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We Can Do Hard Things
Are You a Cynic, Optimist, or Skeptic? Dr. Jamil Zaki Shares Which Type is Happiest
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- [00:00]
Glennon Doyle
Okay, y' all. So I often have to make these presentations to show the kind of work that we do to partners or people outside of our business. That was always very tricky for me because I didn't know what the hell I was doing until Allison, our wonderful team member, taught me about Canva. Canva is a platform that helps you simply and easily make presentations that are beautiful and simple and easy even for someone like me without any design experience. You start with this stunning template and then you can drag and drop graphics, add eye catching charts, and incorporate animation even to really make your slides stand out. And what's even better is that if you're short on time, you can generate slides and text in seconds with a prompt, keeping you on task without juggling multiple apps. And if you're working with a team, collaboration is a breeze. You'll love the presentations you can easily design with key Canva. Your audience will too love your work with Canva presentations.
- [00:59]
Abby Wambach
@Canva.Com this May, Macy's is celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month by recognizing the diverse identities and powerful contributions of AAPI communities. And they're doing it in ways that really make a difference. When you shop in store or@macy's.com you can donate to Apia Scholars, an incredible organization that supports first generation college students and young people from underserved communities, helping them access higher education and become the leaders of tomorrow. Macy's is also spotlighting amazing AAPI owned brands so you can shop with purpose and discover something new. And if you're looking for summer styles, check out Dippin Daisies for both bold feel good swimwear. It's all happening now through May 31st. So shop, support and celebrate AAPI Heritage Month with Macy's at Macy's.com purpose.
- [02:12]
Amanda Doyle
Hello.
- [02:13]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Hi.
- [02:15]
Glennon Doyle
Hooray.
- [02:17]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Hey everybody. It's great to meet you all.
- [02:19]
Glennon Doyle
So nice to meet you. I'm Glennon.
- [02:21]
Unknown
I'm Abby.
- [02:22]
Amanda Doyle
I'm Amanda.
- [02:24]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yes, I know. I know all three of you. It's an honor to be talking with you. Really. I'm a big fan of the show and of all of you. So yeah, thank you so much for having me on. It means a lot.
- [02:33]
Amanda Doyle
We're so excited. There's a lot to discuss.
- [02:36]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
I can't wait.
- [02:37]
Amanda Doyle
Hello, POD squad. We have a question for you. Are you a cynic, an optimist, or a skeptic? And also, da da da da. Did you know which one of those you are will determine how long you live? We're sort of joking, but not at all. Today we are Talking with a brilliant scientist whose new book is a study into the worldview of optimism and cynicism and skepticism. He does not advocate for either side of this debate, but. But he shows us a lot of data that shows how our lives and our relationships and the world around us dramatically changes depending on which worldview we choose. Some of us think, because we talked about this before, Glenn and Abby and me, that while cynicism feels unfortunate, like that's a bummer, it also feels like it's sadly more in line with reality, the just the way that things are and kind of a smarter way to live or how people who are smarter think. But you're about to find out a lot about that that is wrong, so. Dr. Jamil Zaki is a 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. Dr. Zaki is the author of the War for Kindness and most recently, Hope for Cynics. Thank you for being here. This is so exciting for us.
- [04:14]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
It's a total pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- [04:16]
Amanda Doyle
Oh, my gosh. We're going to talk about so much today, and I would love to start. I've listened to a lot of interviews that you've given, and I was surprised because I didn't hear anyone talk to you about Emile, which we're talking about all the ways to live and how your view of the world determines the actual world you live in and the kind of life you have and your happiness and your joy and all of that. And you're a scientist, so it's all data, and it's also about having a beautiful life. And it really, to me, was so beautiful how you grounded all of this in Emile's story and because he had such a profoundly beautiful life. Will you just tell us a little bit about him before we start our conversation on the science and what it means for us?
- [05:08]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Oh, gosh, I would love to. I'll try not to get emotional right off the bat, please, Emil. Emile was a friend of mine, but he was also one of my heroes. We both studied the neuroscience of empathy, and there's not like a million people who do that. So we gravitated towards each other pretty quickly. He in particular, was really interested in how neuroscience could inform our understanding of violence and hatred and how we could reduce those. What happens in the brain when people hate one another and how can we use that information to create new paths to peace. He also was Potentially the most positive person I have ever known in my life. He just stubbornly saw the best in people and really believed that we could use science to do good. And, you know, I'm friends with a lot of people who study things like empathy and kindness. And I'll tell you that not all of us believe that everything will turn out okay at all. And sometimes talking with Emile, you kind of felt like, where does this guy get off being so optimistic? You know, he had observed hatred on five different continents. He had traveled to places around the world where people were in violent conflict with one another, and yet he was so bullish on our entire species. It seemed like maybe he was just naive or sheltered. But as I got to know him better, it was clear that the opposite was true. When Emil was born, his mother developed severe schizophrenia. She was unable to raise him. She lived unhoused for many years. His childhood was enormously difficult. And yet, although she had gone through so much suffering, she was always kind to Emile. The way that he put it is that she walked through darkness, but showed him only light.
- [07:00]
Unknown
Wow.
