shankar Vedantam
So in 1995, a massive earthquake hit Kobe and its surrounding neighborhoods. The tremor sparked fires that lasted for days and destroyed over 100,000 buildings. More than 6,000 people died. What happened to these two neighborhoods? Jamil?
- [12:35]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, this is a horrible tragedy, but really, if you think about it and look at the historical record, it was more than one tragedy because it was experienced so differently by these different neighborhoods. In Makura, people watched, often in their night clothes, in their pajamas, while buildings were reduced to ash. In Mano, people did not wait for the authorities. They banded together and fought the fires themselves. For instance, running hoses from factories or creating pop up bucket brigades to bring water from rivers to fight the fire again on their own. And because of that, the damage was far less in Mano than in Mekura. Again, here you see the this trusting neighborhood banding together in a way that protected them and likely saved many lives.
- [13:31]
Shankar Vedantam
You know Jamil, when we think about cities and neighborhoods, we often think about physical infrastructure. We think about, you know, fire brigades and roads and access to water and electricity. And obviously those things are important. You're pointing to something far subtler here at the level of humanity. Psychology.
- [13:50]
Jamil Zaki
Absolutely, Shankar. I think that's beautifully put. We have the physical infrastructure that connects us. But for that to work as well as it can, we also need a psychological infrastructure. We need a sense of interconnection. You know, the same way that we are all wired together through satellites and telephone wires, we must be psychologically wired together. And the networks that do that are networks of faith in one another, a sense of common purpose and shared values. That social infrastructure, that sense of common purpose and interdependence is crucial to continuing and flourishing together.
- [14:41]
Shankar Vedantam
When we come back, how we become disillusioned and distrustful of the world and the surprising effects this has on us. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
- [15:03]
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- [15:44]
Shankar Vedantam
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- [17:32]
Jamil Zaki
This worldview, Shankar, is cynicism. That is the belief that people in general are greedy, dishonest, and untrustworthy. And it is on the rise. A survey that came out several years ago found that 12th graders, people who are just entering adulthood, were even less trusting than older generations. I think only 18% of them believed that most people can be trusted.
- [18:00]
Shankar Vedantam
So some time ago we had the psychologist Jerry Clifton on Hidden Brain, and he talked about some of his research on parents desire to keep their kids safe by teaching them that the world is a dangerous place in some ways. Do you think parents and other caregivers could be partly to blame for their kids becoming mistrustful?
- [18:19]
Jamil Zaki
I think that parents are probably to blame for a lot about their children, both the good and the bad. But certainly I think that is a big factor. So I love Jer's work. And as you describe, he interviewed hundreds of parents and asked them, what do you think will help your child? What beliefs do you think will help them? And more than half believed that in order to help their child, they should make them feel like the world is dangerous instead of safe. And I want to say I can really understand why a parent would feel that. As a parent, I felt that way too. We think it's our job to protect our children from the slings and arrows of the world. But it turns out that if you teach your children that the world is full of slings and arrows, they'll walk around with a shield all the time. And that might not actually help them. So by teaching our kids that the world is dangerous, we might be keeping them safer from certain risks, but we also are are exposing them to a huge risk of living a diminished and less fulfilled life.
- [19:26]
Shankar Vedantam
So, as you just said, a number of studies show that people with lower trust tend to be less happy, less healthy, less engaged in their communities compared with people who have higher levels of trust. Economists have measured the effect of trust on a nationwide level, and they've compared countries with one another. What do they find? Jamil?
- [19:47]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, trust at a social level is incredibly important. Of course, if you as a person can trust, that's good for you. If we as people can trust, that's excellent for all of us. As we saw in the story of Kobe, this neighborhood of Mano, that was very trusting, was agile and able to pivot that community in times of crisis. But trust helps us in good times as well. Trusting nations tend to have people in them who are more willing to volunteer and donate to charity, who participate in civic life more, for instance, voting more. They tend to have greater levels of happiness nationally and they tend to do better economically. Economists once measured the trust of dozens of nations and then the growth in their GDP over the following years. And they found that high trust nations increased in their economic health over the years, while lower trust nations stagnated or even shrunk economically.
- [20:49]
Shankar Vedantam
One of the statistics that I found, really jaw dropping, was that in terms of well being, living in a high trust group is worth as much as a 40% pay raise. That's incredible, Jamila.
- [21:01]
Jamil Zaki
That's right. And again, I think it comes back to this beautiful metaphor you raised earlier of social infrastructure. If you feel as though you are part of a community, evidence shows from so many angles that that is salutary, positive for both your physical and mental health.
