September 4, 2024 • 36 mins
Psychologist Jamil Zaki studies the science of human connection and he believes cynicism is holding us back. Cynicism isn't just harmful for our health, he says, it’s also misguided. He talks to Maya about a powerful, alternative mindset that can help: what he calls “hopeful skepticism.”
For more on hopeful skepticism, check out Jamil Zaki’s book “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.”
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Cynics might see injustice just like the rest of us do,
but cynicism suggests that there's nothing really to be done
about it, because if a broken system reflects our broken nature,
if the worst of us is who we really are,
then any change, any attempt to improve the world or
the systems that we live in, is doomed from the outset.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Psychologist Jimil Zaki studies the science of human connection, and
he believes that cynicism is holding us back. It's not
just harmful for health, it's also misguided. The alternative, he says,
is a mindset called full skepticism.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And the reason that I call it hopeful skepticism is
because our default tends to be negative. When you adopt
a skeptical perspective, you do tend to move towards a
slightly more hopeful and positive place because you're correcting for
the biases that we already have. People always say, what
you want me to put on a pair of rose
(01:31):
colored glasses, and I say, no, you're probably already wearing
a pair of glasses that's like mud colored, So just
take those off right, so that I'm actually not asking
people to pay less attention, but to pay more attention
to the folks around them.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
On today's episode, the Life Changing Benefits of being a
Hopeful Skeptic, I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight
change of plans, a show about who we are and
who we become in the face of a big change.
(02:17):
Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University
and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. You
might remember him from his first appearance on this show,
when he talked about the power of empathy. Jamil has
spent the last twenty years studying the sunny side of
human nature, things like compassion, kindness, and togetherness. He says
(02:40):
he's widely known as a kind of ambassador for humanity's
better angels. But in his new book Hope for Cynics,
The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Jamil talks about struggling
with this image. He begins the book with a confession.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
This entire time that I've been advocating for and talking
about human goodness, I myself have been pretty cynical. I
tend to suspect people and look at the worst sides
of lots of situations, becoming anxious, neurotic pessimistic, and I
feel like that split between my outer persona on the
(03:18):
one hand and my deepest experiences on the other has
been a problem for me and did something that I
wanted to bring out into the light and address.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I'm curious if you can tell me a bit more
about that disconnect. Do you remember a story in which
you met with someone who were giving a group council
and then you went home and you were kind of like, oh, darn,
I don't actually think I'm buying what I'm saying. I'm
not internalizing this, oh one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
One of the most intense moments came after TED, the
global conference that has a lot of great speakers, asked
me to come and give a talk on optimism as
a path to positive social change. I pulled out my
notebook and I said, I'm going to start drafting this
talk on the first I think Wednesday of the year
(04:06):
in twenty twenty one, which happened to be January. And
I remember I started drafting this talk about how you
know optimism is so important, and my friend texted me
and said, you have to turn on the television right now,
and I saw what the rest of the nation and
world saw with the insurrection at the Capitol Building, and
(04:27):
I thought, to myself, am I full of shit? Is
everything that I talk about a lie? I know it's
not because I do the research, I see the data,
but there's sometimes such a huge distance between your head
and your heart, you know, And like I just couldn't
believe deeper inside myself that people were good as I
(04:51):
watched this tragedy unfold.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah, what were the personal costs to being cynical for you?
I'm curious to hear how that played out.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
During that lockdown period late twenty twenty early twenty twenty one,
I really probably had the rock bottom of my own
personal cynicism, and it was extremely apparent to me that
entire time that it was not helping me, that it
was hurting me emotionally, it was diminishing my relationships. It
(05:22):
was it felt like a form of social depression, right,
depression kind of casts this gray light over everything, and
especially over your sense of self and the world at large.
I felt like cynicism was doing that for my vision
of other people, you know, sort of it made it
extremely difficult for me to see people in a positive light.
(05:44):
And I started exploring the science of cynicism because I
wanted to figure out what was happening inside me and
whether there was anything that I could do for myself
to dig out of this trap that I felt my
mind was in. And it's only then that I discovered
how common this sense of hopelessness, exhaustion, and cynicism really is,
(06:08):
which first of all made me feel better because I
was like, well, at least I'm not alone, but then
made me feel as I learned more and more about
how harmful cynicism is, and not only how harmful, but
how unnecessary it is, I thought, Wow, this could actually
help a lot of people who feel like I.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Do you know when you say the word cynicism, Jimille,
so many images come to mind. What is your definition
of cynicism?
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Cynicism can be defined as a theory about the world
and about people in particular. It's the theory that humanity
in general is selfish, greedy, and dishonest. Okay, that is
not to say that a cynic will doubt that anybody
will ever do a kind thing in their lives. They
just think that at our core, who we are is
(06:58):
defined by self interest. Now, if you have that theory,
you might notice a bunch of things happening inside you
and a bunch of things in your behavior. Right first,
you might find self suspecting other people's motives, even when
they do things that appear positive. You might find yourself
very quick to judge others based on the harms that
(07:18):
they produce, not on the best things that they do.
It might also change what you do and what you
don't do. One place that we see cynicism play out
very strongly is in trust. Trust is our willingness to
be vulnerable to other people on the belief that they
have our best interest in mind. Loaning somebody money, letting
(07:39):
somebody babysit your kid, giving somebody more responsibility at work,
on your team. All of these are types of trust,
and trust is a social gamble. We can't know what
the outcome will be. We need to count on other people.
And if you're cynical, that gamble feels like it's for suckers.
It feels like a losing bet. So cynics tend to
(08:00):
trust a lot less often than non cynics.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
You have a very people focused definition. So is that
intentional and does it exclude those who just think irrespective
of a human involvement you know, an asteroid might hit us, Like,
how do you bucket those folks?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah? I think that what you're describing is pessimism, the
idea that the future will unfold in ways that we
don't want. And I think that pessimism and cynicism are
quite related because a lot of what we expect about
the future has to do with who's around us right now.
But I do think of cynicism as generally a social theory.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Okay, okay, that's very helpful. Would you call cynicism the
default state of the human or like, is that what
you see in the data or do you think that
it's somewhat acquired. I'm just curious to know what we're
running up against.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So there are some defaults in the human brain and
mind that tip us towards cynicism. Psychologists talk about negativity bias,
the idea that it's often much easier to pay attention to,
to remember, and much more tempting to talk about negative
events and people than positive events in people. And you
(09:14):
can see why that would be evolutionarily adaptive, right. You know,
if you're thinking back one hundred thousand years, the people
who paid lots of attention to threats in their environment
might be more likely to survive. And so that's I
think one thing that makes fighting cynicism an uphill battle.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
You've already alluded to some of the negative impacts of
cynicism on our well being and relationships. Are there any
other studies or research that you would want to share?