- [07:01]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
And when he was a teenager, he made the choice during middle school, actually, that he would take her way of living as a challenge, that whatever darkness he faced, he would do his best to spread light. And that's exactly what he did. Tragically, he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018, and he died in 2020. It was leaving behind a young family, and obviously, it was just awful. But even then, he retained his hope. We talked a lot around the time of his diagnosis, and he told me that, of course, was sad, but he also felt this ball of plasma, this sense of beauty in the world and in humanity that was living inside of him, and he wanted desperately to share with the time he had left. It was just inspiring the way that he was able to stay hopeful even as his life was cut short. So, yeah, I mean, meanwhile, here I am, you know, studying human goodness and feeling cynical all the time. And so after Emile died, I decided to see if I could spread his message just a little bit further. He told me in our last conversation that he understood his worldview was unconventional and that he was more positive in some ways and in some ways, startlingly positive, despite what he had gone through. And he said, I wish that if this philosophy was like a tube of toothpaste, I could squeeze it out and leave some behind after I'm gone. So I guess I've been trying since then to squeeze out some of that Emile toothpaste for the rest of the world.
- [08:40]
Amanda Doyle
You do it beautifully. The book is beautiful and I could feel you, but I could also feel Emile incredibly powerfully in the book. So you've done it. You've done it. Beautiful job. Can we start with. Because we're going to talk about a lot of things, just can you tell us what cynicism is, is and then what we believe about cynicism that is not true, what it is and what it isn't?
- [09:07]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah, absolutely. So cynicism is the theory that people in general are selfish, greedy and dishonest. It is hugely on the rise. In 1972, about half of Americans believed most people can be trusted. And by 2018, that had fallen to a third of Americans. So it's a drop as big as the stock market took during the financial collapse of 2008. So we're living through really a five decade long trust deficit and we have lost faith in each other, in our institutions. And to your point, Amanda, I think that a lot of this is because in our culture we glamorize gloom. We view it as, I'd say three different things. We view it as smart, we view it as safe, and we view it as moral. And we can break down all of those if you like, but we can just start with the first, right? We have this view that, hey, if you are not cynical, you must be naive. You just haven't had a chance to be disappointed enough yet. You just don't know what the world is really like. In lots of studies, people will present or be presented with a story of one person who's really cynical and doesn't trust anybody and another person who's really open and trusting. And they're asked, which one of these two people do you think would do better on a variety of different tasks? And it turns out that 70% of people believe that cynics are smarter than non cynics. And 85% of people believe that cynics are socially smarter, that they'd be able to tell who's lying and who's telling the truth. In other words, most of us put a lot of faith in people who don't have faith in people, which is sort of like a bit of a tongue twister. And most of us are wrong. It turns out that cynics do less well on cognitive tests and they're worse at spotting liars than non cynics. So we view being cynical as a form of wisdom when really it's just people who have a bunch of assumptions about the world and just look to defend their assumptions as opposed to learning what People are really like, that's so interesting.
- [11:14]
Glennon Doyle
Wow. How do people think it keeps them safer?
- [11:18]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Well, I think all of us have at some point been betrayed or disappointed, Right? And the last thing you want to experience if somebody's let you down is being let down again, which, by the way, is completely reasonable and understandable. I think that a lot of us, and I'll just say, myself included, as someone who tends to be pretty cynical, a lot of us move from being disappointed, that is lowering our expectations of somebody who's let us down, to being pre disappointed. The best way for me to not get let down again is to just assume I can't trust anybody and that way I'll be safe. And it's true. If you don't trust anybody, you probably won't be betrayed. But you'll also miss out on love and friendship and collaboration and so many of the things that make life beautiful. So you can think of cynicism in this way as like a suit of armor that we put on to protect ourselves from a world of unkind people that ends up suffocating us.
- [12:21]
Amanda Doyle
Instead, you say that cynicism is only safe in the way house arrest is safe, that you are safe there, but you're not experiencing a hell of a lot when you're there. So they are more wrong more often. They can't tell liars apart from people who are telling the truth. We also have a myth that they're at least, they're probably more shrewd business people. Right? They're making more money at least.
- [12:48]
Abby Wambach
Right?
- [12:49]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Tell me that I'm so sorry to be giving this much bad news to the cynics out there. And again, nothing but compassion and resonance. If you feel cynical, I'm right there with you much of the time. But unfortunately, Amanda, they do not make more money. In fact, cynics earn less money over the course of their careers. And researchers have tried to figure out why that is. And it turns out that cynics, compared to non cynics, want success and power just as much, but they have a different theory of how to get it. A cynical person will say, okay, if I want to advance in my workplace, if I want to build my business, the way to do it is to defeat everybody around me. Life is a zero sum competition, so I have to step over or on my colleagues in order to succeed. And it turns out the data are clear. And as I'm sure you all know, real success, even at a bottom line level, but of course, at a human level, requires working with people and building Collaboration and coalition and partnership. And so if you immediately, in trying to succeed, write off all of those strategies, you'll actually fall flat more often than not.
- [14:00]
Amanda Doyle
What about physical and mental health? Tell us about that. If you're a cynic versus not. We're just getting it all out of the way. Let's front load the bad news for cynics.