- [21:24]
Shankar Vedantam
So cynics turn out to be highly critical of others and themselves. And you say that even though you were running a lab studying empathy, you fell into this trap yourself the first year that you were teaching at Stanford. Can you tell me what happened?
- [21:39]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, this is a story that I'm not very proud of, but I think is important to tell. So I started at Stanford in 2012 and was extremely anxious. You know, this is the job that I had dreamed of my entire adult life and finally it was handed to me. And the pressure that I felt from that was indescribable. I felt completely sure that maybe Stanford had made an error in hiring me and certainly I wasn't going to make it to tenure. The other thing that happens when you start a lab is that you no longer are dependent only on yourself. You're dependent on the people you hire, in my case, postdocs and graduate students and staff. I figured that my job was to absolutely, in an anxiety ridden way, make sure that everyone was as productive as I needed them to be and as they needed to be to succeed in the exact same way that I had. I think that I was probably a very stressful person to have as a leader. And actually, I don't just think that. I know it. About a year into the life of my lab, one of the people that I was trying to train urgently requested a meeting. And so we met and she was in tears and said, you know, this work is really stressing me out and it's just unsustainable for me. I feel as though my mental health is taking a hit in this lab and if things don't change, I'm going to leave. Frankly, Shankar, I feel some shame, almost a visceral response even talking about it now.
- [23:14]
Shankar Vedantam
Yeah, yeah, but it is, I mean, it is sort of striking, right, because you're an empathy researcher and you've created something of a toxic environment in your own lab. That is, I mean, the mismatch between that must have been very jarring.
- [23:27]
Jamil Zaki
It was a rich and very painful irony that I felt immediately. And I have to say I'm extremely grateful to that person for having. Having the bravery to step up and challenge a new boss at that time. And, you know, I learned a lot from that moment and changed. But at that time I realized that my cynicism was really not just getting the better of me, not just stopping me from living the life I wanted, but it was creating harm to others. And that really was a very hard realization.
- [24:10]
Shankar Vedantam
I should say, Jamil, that I've known you now for a few years, and I think you are one of the, the kindest and most generous people that I, that I know. So I have no doubt that in some ways you've learned from these experiences and changed. But it is striking that many of the qualities that you describe, that cynics have a tendency to withdraw into themselves or to be distrustful or to be highly critical. These are things that you found in yourself.
- [24:36]
Jamil Zaki
Absolutely. And I think that there's a lot of reasons for that. Cynics tend to be people who have been harmed in the past, and I had a relatively hard family life, and I think that that created that sense of defensiveness, that idea that I needed to protect myself in order to survive. And I think that those lessons die hard. And for me they've lingered. And I consider myself these days a recovering cynic in that I'm working on these qualities in myself even as I try to teach others about them.
- [25:25]
Shankar Vedantam
So there have been a number of different studies looking at the effects of cynicism in different domains. One of the most striking is in education. In the 1950s, the psychologists Walter Cook and Donald Medli asked teachers whether or not they agreed with three statements. One, no one cares much about what happens to you, two, most people dislike helping others, and three, most people are honest chiefly through fear of getting caught. And the teachers were asked, do you agree with these statements? Do you disagree with the statements? What did the study find about the effectiveness of these teachers in working with students?
- [26:01]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, so Cook and Medley actually gave teachers 50 statements like the three that you just read. But those are great examples. And they were in essence trying to locate individual differences, things that people would say, things that they believed that might predict their rapport with students. And indeed, maybe unsurprisingly, they found that teachers who thought that people will just get away with whatever they can and you can't be too careful around them weren't great teachers, at least in terms of their relationships to their students. But what Cook and Medley found was that this did not stop in the classroom, that people who answered these questions positively, who believed these bleak things about human nature, turned out to be hostile in general. They called this cynical hostility. And if I might, I'd like to use their words from a paper that they wrote in 1954 where they describe what a hostile cynic is like. They said the hostile person is one who sees little confidence in his fellow man. He sees people as dishonest, unsocial, immoral, ugly and mean, and believes they should be made to suffer for their sins, not a hit at parties. These people potentially so. Since then, this cynical hostility scale has been used in hundreds of studies and the outcomes are striking in their consistency. People who answer these questions positively, who think of human nature in these bleak and cynical terms, just suffer and create suffering all throughout their path in life. It's really, it's a, it's a tragic way of viewing the world when you look at the data.