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, I mean so. One is that cinics unfortunately live
far less healthy lives, even at a physical level, so
they tend to show greater signs of cellular aging and inflammation.
They tend to develop heart disease more than nonsnics and
even die younger than non cynics. And I think this
comes from the fact that cynics have a harder time
(10:05):
tapping into one of the things that de stresses and
it nourishes us the most connection to other people. There's
one really fascinating study where researchers brought people in the
lab and asked them to give an extemporaneous speech on
a topic they didn't know very well, which of course
is not pleasant for anybody. And in some cases people
(10:27):
had a cheerleader, a friendly stranger who was with them
while they prepared and said, you've got this. I believe
in you. And in other cases they were alone. Now,
for noncnics, their blood pressure went up when they were
preparing this speech, that would happen for any of us.
But when they had a supportive stranger there, their blood
pressure went up a lot less. For cynics, having a
(10:48):
supportive person there didn't make a difference at all. So
their blood pressure increased just as much if they were
alone or if somebody was there to help them. That
is so telling to me. It almost strikes me that
if you're cynical, if you don't believe in people, then
you kind of can't digest or metabolize the social nourishment
of connection. And I think that that's just such a
(11:10):
tragic way to live.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, so much of your book I see as mythbusting cynicism.
And so what are some common misconceptions that people have
about cynicism.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, this was one of the things that was most
surprising for me when I started doing this research, because
I thought to myself, Wow, cynicism feels terrible. It's awful
for our health and relationships, it's not very good for
our communities. Why are so many people adopting this as
a view of life and as a view of humanity.
And there are three myths that I realized our culture
(11:48):
propagates about cynicism. The first is that it's wise. Now,
over the last three years since starting this project, I've
talked to so many self proclaimed cynics, and one thing
that they have in common, besides hostility and a little
bit of contempt, is a sort of bitter pride. A
lot of cynics will say, I'm actually a realist. You
(12:10):
know that if you don't think in cynical terms, you're
a naive roub or a chump. That if you pay
close enough attention and become wise enough, then you will
realize that people are really terrible. And in fact, it's
not just cynics who think this. Surveys find that seventy
percent of people think that cynics are smarter than non cynics,
(12:33):
and eighty five percent of people think that cynics are
more socially smart, for instance, that they'll be better at
picking out liars than nonsnics. It turns out that that's
not true. So there's data from hundreds of thousands of people,
lots of national surveys that finds that cnics actually perform
less well on cognitive tests. Than non cynics, and there
(12:55):
is other research that finds that cynics are worse at
spotting liars than non cynics. So it's important to know
that that perception of cynicism as a type of intelligence
is clearly at odds with the data.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Let's talk a bit more about some of the other
misconceptions we have about cynicism.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, I think that another misconception that I think people
have about cynicism is that it's safe. You know, I
think a lot of us who feel cynical about others
feel that way because we've been hurt, betrayed, disappointed, you know.
I know for me, my cynicism comes from a lot
of early parts of my life where I didn't feel
(13:37):
like I could really count on people. And so it's
not saying that I feel because I think I'm superior
to others or because I want to have a negative attitude.
It's sort of a response to pain. And one response
that we might have to pain is to put our
guard up to feel like, well, I never want to
experience that again. I don't want to be betrayed or
hurt again. And the only way I can guarantee my
(13:58):
own safety moving forward is to shut off any type
of social risk. And that's why I think you often
see cynics not willing to trust people because they don't
want to risk betrayal, They don't want to risk being
taken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
No. I totally appreciate that. Why don't we cover genial
The third misconception that people have when it comes to cynicism.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, the third misconception around cynicism is the idea that
cynicism is moral, that that really it's so important to
be aware of injustice, corruption and harm, and that cynics
are the only ones who are adequately responsive to all
the terrible things that happen in the world, and as
(14:44):
a result, that being hopeful or positive is kind of
an abandonment of our species and our problems, that it's
a pair of rose colored glasses. You know, when I
talk about hope and overcoming cynicism, a lot of people say, well,
that's rich coming from you, an ultra privileged professor at
an elite university. You know, a lot of us don't
(15:05):
have the luxury of feeling good about humanity. We have
to speak truth to power and challenge injustice. And first
of all, I think cynics might see injustice just like
the rest of us do, but cynicism suggests that there's
nothing really to be done about it, because if a
broken system reflects our broken nature, if the worst of
(15:30):
us is who we really are, than any change, any
attempt to improve the world or the systems that we
live in, is doomed from the outset. And so you
actually see more cynical people are less likely to take
part in social movements, they're less likely to vote, they're
more willing to do things like spread conspiracy theories. And
(15:50):
in fact, I think that autocrats and authoritarians often benefit
from cynicism and use it as a way of promoting
the status quo. I mean, a population that doesn't trust
itself is an easy one to manipulate.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, yeah, Do you think there's an element of guilt?
Do people feel guilty when they express optimism? Because it
just feels jarring when you see all the pain and
suffering around you.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
This is such a deep question, and I do want
to separate optimism from hope here. Yeah, Optimism is the
idea that things will turn out well. Hope is the
idea that they could turn out well. And I think
that's a huge distinction, because optimism can lead a little
bit to complacency. You know, if things are going to
(16:41):
go great, then I don't really have to do anything
to make a difference. And in fact, I think that
what you could call toxic optimism is not that different
from cynicism. If cynics think, well, things are going to
go terribly no matter what I do, they can also
be complacent.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, an optimists are like, things are going to go
great no matter what I do, so I'm not going
to do anything.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So you've got two groups of people who have fundamentally
different beliefs, but neither one of them might be inspired
to do much. Hope takes the deep uncertainty that we
have about the future as the place where our actions matter,
and so hopeful people tend to focus on their agency
(17:22):
and they think, well, there's a vision of the world
where things could be better. I'm not saying that's what
will happen, but it's a possibility, and in order for
that possibility to become more likely, I need to take action.
Hopeful individuals, for instance, tend to be more resilient during adversity.
Lower socio economic and underrepresented minority students who have hope,
(17:45):
are more likely to pursue their academic goals, and socially
as well, Hopeful people are more willing to engage in protests.
A protest is not a complacent, rose colored glasses type
of thing to do. It's taking major problems head on.