- [14:08]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
The bad news continues. The train rolls on. So it turns out that cynical people compared to non cynics suffer enormously. And this gets back to this idea of safety. We think that it's safe to cut off connection to people because at least we won't get hurt. But it turns out that we get hurt almost certainly just in very slow motion. One of the things that keeps us thriving is our connection to other people. It's like psychological nourishment. And if you are cynical, if you can't open up and be vulnerable to people, it's like you can't metabolize those calories. And so over time, cynical people suffer from more loneliness and, and depression, but also for more cellular aging and heart disease. And there's a lot of prospective studies with tens of thousands of people that find that folks who are low in trust and more cynical actually die younger than people who are able to connect more deeply. In part because it's those connections that don't just keep us healthy, but literally keep us alive.
- [15:14]
Glennon Doyle
How do cynics present in the world? Because we're talking about all the effects. But my friend might be a cynic if I might be a cynic if. What does this person look like at a dinner party or in the office?
- [15:26]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Well, they might not be as delightful at parties as other folks, but they might actually. So one of the most classic tests of cynicism is just a set of statements. And you're asked, do you think each one of these is true or false? So for instance, people don't like helping one another very much. Or false people. False. Thank you, Abby. Yes, I agree. Or let's try another one. People are honest chiefly through fear of getting caught.
- [15:55]
Unknown
No, false.
- [15:56]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah, I think that's probably false, Amanda.
- [16:00]
Amanda Doyle
Yes, false.
- [16:01]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Okay, well, we've got a non cynical bunch here so far. So, yes, statements like these probe, the more you agree with these statements, the more that you might present as a cynic. But Glennon, you ask a good question. Not just what do cynics think, but how do they act? Right. How do they present to other people? And there's a few different things that you might notice. One is that cynics are less willing to invest in other people in a variety of ways. So in experiments, they invest less money in other people in sort of economic partnerships. But they also are less willing to confide in their friends, for instance, to open up about their struggles. There's a famous study that was carried out around 911 that found that more cynical people turned less often to their friends for support when they were struggling after that tragedy. And so in essence, a cynic might be someone who's relatively closed off. They might also be somebody who tends to appear as pretty judgmental. Right. So they often, if somebody acts in a kind way, might say, well, yeah, they donated to charity, that's great, but they're probably looking for a tax break or maybe they're trying to look good in front of other people. And this is where I think cynics can actually be really, if not positive, can be sometimes fun to be around. We all know that snarky person who sort of has that gimlet eye and is always sort of looking at the underbelly of what people are doing. And it can be funny and sometimes fun to be around that type of person. So there's a lot of ways that cynics can present, but those are just a few ways of detecting them in your life. And again, most of us, I'm not trying to say that there are cynics and non cynics as categories of people. We can all change and we all have cynical moments or cynical months or years even.
- [17:46]
Glennon Doyle
But you do know the person at the table who's going to be like the second somebody says something nice, you know, there's somebody who's going to. I like what you said. Looking at the underbelly of what people are doing, it's always the yeah, but. Or the devil's advocate or the Taylor Swift has this line that says, I'll call you out on your contrarian shit. It's like the person at the table with the contrarian shit is what we're talking about, right?
- [18:08]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah, 100% loads of contrarian shit. Absolutely. And it's almost like an allergy to human goodness. It's almost like if I hear about a wonderful story about somebody helping somebody else, I just need to say something negative in response. It's almost as though stories of goodness make a cynic feel unsafe in their worldview. Right? Disrupt their worldview. Because if you're going to go ahead and think that people are generally awful, you know, you're missing out on a lot. You're missing out on the chance to really commune with the rest of our species. So you better be right. So a cynic can be pretty protective of that worldview and threatened, honestly by the presentation of do gooders around them.
- [18:52]
Amanda Doyle
And they can't take in the do gooders. Can you tell us this social buffering story? Because that broke my heart.
- [18:59]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
For cynics, this is one of the most poignant and saddest studies that I've read. So here people were brought into the lab and asked to give a spontaneous speech about a topic that they didn't know very well, which would freak almost anybody out, right? And it did. And it raised people's blood pressure by about 20%. And so half of these folks had somebody in the room with them who was a sort of cheerleader. I mean, not literally, but who was saying, hey, you've got this, I know you can do it. Just a friendly and supportive stranger. And for most people, having that friendly person around lowered their blood pressure significantly. So that's called stress buffering, right? I guess the saying is trouble shared is trouble halved. That if you can be with somebody during a difficult time, it's just not as difficult unless you are cynical. So it turned out that cynics, again, when they had somebody supportive there, their blood pressure was just as high as when they were alone. So it's almost like if you are cynical and can't open up to people, you are alone, even when you're with somebody else.
- [20:11]
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- [21:19]
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- [23:29]
Unknown
I have two questions. One, what is the need that's being met for the choosing of cynicism over some of the others that we're going to get to? And then I forgot the second question and I'll think of it while you answer it.
- [23:41]
Glennon Doyle
She's so optimistic. She knows she's going to think of it eventually.