- [27:53]
Shankar Vedantam
Can you talk a moment about the vicious cycle between cynicism and mental health problems like depression?
- [28:00]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, absolutely. So cynics tend to suffer many more mental health issues than non cynics and also have a hard time connecting with people. Connecting with people is one of the fastest ways to improve our mental health. Social connections are like nourishment that can help us bounce back from difficult times. For cynics, though, that's not really the case as much. So it's almost as though if social connection is medicine it doesn't work for cynics. It's almost as though they have, you know, they're resistant to this medication that helps the rest of us.
- [28:42]
Shankar Vedantam
I'm wondering if some people might be thinking at this point, you know, so there are a lot of negative consequences to cynicism, but surely there are benefits to being suspicious and distrustful as well. Maybe it can keep you safe. There are obviously lots of violent and dangerous and dishonest people in the world. Are cynics more accurate than non cynics when it comes to spotting the bad guys?
- [29:05]
Jamil Zaki
This is a common stereotype, so common that psychologists have a name for it, the cynical genius illusion. And it has two parts to it. One, as you're saying, people think that cynicism is a sign of intelligence. So in research, if you describe a very cynical and very non cynical person to participants and ask them which one of these people would be better at an analytical task, they will say the cynic would outperform a non cynic. They also think cynics are socially smart. So if you say, hey, you know, I want to ask, I want to bring somebody in to detect who's lying in a company when they give their resume, 85% of people think that a cynic will be a better lie detector than a non cynic. So most people have faith in people who don't have faith in people. It's a little bit of a tongue twister, but it's true. And most people are wrong. The data are pretty clear here that cynics perform less well on analytic and cognitive tests and they're worse lie detectors. So if you actually have cynics and non cynics, look at people sort of giving job interviews, half of the people told to lie, half told to tell the truth. More trusting people are better at spotting liars than cynics. And I think that's partially because cynics have this general blanket theory that nobody can be trusted. And so they actually, in trying to argue, thinking like lawyers in the prosecution against humanity, stop actually listening, stop actually paying attention to the evidence.
- [30:47]
Shankar Vedantam
So, Jameel, I want to talk about some of the drivers of cynicism. The journalist David Borenstein compares the news media to an ambulance siren that sounds every few minutes. I fear you're going to tell me that my profession is part of the problem when it comes to breeding cynicism.
- [31:03]
Jamil Zaki
Well, certainly not your show, Shankar, but I want to say that I really think that the profession of journalism is extremely noble. What Bornstein told me, that resonated so Much is that journalists believe, and I think sincerely believe, that one of the best things they can do to help society is to point out where we're falling short. Exposes and shedding light on injustice and corruption are really moral and powerful endeavors. The problem is when journalists and the news media end up producing so much bad news that they skew people's perception of what society is like. This even has a name called Mean World Syndrome. It turns out that communications scientists have found that the more news a person watches, the more they think that others are dangerous, the more they think that crime is rising, the more they think that they're unsafe. Even when those things are demonstrably untrue.
- [32:07]
Shankar Vedantam
I mean, I think many of us have the experience now of opening a news website and almost bracing each morning saying, what fresh horror are we gonna be told about today?
- [32:19]
Jamil Zaki
I feel like opening my phone in the morning is like preparing for an electric shock, you know? And I've been shocked so many times that I'm almost desensitized to it and can often feel helpless. And I think I'm not alone in that experience, but it certainly drives up my cynicism and I think is driving up our collective cynicism as well.
- [32:46]
Shankar Vedantam
You say that another driver of cynicism is that we live in an increasingly transactional world. What do you mean by this, Jamil?
- [32:53]
Jamil Zaki
Well, in many ways, relationships come in different types. So there are relationships where we're supposed to transact. We're supposed to count and keep score and make sure that, you know, if I go to a restaurant, I'm not just going to tell the owner, hey, that was a delicious meal. Thanks so much. Next week, I'll have you over at my house, right? We're supposed to. We're supposed to transact. We're supposed to work in a way that's defined by markets and market mentality. That's appropriate. There are other cases in which we're not supposed to act that way, right? If my kids make me breakfast for Father's Day and I say, thanks so much, and I tip them $5, that would also be inappropriate because we have a communal relationship where we're supposed to trust one another and not keep score. I think that one thing that worries me is the extent to which features of market living are entering into communal spaces. And I think that one reason for this is because we are counting more things. Like, we used to count money, right? We count how much social approval we receive on different platforms like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. We count how much we exercise and meditate. There are apps where you can compete with your friends for who's taking more steps. And I think that that quantification can make us feel like we're in a transactional space even when we might not want to be.