But why do we take those problems head on? Because
we think that there's a difference to be made.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
You advocate in your book for quote, Unlearning Cynicism, and
you introduce this concept of hopeful skepticism. You've already explained
how hope is different from optimism. Can you explain what
you mean by hopeful skepticism.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
One of the most important things that I learned in
doing research for this project was the difference between cynicism
and skepticism. You know, as we've talked about, cynicism is
a theory about the world. Well as you know as
a scientist, once you have a theory, you start to
kind of see it everywhere and even want to support it,
and so there can be some confirmation bias around theories,
(18:45):
and cynics often have a biased way of looking at
the world. They almost look at it like lawyers, right,
and the prosecution against humanity. They really pay lots of
attention to the terrible things that people do, or they
might explain away the others' kindness and trustworthiness. Skepticism is
not thinking like a lawyer, but thinking like a scientist.
(19:06):
Skeptics don't necessarily have some huge, huge assumption or theory
about what people are like. Instead, they look for evidence.
They're unwilling to rest on early and easy judgments, and
because of that, skepticism is really different from cynicism, and skeptics,
unlike cinics, can learn really quickly, can adapt to new situations,
(19:30):
and become much more accurate about people than cinics do.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
One of the quotes that I really enjoyed from your book,
and I thought articulated the point well, is that hope
is not a naive way of approaching the world. It's
an accurate response to the best data available.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
It's really a point I want to drive home because
a lot of people when they hear hope, they think
of somebody with their head in the sand. They think
of somebody ignoring data as opposed to approaching data. One
of the important points, though, and the reason that I
call it hopeful skepticism, is because our default tends to
(20:09):
be negative. When you adopt a skeptical perspective, you do
tend to move towards a slightly more hopeful and positive
place because you're correcting for the biases that we already have.
People always say, what you want me to put on
a pair of rose colored glasses, and I say, no,
you're probably already wearing a pair of glasses that's like
(20:30):
mud colored, So just take those off right, so that
I'm actually not asking people to pay less attention, but
to pay more attention to the folks around them.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
After the break, Jamil teaches us how to practice hopeful skepticism.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans, Jimil. The hopeful part of all this is
(21:02):
that hopeful skepticism is in fact a skill that we
can build. So why don't we talk a bit about
how it is that we can build that muscle. In
your book, you have this wonderful practical guide, and I'm
hoping that we can share with listeners a few examples
of some of these overarching strategies. The first you say
is to connect with your core values. Tell me what
(21:26):
that looks like.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It turns out that although
cynics have a lot of judgment and contempt for other people.
They also tend to say that they rely on other
people more for their sense of self worth the non cynics.
So there's a sense that when we can't trust ourselves
very deeply, it's hard to trust others. Yeah, it turns
(21:51):
out that one of the best ways to start overcoming
cynicism is to connect in new ways to ourselves. My
colleague at Stanford, Jeff Cohen, has a lot of work
on this through what he calls values affirmation. So values
affirmation is where you so consider what matters most to
you in life. You'll see a list of, for instance,
(22:13):
twenty things that people often say they care a lot about,
and you'll be asked, well, what are your top three
or what's your top one, And then you're asked to
write about, well, why does it matter to you and
what are some ways that you express that value in
your life. And it turns out that this simple exercise,
just ten fifteen minutes of writing about what really matters
to you and how you live your values, instills a
(22:35):
kind of deep confidence in people. I'm not talking about
braggadocious arrogance, but rather a sense of sturdiness, a sense
of solid foundation, and when we have that sense of
sturdiness internally, we're more willing to be open to others.
Jeff finds that when people affirm their own values, they
feel less threatened by information that conflicts with their beliefs
(22:59):
and more open minded. And that's why I think it
might tap us in also to a sense of skepticism
and hopeful skepticism about other people.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
You talk about this in terms of, you know, better
connecting to ourselves, and I wonder I'm just thinking out loud.
I mean, here's one way in which I think increasing
self compassion could be a vehicle through which we have
more hope. So when we do fail or we make
some sort of mistake, we can overconclude from that incident. Right,
So rather than saying I made a mistake, it's I'm
(23:30):
a mistake. There's no redemption.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And if I have more self compassion and I believe, okay,
well I made a mistake, I myself not a mistake,
I might be more willing to assume that posture with
other people in my life, like, oh, that person hurt me,
but they might not be like a hurtful person, like
someone who loves hurting others. They might just have aired
(23:53):
in a particular way.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
That's beautifully put. I love that. And I think there's
a lot of evidence that when we judge people in
a trait based way, we see an action that they
take and we decide that action defines them. That closes
us off not just to compassion for that person, but
it makes it very easy for us to think cynically
(24:15):
about that individual. In fact, cynicism is a sort of
fixed view of humanity.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Right, exactly. That's what I'm trying to get at. It's like, yeah, yeah,
there is actually hope for this person to change, because
I think I can change. I love that.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, No, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Let's go to the second strategy for building hopeful skepticism,
and you say that is to be skeptical of your cynicism.
So tell me a bit more about what that process
can look like.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
This is something that I drew in trying to overcome
my own cynicism from tools in cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. Right, So,
when I started CBT in my twenties, my therapist told me, Okay,
what are your beliefs about yourself and about the world.
Write them down and then try to think about them scientifically.
(25:02):
What evidence do you have to support them? And I
wrote down some of my very negative beliefs at the time.
At the time, I really felt like if I am
not positive all the time, people won't like me. That
I need to entertain or provide people with good vibes
in order for them to stay in my life. I
(25:23):
felt like expressing that true self when my true self
was unattractive or gloomy, would lead people to flee. But
I had no evidence for it because I had never
really tried. I had never been open with other people
about what I was going through or feeling. And so
my therapist then said, Okay, you've got this belief, you
(25:44):
don't have any evidence for it. Why don't you collect
some data, Why don't you try to test your hypotheses?
And both of these steps understanding what our beliefs are
and whether we have evidence for them and then testing
them could be tools for being skeptical of our own cynicism.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, I wonder how that played out for you, because
I own your book. You said people used to call
you Guy Smiley, so you were definitely battling a pretty
strong reputation so what steps did you take to test
out this theory that you had to be a certain
way in order to be liked.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
One example from more recently, a few years ago now,
a couple of new faculty members joined my department and
we went out for drinks and they said, well, what's
it like to be a professor here at Stanford? And
you know, I had my guy smiley response already, you know,
it's the best job in the world. I can't believe it.