- [23:45]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
I believe. I believe as well. Yeah. So I think that it's a really powerful question. And you know, in our culture I think that because we've glamorized cynicism, there are some folks who maybe adopt it in order to seem smart. Right. So research finds that if you tell people, hey, I want you to look as competent as possible, they actually start to act more cynically. So they'll remove positive language from their emails, they'll write book reviews that are more negative because they, they think that being positive just doesn't seem quite as bright. But I would say that actually the primary siren call of cynicism is not trying to look smart and rather trying to be safe in a world that doesn't feel safe. One big predictor of cynicism is what we could call insecure attachment. Right. If early in your life you just didn't feel safe in the context of your home and family, it's much more likely that you put up those walls. And again, I say this with zero judgment and just in the interest of transparency and disclosure. That's my experience. I had a pretty insecure emotional upbringing and I think that's where my cynicism comes from. It took me decades and many years of therapy to come to a place where I could trust people in my life. And that wasn't because I was trying to look smart in front of other people or impress them. It was because I was trying to gain control in a life where it sometimes didn't feel like I had it.
- [25:16]
Unknown
Do cynics tend to be more loners versus an optimist to be more in terms of introvert, extrovert optimists might be a little bit more of a people y person. Is there any research around that?
- [25:29]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
It's really interesting. So cynicism is less correlated with extroversion and introversion. There's with another personality dimension called agreeableness. So generally a cynic would probably be less extroverted than a non cynic, but only a little. The relationship is weaker. What they definitely are not is agreeable. They're just not as. Although they might be fun to hang out with, they're probably not going to react as positively to other people and be as warm towards other people. That's really the personality dimension that tracks it most strongly.
- [26:03]
Amanda Doyle
So we have cynics and then can you tell us about optimists and then land us in hopeful skeptics?
- [26:13]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Absolutely. I want to separate between optimism and hope as well because I wrote a book about hope, came out during an election season. The election went away that a lot of people were not expecting or wanting. And I received about 5,000 emails telling me that I was a ridiculous and toxic person for encouraging hope in this moment. And to which I would say, hey, it's fair. Maybe read some of the writing.
- [26:40]
Glennon Doyle
No, they don't do actually tracks very.
- [26:42]
Amanda Doyle
Well if you actually read the book. But those are those negative book review writers, so you got to give them an outlet.
- [26:47]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
They seemed really smart when they wrote. But at any rate, I totally understand the sentiment. And the same way that we've glamorized gloom, I think that we've actually stereotyped hope as naive and privileged and even toxic. Right. As though it's toxic positivity. You're ignoring real problems. I mean, look at all the tragedies happening simultaneously in the world. We're living inside this crisis layer cake and you're telling me to be hopeful. It sounds ridiculous and even harmful. I think that folks who say that might be confusing hope with optimism. So optimism is the belief that the future will turn out well. And optimists tend to be pretty happy, but they can also be a little bit complacent. So if you think a bright future is on its way, you can kind of just sit on your couch and wait for its arrival. Hope is different. Hope is the idea that the future could turn out well, or at least better than it is, but that we don't know. And in that deep uncertainty, our actions matter because it could turn out well or very poorly. And so where optimism can be complacent, hope is a deeply action oriented emotion. Right. It guides us to fight for something better. And you see hope really at the core of, for instance, activist movements throughout history and around the world. So hope is not ignoring our problems. In fact, it's facing them head on and saying the status quo is unacceptable. But there are many people, maybe most people in the world who want something better, who want greater peace, equality and sustainability. So I'm going to fight because I believe that that fight can produce something that most of us want.
- [28:36]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah.
- [28:37]
Glennon Doyle
So optimism stays on the couch and just says, maybe it'll be all right. And hope says, maybe it'll be all right and gets off the couch. And so it's a self fulfilling prophecy.
- [28:45]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
My favorite quote on hope comes from, honestly, my favorite writer about hope, Rebecca Solnit, who says hope is not a lottery ticket you clutch waiting for good luck. It's an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.
- [29:00]
Glennon Doyle
Oh, she's so good. She's so good.
- [29:06]
Amanda Doyle
And when you talk about skepticism, which I love, skepticism is thinking if optimism is it's gonna be good no matter what. And cynicism is it's gonna be bad no matter what. And that's just the way the world is, then skepticism is this place in the middle which is really the only place that lets new information in. Yeah, that's right. Because if you've already decided it's all good or it's all bad, there's no new information coming in. You talk about skepticism as in living and experiencing the world like a scientist would talk to us about what that looks like when you have that view.
- [29:45]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
You nailed it. That's exactly right. So I think that cynics consider naive optimists, people who think everything is great, as the opposite of themselves. In fact, I think they have a lot in common. Both groups of people think they know the future. They think they know humanity and they don't have to do anything because of that. Right. So there's two things. One is certainty about how the future will turn out. And the other is complacency. As we've talked about, a naive optimist might be complacent because they think everything's going to be great. But a cynic also turns out to be pretty complacent. You can think of it as a dark complacency. Everything's going to be awful. So there's nothing really that I have to do. And you see this. I think we again have this stereotype that cynics would be super moral, that they'd be radicals who would push for change. But in fact, cynics vote less often. They take part in social movements less often. They even vote more. When they do vote for strongman leaders who will protect them from the selfish folks who are all around. And I think that skeptics, by contrast, have the courage of uncertainty. And when I say, Amanda, that they think like scientists, that's sort of what I mean. As a scientist, one of my favorite things is not knowing how an experiment will turn out. I find it delightful to live in uncertainty and then discover something. Usually discover that I'm wrong at least two thirds of the time. But I think that one of the things that is hardest, at least for me in life, is to accept uncertainty. I think it really takes a lot of courage and presence and humility to know what we don't know. When things turn out badly in the world, when there's some horrible event that occurs, it almost feels like a knee jerk reaction to say, aha, I knew this would happen. This is the way that people are. This is all that we have to give. And that can give you a sense of control again in a world where you feel like you can't control anything, but that control comes at A cost. It comes at the cost of recognizing so much human beauty and continuing a struggle for progress and change.