- [34:26]
Shankar Vedantam
So Jamil, you say that there is a relationship between cynicism and loneliness, and in some ways this might be a chicken and egg problem because cynicism prompts people to withdraw from the world. But you're saying that also the reverse is true.
- [34:40]
Jamil Zaki
That's right, yes. When you feel withdrawn, oftentimes in that space, in the pain and isolation and sadness that you feel, beliefs and ideas pop up like, actually, I need to focus only on myself. You see this a lot in loneliness and also in depression, where people who are depressed will withdraw socially. Then they'll start to judge themselves or others and think, wow, I feel really lonely. People just aren't trustworthy. Maybe I'm not good enough, maybe they're not good enough, I don't know. But for whatever reason, I'm going to be alone forever. And when people start to have those beliefs, they then start to act on them, withdrawing further. Cynicism is sort of can be thought of as a toxic set of self fulfilling prophecies. When we don't believe in people, we act in ways that show a lack of faith and they react to that in a way that maybe confirms our initial beliefs.
- [35:44]
Shankar Vedantam
The comedian George Carlin once said, scratch a cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist. People are not born cynical. It happens after experience causes them to change their expectations about the world. Many of us have come to see the world as a hopeless place where people cannot be trusted. We think these views will protect us from harm, but they often end up doing the opposite when we come back. How to balance realism with hope? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Anthropic. Anthropic's Claude family of models is AI backed by uncompromising integrity. Claude is run by responsible leadership who have an ethical approach to the development of AI while providing strong data security and putting humanity first. Whether you're brainstorming alone or building with a team, Claude can help many companies build with Claude. Work with Claude to help you do your best work too. Claude can perform complex cognitive tasks, quickly, translate between various languages, and generate code. Plus, users love Claude's softer, more humanistic interactions. Want to take Claude with you? The Claude app is available on Apple and Android app stores. Discover how Claude can transform your work and business@anthropic.com that's anthropic a n t h r o p I c.com Claude C L A U D E Apple Card is the perfect card for your holiday shopping. When you use Apple Card on your iPhone, you'll earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, including products at Apple like a new iPhone 16 or Apple Watch Ultra. Apply now in the Wallet app on your iPhone subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and more@applecard.com Support for Hidden Brain comes from SimpliSafe if you're ever worried about the safety of your home and family, there's no better time to act right now. You can get 60% off today just by visiting simplisafe.com brain SimpliSafe is a new way to protect your home that stops intruders before they break into your home. SimpliSafe's Active Guard Outdoor Protection changes the game by preventing crime before it even happens. There are no long term contracts, no cancellation fees, and it's around $1 a day. For all this protection, SimpliSafe is offering our listeners exclusive early access to their Black Friday sale this week. Only you can get 60% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan. This is their best offer of the year. Head to simplisafe.com brain that's simplisafe.com brain there's no safe like simplisafe. This is hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We live in a world where it's easy to be cynical. Look around you and you will find endless reasons to believe the world is a dangerous, violent place, that people are unreliable, undependable and greedy. At Stanford University, psychologist Jamil Zaki studies the effects of these beliefs on our well being. In his book Hope for the Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Jamil explores the psychology of cynicism and the ways it affects our lives. He says that cynicism doesn't just erode our mental health, it also undermines our ability to fix our toughest problems. Jameel In 1978, the Czech writer Vaclav Havel wrote a parable about a grocer living under an authoritarian regime. What was this story?
- [40:02]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, this was in Havel's essay the Power of the Powerless, and he wrote about how totalitarian states erode people's trust in one another. So in his example, this grocer is compelled by his government to hang a slogan in support of A communist regime. And he does so he doesn't believe the slogan, and his neighbors know he doesn't believe it. So in hanging it up, what he's really doing is hanging a white flag of defeat. Other people, his neighbors, hang up their slogans as well. And what this does is it sends a sort of message around the entire neighborhood that everyone has capitulated to the regime. And if anybody decides to try to stand up or create social change, the people around them will not have their back. It's a visual cue that people can't trust one another.
- [40:58]
Shankar Vedantam
And of course, what the story suggests is that as we become cynical and mistrustful, it breeds cynicism and mistrust in those around us.