But instead I decided to answer honestly, and I said,
(26:47):
it's terrifying. You know, you you never feel like you
deserved this job, because nobody really deserves it. You have
to be so lucky to get here, and it's incredibly
easy to feel like an impostor and to feel like
any mistake you make is just proof that the university
made a mistake in hiring you. And I still remember
(27:09):
the seconds of silence that followed this, you know, rant
that these people had not asked for and our first
time hanging out, and they felt like ours to me.
And I also remember the relief that poured out of
these new faculty members. They said, Wow, it means so
much to hear somebody who we see as succeeding open
(27:30):
up about this, and we ended up becoming really fast friends.
And even now years later, we get together about once
a quarter and we have something called beer and wine
where we drink beer and wine, but with an h
you know, we complain and vent and open up and again.
So for me, being positive was inauthentic. Sometimes it was
(27:50):
a defense mechanism, and being honest about my struggles showed
that I believed in the people around me. I believed
that they would have my back, and more often than
not they did. So the experiments that I did in
my life, the data came back shockingly positive.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah. So the final strategy is to practice what you
call social saving. Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yeah. Savoring is generally the practice of appreciating good things
as they happen, and it's related to, but distinct from gratitude,
which is generally appreciating the good things that have happened.
So I practice savoring a lot with my kids. We
will do things like ice cream eating class or sunset
(28:40):
watching class, where we will enjoy something, but we'll enjoy
it very carefully. I'll say, well, what do you like
about how this tastes or the texture of the ice cream.
What do you want to remember about this moment? Just
pointing our awareness towards the good things in our lives.
And social savoring is in essence, taking that same general strategy,
(29:00):
but pointing it towards other people. And so for me,
social saving has two parts. One is paying attention to
and looking for examples of people doing good in the world.
And I'm not talking about heroics that you see in
the news. I'm talking about walking around a city and
seeing people pick up litter or helping somebody who's in need,
(29:20):
for instance. The second part of social savoring is not
just to notice the goodness that's all around us all
the time, but to share it. When you socially savor
with others, you help fight their cynicism. But you also
in changing what you say, change the way that you think,
your habits of speech become habits of mind, and help
(29:42):
kind of pop up in antenna in your own mind
for the goodness of others, which of course is not
that hard to find once you start to look for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah. One lesson I internalized early for my mom is,
especially when engaging with people in the service industries, they're
always hearing complaints and so her goal is always to
counteract that by every time she has a really positive experience,
making sure she calls in the manager and says, you know,
so and so is so amazing and so excellent and
so just the other day flying back from New York,
(30:10):
and our flight attendant was just so kind, and I
just called her over and I was like, Hey, I
just need you to know you are such a kind,
cheerful presence. And it's made my day and it's made
this flight so much better. And I thought in that
moment about the impact that sharing that with her would
have on her. But I didn't think in that moment
about what you're sharing with me now, which is what
impact it probably had on me and my view of humanity.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I love that. It's a lot. I mean, our culture
is so full of people giving life one star reviews
on Yelcha you and I'm giving all the people around
them one star reviews. But if that's all we do,
if the loudest conversations we have are about the worst
things that happen, yeah, then we will end up with
a skewed view of the world and of each other.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I'm curious to know how writing this book and engaging
with the research on hope and cynicism has transformed your
own outlook on life. Right, So you came into this saying, Okay,
I'm going to confess that I am a cynic. How
has it changed the way that you live your life?
How has it changed your relationship with some of your
big fears? Yeah, share with me any reflections you have.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I don't consider myself an ex cynic. I consider myself
a recovering cynic.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Right. In that I work on this all the time,
I still have the same defaults. I still have the
same instincts. I think that one of the things that
this project has changed in me is that I'm more
aware that when I'm thinking in gloomy or cynical terms,
that that doesn't mean that I'm right. So I guess
I trust my cynicism less. I'm more skeptical of it.
(31:47):
That is something that I can say I've achieved. And
then this project has changed how I parent. I'm much
more aware of how even if I'm taking risks, even
if I'm trusting people, my default is to stop my
kids from taking any risks and to protect them from
all sorts of harm, and especially from harmful people. I
(32:10):
stand by that instinct one thousand percent, but I think
oftentimes as a parent, my default has been protection over freedom,
protection over exploration, and protection over learning, and so I've
been trying to balance that. And so one of our
daughters is eight years old and we live in the
middle of a big city here in San Francisco, and
(32:33):
she really wants to be able to go buy something
on her own, right. She wants to be able to
go a couple of blocks and pick something up. And
we've gone back and forth on this for over a
year now, and I won't say that she's done it yet,
but we're on the cusp of doing it. I got
her some walkie talkies so that she can be in
(32:54):
contact if she needs us. But you know, before working
on this project, I would have thought, no way, I'm
letting her go even two blocks. You know, there's just
too many people out there who could try to harm her.
And of course, I want, above and beyond anything in
the world for my daughter to be safe. But I
also think now that her going a block or two
is actually a pretty safe thing to do. It's something
(33:16):
that children have done for generations, and that keeping her
from doing that isn't actually keeping her safe, it's in
fact keeping her from learning about the world and how
to interact with it.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Jimille can feel like a huge shift to move from
cynicisms to hopeful skepticism, especially during the time we live in.
I mean, I'm thinking about areas of life that I'm
very cynical about, and it seems like a herculean effort
to do that, And so I do wonder you can
talk just a bit about that.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
This is a process of small steps, right, I mean,
nobody changes fundamentally how they view the world overnight, really
change fundamental deep change is a process of building new habits,
little things that we do slightly differently each day. Another
thing that I'll say is that cynicism is really most
(34:06):
powerful in the abstract. If you ask people what are
people like, they're pretty gloomy. But if you ask them
what are the people in your life like? And I'm
not saying your friends and family, but the strangers you
interact with, your grosser, your neighbor, the person you sit
next to on the bus. If you ask people about
(34:26):
their actual communities, they're much more bullish. They think that
those people are very trustworthy, are kind, They think that
those communities are generally pretty good, and so I think
it's important to remember that hope oftentimes isn't out there
in the ether, it's right here all around us, in
(34:48):
the communities that we live in.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this
conversation with Jamil, we on the Slight Change team would
be so grateful if you could share the episode with
someone you know, it helps us get the word out
so we can keep making more episodes for you. And
if you're looking for more stories of change later this month,
I'm sharing one of my all time favorite episodes from
the archives, and we've got some great new episodes coming
(35:34):
later this fall. And as always, I highly recommend checking
out the back catalog. That's where you can find Jamil's
first episode called how to Build Empathy and Avoid Burnout.