- [31:59]
Unknown
I think that's so true. The need for certainty, it's like very egoic. Right. Like we are dying to have any kind of sense of certainty. And so we will throw ourselves in either the cynics camp or this optimist camp, and we will live there because that gives us some level of safety. And I guess I'm wondering, physiologically, the cynics don't fare as well long term. Is that the same for optimists?
- [32:27]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah.
- [32:28]
Unknown
Are they chilling or are they more healthy? Like, what is it for the optimists in their physiology and longevity?
- [32:34]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah, it's a great question. Optimists certainly, health wise, do better than cynics. In fact, if you just look at a correlation between optimism and a bunch of health outcomes, it's mostly positive. But there's a couple of caveats to that. One, optimism is less health positive if you are facing adversity. So long as things are going well.
- [32:56]
Abby Wambach
Optimism wasn't what it was supposed to be.
- [32:59]
Amanda Doyle
I was told everything would be great.
- [33:01]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Exactly. I was promised that I would have a jetpack by now. Where's my jetpack? Right. So absolutely, optimism is a health positive experience, but can be a fragile one, if that makes sense. It can be shattered pretty easily. And second, optimists tend to strive less than hopeful people, for instance. So hope and optimism are both health positive. But hope, unlike optimism, I guess you could say it magnetizes us towards a future we want through our actions.
- [33:32]
Amanda Doyle
Hope has some grit to it.
- [33:34]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yes, yes. Hope is a gritty positivity. I love that, Amanda. That's perfectly said.
- [33:40]
Amanda Doyle
When we were talking about the certainty piece, that to me lands us. It feels like exactly at this crucible moment that we're in right now in the world, because. And you talked about this so beautifully with Emile, the confusion that a lot of us have between beliefs and values and why we won't let new information in because we think our beliefs are our values and therefore we will go fight to the death for our beliefs because we believe that that's our values and we have to defend them. But can you talk about Emile's view of that and what the data shows about if we got that correlation correct between beliefs and values, whether we'd actually be able to be unthreatened by new information and maybe have some kind of a bridge toward each other that we do not have right now?
- [34:34]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah, I mean, Emile believed this really fiercely. He really thought that we could connect with people who were different from us on any dimension. And he was a really active person in social movements, and he would engage with people on social media who completely disagreed with him. But he would do so with extraordinary good faith, right? I mean, he would talk with somebody where they had completely opposite perspectives, and he would ask a lot of questions, and it was almost like he was interviewing people. And I remember asking him, like, why are you feeding the trolls, man? Why are you doing this? Do you think something's going to come of it? And he said, well, I think that we so often want to be right. And being right feels the same as being good. Being a good person and. And being wrong feels to us like a threat to who we are. But that's not what I really. I don't actually care as much about being right. I just want to live with integrity, right? And for him, that meant seeking peace wherever he could find it, you know, creating bridges wherever he could. And that just the way that he talked about that led me to do a bunch of research on, again, the difference between beliefs and values. And it turns out they're really quite different. So a belief is an opinion you have about the world. A value is what makes you who you are, the things that you care about most, what you want to give to the world. And it turns out that people who are strong in their values, who know what they want. For Emile, it was integrity and peace. For other people, it might be other things. It can be achievement, family, a sense of humor, whatever you want. But if you are grounded in those values, it turns out that you clutch your beliefs less firmly. Right? You loosen your grip on your beliefs. If you know who you are, then it doesn't matter as much that you be right all the time. And that allows us to be more flexible and open minded.
- [36:35]
Glennon Doyle
Whoa. We are all. So we really think who we are is our beliefs.
- [36:41]
Amanda Doyle
Yep.
- [36:45]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Foreign.
- [36:51]
Unknown
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- [38:24]
Glennon Doyle
I wanna tell you about a podcast you should check out. It's called ADHD aha. Hosted by Laura Key. It's candid stories from people who share the moment it clicked that they or someone they know has adhd. You'll hear real stories about what ADHD symptoms can look like and how a diagnosis can change someone's life. They talk about how ADHD can be a factor behind impulse spending, trouble making decisions, social anxiety, and so much more. I actually checked out an episode of ADHD Aha. And it really unlocked a lot of understanding in me about that experience. To listen to ADHD Aha speak, search for ADHD Aha in your podcast app. That's ADHD Aha with AHA spelled A H A. Enjoy. Can you define real quick for me, cynicism is it was three things. What is it that people are that.
- [39:29]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
They'Re selfish, greedy and dishonest.
- [39:31]
Glennon Doyle
Okay, so the Christian church. That is what we are taught. You said you can become a cynic because of attachment and family, right? The other place we learn worldview besides family is in the religions that we're taught. And I know mine. But so many world religions are literally based. That is what people told me. You, Glennon and everyone else are bad, greedy, dishonest. You are so bad. There's only one good person and it's Jesus. You can't see him. So shit. Just so is that seems to be a problem if is that one place where cynicism comes religion?