- [41:08]
Jamil Zaki
That's right. Again, this is a sort of self fulfilling prophecy in which cynical people tell a story full of villains and then end up living in it. And this is really useful actually for things like totalitarian regimes. One view of cynicism is often, well, it might not feel good, but it's moral. It's good for us or right for us to pay attention to injustice. And I certainly wouldn't disagree with that. But it's also true that cynics foreclose on the possibility of anything better. And when you lose faith or hope that things could get better, you stop trying. I would say that cynicism is far from a radical worldview. I'd say it's often a tool of the status quo.
- [41:59]
Shankar Vedantam
So you talk about a concept called hopeful skepticism. What is hopeful skepticism, Jamila?
- [42:06]
Jamil Zaki
Well, I think it's important to first separate cynicism from skepticism because these two are often confused with one another. As we've been discussing. Cynicism is the theory that others are greedy, selfish and dishonest. Skepticism is really quite different. It's a desire to have evidence to support our beliefs and to not simply accept our assumptions about the world. The idea of hopeful skepticism is twofold. One, it's being open to evidence the way that scientists are. But two, it's understanding that our default is relatively negative and often too negative. We often miss the goodness in others, even when it's there. So hopeful skepticism is an openness to the world that is complemented by the idea that, hey, people are probably better than I think and if I pay attention, pleasant surprises might be everywhere.
- [43:12]
Shankar Vedantam
You say that one of the first steps to becoming a hopeful skeptic is to challenge your own assumptions. You conduct an exercise on yourself that you call reasons to be cheerful. What is this exercise?
- [43:26]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, this is one in which I try to notice positive things in my everyday life and in particular, positive things that other people do. I actually started this as a practice with my kids because I realized I was griping to them about all sorts of people and maybe giving them a negative view of the world. So I started trying to notice for them and tell them about everyday positive acts that I had seen. And I noticed that this habit of action, of speech turned into a habit of mind. It was like knowing that I wanted to share positive stories with them popped an antenna out of my head and made me curious and hungry for evidence of positive and kind acts. And once that antenna popped up, it was not hard to find those acts. They are everywhere. It was like changing the lens through which I saw the social world and suddenly alerted me to a world full of generous and open minded and warm people.
- [44:32]
Shankar Vedantam
You've also studied the impact of small acts of kindness. Tell me about some of this research you've done in your lab.
- [44:40]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, so in my lab we study kindness and generosity and empathy. And one of the things that we find is that you often imagine that kindness is a sort of transfer. I do something for you, you feel better. And maybe I pay a cost, maybe I'm more tired or sadder after listening to your hardships, or maybe I give you money and I'm broker. It turns out though that everyday acts of kindness are one of the best ways to improve our own well being. But it matters why you do it. I think that many of us can act kindly in a cynical way, right? You help a friend move because you owe them or because you feel like you have to. And it turns out that when you act kindly from a place of cynicism, that doesn't help you at all. Acting kindly only helps our well being when we do so from a place of compassion and genuine connection.
- [45:44]
Shankar Vedantam
I mean, this goes back in some ways to what you were saying earlier about the tendency we increasingly have to keep score. What you're really saying is that keeping score doesn't help us gain the benefits of generosity and compassion.
- [45:57]
Jamil Zaki
That's right. That's absolutely right. If you treat life as an exchange, then you can benefit in that setting. But so much of what matters most in life is what can't be counted. It's the relationships and community that we have just for the sake of it. And when you act even kindly, but from a calculating place, you deprive yourself of that feeling, that feeling of community that I think is so fundamental to who we are as a species and to what allows us to flourish.
- [46:32]
Shankar Vedantam
So I can hear some people saying, you know, Jamil Zaki is telling me to put on rose tinted glasses. Surely in the face of major problems like war and climate change, it's. It's ridiculous. It's naive to be hopeful.
- [46:47]
Jamil Zaki
Well, you know, I can hear those people as well because oftentimes they say that to me directly. I don't have to imagine them. And I understand that instinct. Look, in talking about the downsides of cynicism and the upsides of hope, I am in no way wanting to paper over the real harm and destruction and corruption and pain that saturate our world. Hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism is the belief that things will be better. I think of that as rose colored glasses and something that can make us even complacent. Hope is the notion that things could get better. And it often coincides with a lot of dissatisfaction with how things are now. I think that hope can be a feeling that actually inspires us to challenge these structures, to challenge the forces in our culture that are doing harm. I think of hope as a fiery and often radical emotion. Something that is not saying, this is fine in a room that's on fire, but rather saying, this room is on fire. We can put it out.