Thanks so much and see you soon. A Slight Change
(35:58):
of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me
Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green,
our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our senior producer Trisha Bobida,
and our engineer Eric o'huang. Luis Scara wrote our delightful
theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
(36:19):
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so a big thanks to everyone there, and of course
a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow
a Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
See you next week.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Cynics might see injustice just like the rest of us do,
but cynicism suggests that there's nothing really to be done
about it, because if a broken system reflects our broken nature,
if the worst of us is who we really are,
then any change, any attempt to improve the world or
the systems that we live in, is doomed from the outset.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Psychologist Jimil Zaki studies the science of human connection, and
he believes that cynicism is holding us back. It's not
just harmful for health, it's also misguided. The alternative, he says,
is a mindset called full skepticism.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And the reason that I call it hopeful skepticism is
because our default tends to be negative. When you adopt
a skeptical perspective, you do tend to move towards a
slightly more hopeful and positive place because you're correcting for
the biases that we already have. People always say, what
you want me to put on a pair of rose
(01:31):
colored glasses, and I say, no, you're probably already wearing
a pair of glasses that's like mud colored, So just
take those off right, so that I'm actually not asking
people to pay less attention, but to pay more attention
to the folks around them.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
On today's episode, the Life Changing Benefits of being a
Hopeful Skeptic, I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight
change of plans, a show about who we are and
who we become in the face of a big change.
(02:17):
Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University
and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. You
might remember him from his first appearance on this show,
when he talked about the power of empathy. Jamil has
spent the last twenty years studying the sunny side of
human nature, things like compassion, kindness, and togetherness. He says
(02:40):
he's widely known as a kind of ambassador for humanity's
better angels. But in his new book Hope for Cynics,
The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Jamil talks about struggling
with this image. He begins the book with a confession.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
This entire time that I've been advocating for and talking
about human goodness, I myself have been pretty cynical. I
tend to suspect people and look at the worst sides
of lots of situations, becoming anxious, neurotic pessimistic, and I
feel like that split between my outer persona on the
(03:18):
one hand and my deepest experiences on the other has
been a problem for me and did something that I
wanted to bring out into the light and address.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I'm curious if you can tell me a bit more
about that disconnect. Do you remember a story in which
you met with someone who were giving a group council
and then you went home and you were kind of like, oh, darn,
I don't actually think I'm buying what I'm saying. I'm
not internalizing this, oh one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
One of the most intense moments came after TED, the
global conference that has a lot of great speakers, asked
me to come and give a talk on optimism as
a path to positive social change. I pulled out my
notebook and I said, I'm going to start drafting this
talk on the first I think Wednesday of the year
(04:06):
in twenty twenty one, which happened to be January. And
I remember I started drafting this talk about how you
know optimism is so important, and my friend texted me
and said, you have to turn on the television right now,
and I saw what the rest of the nation and
world saw with the insurrection at the Capitol Building, and
(04:27):
I thought, to myself, am I full of shit? Is
everything that I talk about a lie? I know it's
not because I do the research, I see the data,
but there's sometimes such a huge distance between your head
and your heart, you know, And like I just couldn't
believe deeper inside myself that people were good as I
(04:51):
watched this tragedy unfold.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah, what were the personal costs to being cynical for you?
I'm curious to hear how that played out.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
During that lockdown period late twenty twenty early twenty twenty one,
I really probably had the rock bottom of my own
personal cynicism, and it was extremely apparent to me that
entire time that it was not helping me, that it
was hurting me emotionally, it was diminishing my relationships. It
(05:22):
was it felt like a form of social depression, right,
depression kind of casts this gray light over everything, and
especially over your sense of self and the world at large.
I felt like cynicism was doing that for my vision
of other people, you know, sort of it made it
extremely difficult for me to see people in a positive light.
(05:44):
And I started exploring the science of cynicism because I
wanted to figure out what was happening inside me and
whether there was anything that I could do for myself
to dig out of this trap that I felt my
mind was in. And it's only then that I discovered
how common this sense of hopelessness, exhaustion, and cynicism really is,
(06:08):
which first of all made me feel better because I
was like, well, at least I'm not alone, but then
made me feel as I learned more and more about
how harmful cynicism is, and not only how harmful, but
how unnecessary it is, I thought, Wow, this could actually
help a lot of people who feel like I.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Do you know when you say the word cynicism, Jimille,
so many images come to mind. What is your definition
of cynicism?
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Cynicism can be defined as a theory about the world
and about people in particular. It's the theory that humanity
in general is selfish, greedy, and dishonest. Okay, that is
not to say that a cynic will doubt that anybody
will ever do a kind thing in their lives. They
just think that at our core, who we are is
(06:58):
defined by self interest. Now, if you have that theory,
you might notice a bunch of things happening inside you
and a bunch of things in your behavior. Right first,
you might find self suspecting other people's motives, even when
they do things that appear positive. You might find yourself
very quick to judge others based on the harms that
(07:18):
they produce, not on the best things that they do.
It might also change what you do and what you
don't do. One place that we see cynicism play out
very strongly is in trust. Trust is our willingness to
be vulnerable to other people on the belief that they
have our best interest in mind. Loaning somebody money, letting
(07:39):
somebody babysit your kid, giving somebody more responsibility at work,
on your team. All of these are types of trust,
and trust is a social gamble. We can't know what
the outcome will be. We need to count on other people.
And if you're cynical, that gamble feels like it's for suckers.
It feels like a losing bet. So cynics tend to
(08:00):
trust a lot less often than non cynics.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
You have a very people focused definition. So is that
intentional and does it exclude those who just think irrespective
of a human involvement you know, an asteroid might hit us, Like,
how do you bucket those folks?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah? I think that what you're describing is pessimism, the
idea that the future will unfold in ways that we
don't want. And I think that pessimism and cynicism are
quite related because a lot of what we expect about
the future has to do with who's around us right now.
But I do think of cynicism as generally a social theory.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Okay, okay, that's very helpful. Would you call cynicism the
default state of the human or like, is that what
you see in the data or do you think that
it's somewhat acquired. I'm just curious to know what we're
running up against.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So there are some defaults in the human brain and
mind that tip us towards cynicism. Psychologists talk about negativity bias,
the idea that it's often much easier to pay attention to,
to remember, and much more tempting to talk about negative
events and people than positive events in people. And you
(09:14):
can see why that would be evolutionarily adaptive, right. You know,
if you're thinking back one hundred thousand years, the people
who paid lots of attention to threats in their environment
might be more likely to survive. And so that's I
think one thing that makes fighting cynicism an uphill battle.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
You've already alluded to some of the negative impacts of
cynicism on our well being and relationships. Are there any
other studies or research that you would want to share?