- [40:15]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Oh yeah. I mean it's complicated. So there's very little data on cynicism and religion. The data that are out there are really really mixed. Clergy people appear to be less cynical than non clergy, but there's no strong relationship between the amount of faith or religious practice that someone engages in and how cynical they are. But I completely resonate with your intuition and I think that the reason that the data are so noisy is because different traditions tell us completely different things about what we are at our core. Absolutely. Original sin is incursive.
- [40:51]
Unknown
Original sin.
- [40:51]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah. You're all fundamentally broken. We are all broken. And salvation comes in another world, not in this one. But you think about other religious traditions. Like in Hinduism, we all have the light of God inside us. My kids go to a Quaker school and they're taught all the time about the light that they have to carry and to give and that that is divine. And so I think that there are so many affirmations, affirming spiritual traditions that really teach us about fundamental goodness and just as many disaffirming traditions that teach us that we are broken to our core. And I would love to see more evidence about how those teachings affect our worldviews. But I really share your intuition that it could matter a lot.
- [41:36]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah. And like Judaism teaches so much about you are what you do. Christianity, the version I had, was very much the. It doesn't matter really, as long as you believe these three things. And that's how we get, you know, Donald Trump, all the Christians can follow him because it doesn't matter what he does. It just matters that he says he believes a certain thing, which has always seemed to be a real trick to me. I think if we thought a lot about what you just said, that, like, what you believe or say you believe actually doesn't matter. What you do, what you want, what you live out is what matters, is what you're saying.
- [42:21]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
And in fact, I think the way that you just described it is much closer to how I land as, I guess a humanist. Right. Which is that I don't think people. I mean, I'm fascinated in whether we believe we are good or bad, kind or cruel, callous or compassionate. As a scientist, I will never answer that question. But what I do know is that if human beings are anything, we are adaptable. We mold ourselves to the circumstances of our culture, of our family, of our faith, of our communities. We become different versions of who we could have been over time. And that very much includes whether we treat other people well or poorly, whether we are open or closed minded, whether we are egalitarian or bigoted. You know, I mean, all of these things, I don't think people are born any of those things. I think we are shaped in large part into who we become. And I do think if you consider humanity that way, just like the future is unknown, human nature is unknown too. Right. We don't know whether people are good or bad. That's so simplistic. In fact, we are complicated and we are creatures that learn more than anything else.
- [43:34]
Amanda Doyle
And in fact we adapt even to others view of whether we are good or bad. So can you talk about kind of how cynicism can become a self fulfilling prophecy and the reverse that if we believe that people are bad and untrustworthy, that is what they become around us?
- [43:57]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah, I mean, as we've been talking about, we're molded by our circumstances. And one thing that I think we don't realize as much as we should is that every time you interact with somebody, you are their circumstance, you are their situation. Right. And so what you do will shape them. And cynical people, for instance, are much more likely to spy on their romantic partners, to spy on their colleagues, or micromanage them to mistrust their friends and family members. And it turns out if you treat people that way, they can tell you're probably not as sly as you think you are. And we are a really reciprocal species. So if you treat people that way, they will treat you that way. And oftentimes what you see in research and in life is that cynics will treat people as though they are selfish and then bring out those people's most selfish side. And then the cynic will say, aha, I knew it all along, not realizing that they have created the very situation that they feared.
- [45:05]
Unknown
You know how they say I've always like said out loud, it takes less effort to be kind than it does to be mean. And so I'm thinking about it from like an energy perspective. Do you have any data or information around the energy difference between being a cynic and being an optimist or a hopeful skeptic?
- [45:25]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah, absolutely right. So I think that you're pointing to the virtuous version. I mean if cynicism creates these kind of toxic self fulfilling prophecies, right, you basically, you mistreat somebody, they mistreat you. You can think of that as energy dissipating from the relationship. Right. Basically the connection between you reducing to zero, sort of giving way to entropy. Well guess what? The opposite happens when we treat other people in good faith, right? When we treat them as though they're the folks we hope they are instead of the people we fear they are. This is what is often known in social science as earned trust. So when you treat somebody as though they will step up, they're much more likely to step up. And that's why I often encourage people to not just trust others, but in order to Learn about them and build relationships. But to trust loudly. If you're going to put faith in somebody, tell them you're doing it. I know it can sound cringe and corny and all of that, but the data are very clear that we underestimate the power of our positive words. And Abby, to your point, that generates energy insofar as when we tell people, hey, I'm going to give you this responsibility or I'm going to invest my time in you or my energy in you, because I believe in you. If you say that out loud, it makes it much more likely that this person is honored by the way that you're treating them. And then they become who you hope they'll be. Right? So it turns these self fulfilling prophecies into something really beautiful.
- [46:58]
Unknown
And then you get into this energy loop. This is an experience that I had playing soccer and being a veteran, a leader on the team. There was oftentimes I would say that were factually just like untrue, but they were personal, real, true beliefs and things that I thought could be possible for my teammates. That they were like, you're crazy. And I was like, no, this is so possible. Like, I really believe that this is possible for you.
- [47:27]
Glennon Doyle
Tell them what you said to Alex Morgan. Alex just told the story. Didn't you say you're gonna be the whatever?