- [48:05]
Shankar Vedantam
Jamil says one of his role models when it comes to cultivating a hopeful outlook in life was the late neuroscientist Emile Bruno. They worked on several research projects together. Then in 2018, Emile noticed something odd.
- [48:20]
Jamil Zaki
In 2018, Emil noticed that each night his laptop screen looked dimmer and dimmer. And then he started getting headaches. He's a neuroscientist, so he knew this was a bad sign. And he asked for a CT scan. And what the doctors discovered was a glioblastoma, which is a very aggressive form of brain cancer. And it's one that would take his life. Two years later, on September 30, 2020.
- [48:48]
Shankar Vedantam
Once Emile found out that he had brain cancer, he knew that he didn't have long to live. And the two of you talked on the phone and he told you the news. Can you tell me what happened that day, what that conversation was like?
- [49:03]
Jamil Zaki
I was beside myself with grief and sadness. He had two young children, you know, a loving spouse. He was in his early to mid-40s. It was just this tragedy that his life would be cut short. And in an astonishing turn of events, he started to try to comfort me. Maybe I could have done better there. But he said that although he was, of course, extremely sad and his family was so sad, he also had discovered Inside himself, this sense of all that is beautiful in the world. He said it lived inside him like a ball of plasma. He told me that none of us get to live forever, but most of us don't know how long we have. And he knew that he had months, maybe a year or two to live. And it just equipped him with this sense of deep determination to live his values, to be with his community and to continue his work, to find the good in people and to promote hope and peace. It was really incredible. And it made me think, and I still think to this day, that there's a difference between a long life and a good life. He knew at that moment that he was going to be deprived of the first. None of us can choose how long our lives are. But he made a choice to have the second, to have a good life. It was one of the most inspirational conversations I've ever had.
- [50:48]
Shankar Vedantam
So a lot of us, Jameel, feel like the world hands us things, and when those things are good, we feel hopeful about the world. And when the world hands us bad things, we don't feel hopeful about the world. I think what Emil was saying is that we actually have the agency to choose hope. That hope, in fact, is an active choice.
- [51:08]
Jamil Zaki
Oh, thank you, Shankar. That's so well put. That is exactly what I see Emile to have done. His life was by no means easy, and he could have chosen to turn his back on the world, to feel as though life had treated him unfairly, and he just refused. His hope was fierce and defiant, and to me, gives exactly the lesson that you're describing, that hope is a choice. It's something that we work on, and it's a skill that we can build. I told Emil during that phone call that I was jealous of him. I know that's a strange thing to say to somebody who's just been diagnosed with cancer, but his positivity was just so mind blowing. And I said, I just don't know anybody who sees the world the way that you do. And he knew that. He said, I know. I know that I have this idiosyncratic view. I know that I have this intense positivity. And he said, one of the things that I wish is that if I could squeeze that positivity out like the toothpaste out of a tube, that I could leave it behind, that I could spread it even after I'm gone. And, you know, in the book, I try to tell his story, and it's my very small way of trying to help him, even just a little bit, with that mission.
- [52:47]
Shankar Vedantam
Jamil Zaki is a psychologist at Stanford University. He is the author of Hope for the Surprising Science of Human Goodness. Jamil, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
- [52:59]
Jamil Zaki
Thank you Shankar. This has been delightful.
- [53:05]
Shankar Vedantam
Do you have follow up questions for Jameel Zaki about cynicism and how to resist it? If you'd be willing to share your question with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo and email it to us@ideasiddenbrain.org that email address again is ideasiddenbrain.org 60 seconds is plenty. And please use the subject line cynical. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy, Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our Executive Producer. I'm Hidden Brain's Executive Editor. If you enjoyed today's story, please do two things. One, tell a friend about our program, spread the Word and the power of these ideas. Second, please consider signing up for a free 7 day trial of our subscription feed Hidden Brain Plus Building this show is a labor of love and it makes a big difference to us to know that you have our backs. If you have an Apple device, you can sign up at Apple Co HiddenBrain. If you have another device, you can access the subscription via support.hiddenbrain.org I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
- [54:49]
Unknown
When work gets crazy, I like to stop by the bar after have a few cold ones.
- [54:54]
Jamil Zaki
I don't drink at all until 4:00. We limit ourselves to one bottle of wine a night.
- [55:00]
Unknown
Excessive drinking has a way of sneaking up on us. A few drinks a few nights a week, it can add up and suddenly we're at greater risk for long term problems like heart disease, cancer and depression. Reason enough to rethink the Drink more@rethinkthedrink.com an OHA initiative.