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, I mean so. One is that cinics unfortunately live
far less healthy lives, even at a physical level, so
they tend to show greater signs of cellular aging and inflammation.
They tend to develop heart disease more than nonsnics and
even die younger than non cynics. And I think this
comes from the fact that cynics have a harder time
(10:05):
tapping into one of the things that de stresses and
it nourishes us the most connection to other people. There's
one really fascinating study where researchers brought people in the
lab and asked them to give an extemporaneous speech on
a topic they didn't know very well, which of course
is not pleasant for anybody. And in some cases people
(10:27):
had a cheerleader, a friendly stranger who was with them
while they prepared and said, you've got this. I believe
in you. And in other cases they were alone. Now,
for noncnics, their blood pressure went up when they were
preparing this speech, that would happen for any of us.
But when they had a supportive stranger there, their blood
pressure went up a lot less. For cynics, having a
(10:48):
supportive person there didn't make a difference at all. So
their blood pressure increased just as much if they were
alone or if somebody was there to help them. That
is so telling to me. It almost strikes me that
if you're cynical, if you don't believe in people, then
you kind of can't digest or metabolize the social nourishment
of connection. And I think that that's just such a
(11:10):
tragic way to live.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, so much of your book I see as mythbusting cynicism.
And so what are some common misconceptions that people have
about cynicism.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, this was one of the things that was most
surprising for me when I started doing this research, because
I thought to myself, Wow, cynicism feels terrible. It's awful
for our health and relationships, it's not very good for
our communities. Why are so many people adopting this as
a view of life and as a view of humanity.
And there are three myths that I realized our culture
(11:48):
propagates about cynicism. The first is that it's wise. Now,
over the last three years since starting this project, I've
talked to so many self proclaimed cynics, and one thing
that they have in common, besides hostility and a little
bit of contempt, is a sort of bitter pride. A
lot of cynics will say, I'm actually a realist. You
(12:10):
know that if you don't think in cynical terms, you're
a naive roub or a chump. That if you pay
close enough attention and become wise enough, then you will
realize that people are really terrible. And in fact, it's
not just cynics who think this. Surveys find that seventy
percent of people think that cynics are smarter than non cynics,
(12:33):
and eighty five percent of people think that cynics are
more socially smart, for instance, that they'll be better at
picking out liars than nonsnics. It turns out that that's
not true. So there's data from hundreds of thousands of people,
lots of national surveys that finds that cnics actually perform
less well on cognitive tests. Than non cynics, and there
(12:55):
is other research that finds that cynics are worse at
spotting liars than non cynics. So it's important to know
that that perception of cynicism as a type of intelligence
is clearly at odds with the data.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Let's talk a bit more about some of the other
misconceptions we have about cynicism.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, I think that another misconception that I think people
have about cynicism is that it's safe. You know, I
think a lot of us who feel cynical about others
feel that way because we've been hurt, betrayed, disappointed, you know.
I know for me, my cynicism comes from a lot
of early parts of my life where I didn't feel
(13:37):
like I could really count on people. And so it's
not saying that I feel because I think I'm superior
to others or because I want to have a negative attitude.
It's sort of a response to pain. And one response
that we might have to pain is to put our
guard up to feel like, well, I never want to
experience that again. I don't want to be betrayed or
hurt again. And the only way I can guarantee my
(13:58):
own safety moving forward is to shut off any type
of social risk. And that's why I think you often
see cynics not willing to trust people because they don't
want to risk betrayal, They don't want to risk being
taken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
No. I totally appreciate that. Why don't we cover genial
The third misconception that people have when it comes to cynicism.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, the third misconception around cynicism is the idea that
cynicism is moral, that that really it's so important to
be aware of injustice, corruption and harm, and that cynics
are the only ones who are adequately responsive to all
the terrible things that happen in the world, and as
(14:44):
a result, that being hopeful or positive is kind of
an abandonment of our species and our problems, that it's
a pair of rose colored glasses. You know, when I
talk about hope and overcoming cynicism, a lot of people say, well,
that's rich coming from you, an ultra privileged professor at
an elite university. You know, a lot of us don't
(15:05):
have the luxury of feeling good about humanity. We have
to speak truth to power and challenge injustice. And first
of all, I think cynics might see injustice just like
the rest of us do, but cynicism suggests that there's
nothing really to be done about it, because if a
broken system reflects our broken nature, if the worst of
(15:30):
us is who we really are, than any change, any
attempt to improve the world or the systems that we
live in, is doomed from the outset. And so you
actually see more cynical people are less likely to take
part in social movements, they're less likely to vote, they're
more willing to do things like spread conspiracy theories. And
(15:50):
in fact, I think that autocrats and authoritarians often benefit
from cynicism and use it as a way of promoting
the status quo. I mean, a population that doesn't trust
itself is an easy one to manipulate.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, yeah, Do you think there's an element of guilt?
Do people feel guilty when they express optimism? Because it
just feels jarring when you see all the pain and
suffering around you.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
This is such a deep question, and I do want
to separate optimism from hope here. Yeah, Optimism is the
idea that things will turn out well. Hope is the
idea that they could turn out well. And I think
that's a huge distinction, because optimism can lead a little
bit to complacency. You know, if things are going to
(16:41):
go great, then I don't really have to do anything
to make a difference. And in fact, I think that
what you could call toxic optimism is not that different
from cynicism. If cynics think, well, things are going to
go terribly no matter what I do, they can also
be complacent.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, an optimists are like, things are going to go
great no matter what I do, so I'm not going
to do anything.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So you've got two groups of people who have fundamentally
different beliefs, but neither one of them might be inspired
to do much. Hope takes the deep uncertainty that we
have about the future as the place where our actions matter,
and so hopeful people tend to focus on their agency
(17:22):
and they think, well, there's a vision of the world
where things could be better. I'm not saying that's what
will happen, but it's a possibility, and in order for
that possibility to become more likely, I need to take action.
Hopeful individuals, for instance, tend to be more resilient during adversity.
Lower socio economic and underrepresented minority students who have hope,
(17:45):
are more likely to pursue their academic goals, and socially
as well, Hopeful people are more willing to engage in protests.
A protest is not a complacent, rose colored glasses type
of thing to do. It's taking major problems head on.