- [47:31]
Unknown
Yeah. So we, Alex Morgan and I, we were sitting in a hotel and we were talking. This also happened with a former teammate of mine, Mia Hamm. Mia had the record in goals and she just like offhandedly said to me, well, you're gonna break my record.
- [47:47]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Wow.
- [47:48]
Unknown
And I thought, she is batshit crazy. I mean, I must have had like 50 goals at the time and she had 158 or something. I'm like, that is insane. But I never forgot it because it made me feel like, oh, this person who achieved this thing believes that there's even a small chance, even like a little bit of an opportunity. And so I thought about that and I got closer and I eventually, of course not of course, but eventually I passed her. And then, you know, similar things happened with Alex Morgan. When she came onto the scene, I had mentioned to her, like, oh, you're going to do so many bigger things than me. Like, you are going to be more famous, you're going to make more money, you're going to win more championships than I am. She's just like, what? And you just don't believe it. So you have to like, there's almost this, this willing of belief into the energy between people that I think really is tapping into something divine.
- [48:45]
Glennon Doyle
That's beautiful.
- [48:46]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
I think that's so beautiful and compelling. And, you know, it reminds me of, in psychology, we talk about the Pygmalion effect. So there's all these experiments where teachers are told that some of their students are gifted and then the rest are not. But in fact, and we wouldn't run these experiments today, by the way, these are done decades ago. But in fact, the students that the teacher learns are gifted. Their aptitude is the same as all the other ones. But it turns out that teachers who think that they're working with a gifted student invest more in them. They say, I think you're going to thrive. I think you're going to crush this. I think you're gonna succeed. And then, guess what, those students become more likely to succeed. And I think we see this in all parts of our lives. And it also speaks to the power that we all have to better each other. Right. By expressing the way that you did, Abby, beautifully, our belief, our faith in other people. Now, I think you said something really critical though, which is you always believed it, even if everybody else thought it was batshit crazy, it was true for you. I don't think that this works if you're being insince. I think it only works if you truly believe in people. So I would not suggest trusting loudly or expressing faith in people if it's false. But if you believe it, I think you should say it. You know, there's this saying, if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. But I think we need the opposite saying as well. If you do have something nice to say, just spit it out. Yes. Stop being so shy with our positive evaluations of other people.
- [50:17]
Amanda Doyle
Yes, well, and we also have the information that we need to share with people, but we also have false information that we believe that is very much impacting us. So you talked about this study that 30% of people believed that, quote, unquote, most people can be trusted. Only 30%, but then 65% of those same people said that their own community could be trusted. So it's like we actually do trust our own people. It's this idea that the people that aren't our people are different than our people. Right. So it's like what we can see, we trust, but we mistrust what we can't see. And I was wondering if you could, in this thinking of this globally, talk to us about what happened in Prague with Vaclav Havel and The whole idea that hopelessness results from most people believing, incorrectly, that most people don't care. So we think that most people don't care, which isn't true, but then that thinking leads to hopelessness, which leads most people not to care. So it's like this vicious cycle. Tell us what happened with him, because that was with the butcher shop and all of that. It was so beautiful.
- [51:34]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah. Vaclav Havel was an amazing person. He was a playwright, friends with Kurt Vonnegut and Samuel Beckett and all these people. And he was also a dissident in Prague, and he was part of what was called the Prague Spring, which was this movement to democratize Czechoslovakia, and it failed. The country moved forward, and then immediately this sort of movement for greater egalitarianism was shut down by Soviet rule, and the country became much more despotic, really. And so Havel then was imprisoned and lived for years in jail. And he wrote about how cynicism was at the root of this sort of authoritarian state, that the thing that helps regimes to control people is if they can convince people that nobody else wants change. Right. So, for instance, if you. And he wrote this beautiful essay called the Power of the Powerless, where he says, if you tell a butcher, if you force them, on penalty of going to prison, to hang a sign in support of Communist rule, for instance, in Czechoslovakia, then what other people will think, their neighbors, is that, oh, this person is not going to support me. If I want to take part in a movement to make things better, this person is not on my side, even though they're being forced to put the sign up. So there's these authoritarian states, and really, I think these movements to take power away from people thrive by getting people to trust each other less. I think there's something really powerful, though, that people need to know, which is that, in fact. And Amanda, this gets to your point. The more that we're able to move past those representations, whether it's a sign in the window or what we see in the news, and actually get to know the people around us, the more we realize that those negative beliefs are wrong, the more we realize that people actually do generally want what we want. That they want greater peace, for instance, that they want more egalitarianism. And this is one thing that just struck me over and over again when I was doing the research for this book, is that cynicism really lives more on our screens when we're taking in cable news or social media. We are much more likely to mistrust people, to think that people are extreme and dangerous and violent and that we should really stay the hell away from them. When we are actually out in the world with our communities, that cynicism naturally dissipates. So one of the crucial things that I learned is that in order to defeat cynicism, we don't need to ignore the truth. We actually need to get closer to the truth. We actually need to be more accurate and learn more deeply about what people are really like.
- [54:22]
Amanda Doyle
Because then what happened was when a few of, like, the theaters came out, and instead of, like, against all odds, they came out and spoke against the regime, then other people started saying, oh, my God, them too. Them2. Them2. 2 weeks later, the regime is crushed.
- [54:38]
Abby Wambach
Right?
- [54:38]
Amanda Doyle
Because it's the domino effect. That is the reverse domino effect of the sign going up is the, they're with me, they're with me. Wait, we have more power. They're just trying to separate us from each other.
- [54:50]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Exactly. I mean, I know you all had Malcolm Gladwell on talking about tipping points and how epidemics, for instance. You reach this point, and then all of a sudden, everything moves really rapidly, right? It's bit by bit and then all at once. And that can be true of virtuous social movements as well. And that's exactly what happened. So about a decade after the Prague Spring, the. There was a second movement in Prague to sort of defeat and remove Soviet rule. And it started slowly. And then, as you said, Amanda, people started realizing how many others supported this cause. And then all of a sudden, things moved very quickly, and Vaclav Havel went from a jail cell to being the first democratically elected president of the country in a very short amount of time and ushered in this sort of golden age for that state. And, you know, I think that we see this now, too. One of the issues that makes me most cynical is climate change. I just feel like, oh, my God, everything else means nothing if we can't slow this destruction down. And I often feel really alone in this. And it turns out that a lot of people do. Research finds that Americans believe that only 40, 35% of fellow Americans want aggressive policy to protect the climate. The real number is closer, depending on the issue, to 65 or 80%, depending on which particular issue you're looking for. So it turns out that most of us don't realize that most of us want climate action. But if you want that, you're part of a super majority. And again, discovering faith in each other now goes hand in hand with cultivating hope for the future. And not a complacent hope one where we could say, hey, most of us want this. Let's fight harder, let's pressure governments more, let's pressure industry more to make change, because that's what the vast majority of the country and the world desires.
- [56:49]
Glennon Doyle
Can you just leave us with a couple like, let's just say the people are thinking, they've listened to this and they're like, I want to try, I want to try to be less cynical because I believe everything you're saying and I'm feeling it in my bones. And that feels right.
- [57:03]
Amanda Doyle
But it's hard.
- [57:04]
Glennon Doyle
It's like changing a religion. It's a hard thing to do. If these people aren't going to fix climate change today, what can they do to experiment with moving from cynicism to skepticism in their everyday lives?
- [57:23]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Yeah, I love this question. And one of my favorite pieces of writing on this comes from the brilliant nun and author Pima Chodron. She writes that we can let go of our assumptions, we can let go of what we think we know, and treat our lives a little bit more like an experiment. And so that would be my suggestion. There's a bunch of ways you can do that. The first is to fact check your cynicism. If you find yourself judging somebody you just met or mistrusting a whole group of people, ask yourself, what evidence do I have for this claim? If I had to defend this position, how would I do it? Oftentimes when I feel this, which is quite often, I realize, wait a minute, that's just kind of a vibe that I'm getting more than it's really based on any information. And so if you don't have data to support your claim, go out and collect some data. The best way to do that is to take little leaps of faith on people. I'm not saying to be reckless, I'm not saying. Not saying to put everything on the line, but take little chances on people. Give them an opportunity to show you who they are. And then the third thing I would say is to try out something I call positive gossip. We tend to think negatively. We also tend to speak negatively. In my lab, we find that people gossip three times more about selfish actions than they do about generous ones. But we can balance that out. I try with my kids each day to sort of forage for one example of goodness that I witness and then tell them about it at dinner, which I know sounds corny. And they're nine and seven. I probably have about two years left before they completely disallow me from ever doing it again. But for now, this is my small way of trying to fight their cynicism. But it also changes the way that I think when you know you're going to say something or talk about something later, it kind of pops up an antenna in your mind and you look for it in your everyday life. And I've found that because I know that I want to share something positive with my kids, each day I start to notice more positivity and it actually isn't that hard to find at all. So those are just some starting points. And I mean, again, I think that living a little bit more like a scientist can be really beautiful. Not just because you learn more, but because if you're like most people, most people are better than you think. So, but you pay more attention. Pleasant surprises should be everywhere.
- [59:44]
Amanda Doyle
I love that calling out moral beauty, you said. I love that it's finding evidence of moral beauty all around you. It will be there if you're looking for it. I love it. Thank you so much for being here. Book is beautiful. It's a beautiful tribute and such important information. If we're going to get ourselves free, it's going to be in part through more accurate information. So thank you for this.
- [60:11]
Glennon Doyle
Thank you so much.
- [60:12]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Thank you all. This has been absolutely delightful. Thank you for having me. And yeah, I hope that this can be useful to folks.
- [60:18]
Glennon Doyle
Oh, I think it will be. I think that whoever's in charge. Well, we know who's in charge. Someone else should put you on every stage in America for the next. I mean, oh my God. So helpful.
- [60:29]
Unknown
So needed right now.
- [60:30]
Glennon Doyle
Thank you.
- [60:31]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
Thank you very much.
- [60:32]
Amanda Doyle
See you next time, POD Squad.
- [60:34]
Glennon Doyle
Bye.
- [60:34]
Amanda Doyle
Find moral beauty.
- [60:42]
Glennon Doyle
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the POD helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Allison Schott and Bill Schultz.
- [61:51]
Dr. Jamil Zaki
SA.