But why do we take those problems head on? Because
we think that there's a difference to be made.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
You advocate in your book for quote, Unlearning Cynicism, and
you introduce this concept of hopeful skepticism. You've already explained
how hope is different from optimism. Can you explain what
you mean by hopeful skepticism.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
One of the most important things that I learned in
doing research for this project was the difference between cynicism
and skepticism. You know, as we've talked about, cynicism is
a theory about the world. Well as you know as
a scientist, once you have a theory, you start to
kind of see it everywhere and even want to support it,
and so there can be some confirmation bias around theories,
(18:45):
and cynics often have a biased way of looking at
the world. They almost look at it like lawyers, right,
and the prosecution against humanity. They really pay lots of
attention to the terrible things that people do, or they
might explain away the others' kindness and trustworthiness. Skepticism is
not thinking like a lawyer, but thinking like a scientist.
(19:06):
Skeptics don't necessarily have some huge, huge assumption or theory
about what people are like. Instead, they look for evidence.
They're unwilling to rest on early and easy judgments, and
because of that, skepticism is really different from cynicism, and skeptics,
unlike cinics, can learn really quickly, can adapt to new situations,
(19:30):
and become much more accurate about people than cinics do.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
One of the quotes that I really enjoyed from your book,
and I thought articulated the point well, is that hope
is not a naive way of approaching the world. It's
an accurate response to the best data available.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
It's really a point I want to drive home because
a lot of people when they hear hope, they think
of somebody with their head in the sand. They think
of somebody ignoring data as opposed to approaching data. One
of the important points, though, and the reason that I
call it hopeful skepticism, is because our default tends to
(20:09):
be negative. When you adopt a skeptical perspective, you do
tend to move towards a slightly more hopeful and positive
place because you're correcting for the biases that we already have.
People always say, what you want me to put on
a pair of rose colored glasses, and I say, no,
you're probably already wearing a pair of glasses that's like
(20:30):
mud colored, So just take those off right, so that
I'm actually not asking people to pay less attention, but
to pay more attention to the folks around them.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
After the break, Jamil teaches us how to practice hopeful skepticism.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans, Jimil. The hopeful part of all this is
(21:02):
that hopeful skepticism is in fact a skill that we
can build. So why don't we talk a bit about
how it is that we can build that muscle. In
your book, you have this wonderful practical guide, and I'm
hoping that we can share with listeners a few examples
of some of these overarching strategies. The first you say
is to connect with your core values. Tell me what
(21:26):
that looks like.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It turns out that although
cynics have a lot of judgment and contempt for other people.
They also tend to say that they rely on other
people more for their sense of self worth the non cynics.
So there's a sense that when we can't trust ourselves
very deeply, it's hard to trust others. Yeah, it turns
(21:51):
out that one of the best ways to start overcoming
cynicism is to connect in new ways to ourselves. My
colleague at Stanford, Jeff Cohen, has a lot of work
on this through what he calls values affirmation. So values
affirmation is where you so consider what matters most to
you in life. You'll see a list of, for instance,
(22:13):
twenty things that people often say they care a lot about,
and you'll be asked, well, what are your top three
or what's your top one, And then you're asked to
write about, well, why does it matter to you and
what are some ways that you express that value in
your life. And it turns out that this simple exercise,
just ten fifteen minutes of writing about what really matters
to you and how you live your values, instills a
(22:35):
kind of deep confidence in people. I'm not talking about
braggadocious arrogance, but rather a sense of sturdiness, a sense
of solid foundation, and when we have that sense of
sturdiness internally, we're more willing to be open to others.
Jeff finds that when people affirm their own values, they
feel less threatened by information that conflicts with their beliefs
(22:59):
and more open minded. And that's why I think it
might tap us in also to a sense of skepticism
and hopeful skepticism about other people.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
You talk about this in terms of, you know, better
connecting to ourselves, and I wonder I'm just thinking out loud.
I mean, here's one way in which I think increasing
self compassion could be a vehicle through which we have
more hope. So when we do fail or we make
some sort of mistake, we can overconclude from that incident. Right,
So rather than saying I made a mistake, it's I'm
(23:30):
a mistake. There's no redemption.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And if I have more self compassion and I believe, okay,
well I made a mistake, I myself not a mistake,
I might be more willing to assume that posture with
other people in my life, like, oh, that person hurt me,
but they might not be like a hurtful person, like
someone who loves hurting others. They might just have aired
(23:53):
in a particular way.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
That's beautifully put. I love that. And I think there's
a lot of evidence that when we judge people in
a trait based way, we see an action that they
take and we decide that action defines them. That closes
us off not just to compassion for that person, but
it makes it very easy for us to think cynically
(24:15):
about that individual. In fact, cynicism is a sort of
fixed view of humanity.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Right, exactly. That's what I'm trying to get at. It's like, yeah, yeah,
there is actually hope for this person to change, because
I think I can change. I love that.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, No, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Let's go to the second strategy for building hopeful skepticism,
and you say that is to be skeptical of your cynicism.
So tell me a bit more about what that process
can look like.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
This is something that I drew in trying to overcome
my own cynicism from tools in cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. Right, So,
when I started CBT in my twenties, my therapist told me, Okay,
what are your beliefs about yourself and about the world.
Write them down and then try to think about them scientifically.
(25:02):
What evidence do you have to support them? And I
wrote down some of my very negative beliefs at the time.
At the time, I really felt like if I am
not positive all the time, people won't like me. That
I need to entertain or provide people with good vibes
in order for them to stay in my life. I
(25:23):
felt like expressing that true self when my true self
was unattractive or gloomy, would lead people to flee. But
I had no evidence for it because I had never
really tried. I had never been open with other people
about what I was going through or feeling. And so
my therapist then said, Okay, you've got this belief, you
(25:44):
don't have any evidence for it. Why don't you collect
some data, Why don't you try to test your hypotheses?
And both of these steps understanding what our beliefs are
and whether we have evidence for them and then testing
them could be tools for being skeptical of our own cynicism.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, I wonder how that played out for you, because
I own your book. You said people used to call
you Guy Smiley, so you were definitely battling a pretty
strong reputation so what steps did you take to test
out this theory that you had to be a certain
way in order to be liked.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
One example from more recently, a few years ago now,
a couple of new faculty members joined my department and
we went out for drinks and they said, well, what's
it like to be a professor here at Stanford? And
you know, I had my guy smiley response already, you know,
it's the best job in the world. I can't believe it.
But instead I decided to answer honestly, and I said,
(26:47):
it's terrifying. You know, you you never feel like you
deserved this job, because nobody really deserves it. You have
to be so lucky to get here, and it's incredibly
easy to feel like an impostor and to feel like
any mistake you make is just proof that the university
made a mistake in hiring you. And I still remember
(27:09):
the seconds of silence that followed this, you know, rant
that these people had not asked for and our first
time hanging out, and they felt like ours to me.
And I also remember the relief that poured out of
these new faculty members. They said, Wow, it means so
much to hear somebody who we see as succeeding open
(27:30):
up about this, and we ended up becoming really fast friends.
And even now years later, we get together about once
a quarter and we have something called beer and wine
where we drink beer and wine, but with an h
you know, we complain and vent and open up and again.
So for me, being positive was inauthentic. Sometimes it was
(27:50):
a defense mechanism, and being honest about my struggles showed
that I believed in the people around me. I believed
that they would have my back, and more often than
not they did. So the experiments that I did in
my life, the data came back shockingly positive.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah. So the final strategy is to practice what you
call social saving. Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yeah. Savoring is generally the practice of appreciating good things
as they happen, and it's related to, but distinct from gratitude,
which is generally appreciating the good things that have happened.
So I practice savoring a lot with my kids. We
will do things like ice cream eating class or sunset
(28:40):
watching class, where we will enjoy something, but we'll enjoy
it very carefully. I'll say, well, what do you like
about how this tastes or the texture of the ice cream.
What do you want to remember about this moment? Just
pointing our awareness towards the good things in our lives.
And social savoring is in essence, taking that same general strategy,
(29:00):
but pointing it towards other people. And so for me,
social saving has two parts. One is paying attention to
and looking for examples of people doing good in the world.
And I'm not talking about heroics that you see in
the news. I'm talking about walking around a city and
seeing people pick up litter or helping somebody who's in need,
(29:20):
for instance. The second part of social savoring is not
just to notice the goodness that's all around us all
the time, but to share it. When you socially savor
with others, you help fight their cynicism. But you also
in changing what you say, change the way that you think,
your habits of speech become habits of mind, and help
(29:42):
kind of pop up in antenna in your own mind
for the goodness of others, which of course is not
that hard to find once you start to look for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah. One lesson I internalized early for my mom is,
especially when engaging with people in the service industries, they're
always hearing complaints and so her goal is always to
counteract that by every time she has a really positive experience,
making sure she calls in the manager and says, you know,
so and so is so amazing and so excellent and
so just the other day flying back from New York,
(30:10):
and our flight attendant was just so kind, and I
just called her over and I was like, Hey, I
just need you to know you are such a kind,
cheerful presence. And it's made my day and it's made
this flight so much better. And I thought in that
moment about the impact that sharing that with her would
have on her. But I didn't think in that moment
about what you're sharing with me now, which is what
impact it probably had on me and my view of humanity.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I love that. It's a lot. I mean, our culture
is so full of people giving life one star reviews
on Yelcha you and I'm giving all the people around
them one star reviews. But if that's all we do,
if the loudest conversations we have are about the worst
things that happen, yeah, then we will end up with
a skewed view of the world and of each other.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I'm curious to know how writing this book and engaging
with the research on hope and cynicism has transformed your
own outlook on life. Right, So you came into this saying, Okay,
I'm going to confess that I am a cynic. How
has it changed the way that you live your life?
How has it changed your relationship with some of your
big fears? Yeah, share with me any reflections you have.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I don't consider myself an ex cynic. I consider myself
a recovering cynic.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Right. In that I work on this all the time,
I still have the same defaults. I still have the
same instincts. I think that one of the things that
this project has changed in me is that I'm more
aware that when I'm thinking in gloomy or cynical terms,
that that doesn't mean that I'm right. So I guess
I trust my cynicism less. I'm more skeptical of it.
(31:47):
That is something that I can say I've achieved. And
then this project has changed how I parent. I'm much
more aware of how even if I'm taking risks, even
if I'm trusting people, my default is to stop my
kids from taking any risks and to protect them from
all sorts of harm, and especially from harmful people. I
(32:10):
stand by that instinct one thousand percent, but I think
oftentimes as a parent, my default has been protection over freedom,
protection over exploration, and protection over learning, and so I've
been trying to balance that. And so one of our
daughters is eight years old and we live in the
middle of a big city here in San Francisco, and
(32:33):
she really wants to be able to go buy something
on her own, right. She wants to be able to
go a couple of blocks and pick something up. And
we've gone back and forth on this for over a
year now, and I won't say that she's done it yet,
but we're on the cusp of doing it. I got
her some walkie talkies so that she can be in
(32:54):
contact if she needs us. But you know, before working
on this project, I would have thought, no way, I'm
letting her go even two blocks. You know, there's just
too many people out there who could try to harm her.
And of course, I want, above and beyond anything in
the world for my daughter to be safe. But I
also think now that her going a block or two
is actually a pretty safe thing to do. It's something
(33:16):
that children have done for generations, and that keeping her
from doing that isn't actually keeping her safe, it's in
fact keeping her from learning about the world and how
to interact with it.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Jimille can feel like a huge shift to move from
cynicisms to hopeful skepticism, especially during the time we live in.
I mean, I'm thinking about areas of life that I'm
very cynical about, and it seems like a herculean effort
to do that, And so I do wonder you can
talk just a bit about that.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
This is a process of small steps, right, I mean,
nobody changes fundamentally how they view the world overnight, really
change fundamental deep change is a process of building new habits,
little things that we do slightly differently each day. Another
thing that I'll say is that cynicism is really most
(34:06):
powerful in the abstract. If you ask people what are
people like, they're pretty gloomy. But if you ask them
what are the people in your life like? And I'm
not saying your friends and family, but the strangers you
interact with, your grosser, your neighbor, the person you sit
next to on the bus. If you ask people about
(34:26):
their actual communities, they're much more bullish. They think that
those people are very trustworthy, are kind, They think that
those communities are generally pretty good, and so I think
it's important to remember that hope oftentimes isn't out there
in the ether, it's right here all around us, in
(34:48):
the communities that we live in.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this
conversation with Jamil, we on the Slight Change team would
be so grateful if you could share the episode with
someone you know, it helps us get the word out
so we can keep making more episodes for you. And
if you're looking for more stories of change later this month,
I'm sharing one of my all time favorite episodes from
the archives, and we've got some great new episodes coming
(35:34):
later this fall. And as always, I highly recommend checking
out the back catalog. That's where you can find Jamil's
first episode called how to Build Empathy and Avoid Burnout.
Thanks so much and see you soon. A Slight Change
(35:58):
of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me
Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green,
our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our senior producer Trisha Bobida,
and our engineer Eric o'huang. Luis Scara wrote our delightful
theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
(36:19):
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so a big thanks to everyone there, and of course
a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow
a Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
See you next week.
Host
Dr. Maya Shankar
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