Forum From the Archives: Jamil Zaki On Why Cynics Have It All Wrong
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From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim. Coming up on Forum, hope for cynics. That's the title of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki's book, which finds cynicism can be far more detrimental than we realize. Though an understandable response to an unjust and divided world, Zaki says when we indulge in cynicism, we limit our futures, undermine our relationships, and fail to see how generous and open-minded people are.

We'll listen back to my September conversation with Zaki about what cynicism really is and how to quiet our inner cynic. Forum is next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. After the death of a beloved colleague known for his hope and optimism, Stanford psychology professor Jamil Zaki began reflecting on his own cynicism.

He discovered that cultural stereotypes casting cynics as smarter and more worldly are wrong. Instead, cynicism undermines relationships and limits our vision of the future. In Zaki's new book, Hope for Cynics, he says there's good news. Our cynicism is misplaced. Humanity is far more beautiful and complex than a cynic imagines. So what tends to bring out cynicism in you, listeners? And what helps you keep it at bay?

Dr. Jamil Zaki joins me now. Welcome to Forum. I'm thrilled to be here with you, Mina. Glad to have you with us. So your friend, Emil Bruno, inspired the book, and his memory is woven throughout Hope for Cynics. Can you tell us a little bit about him? Emil was a friend of mine and also one of my heroes. He grew up in this area near Palo Alto and became a peace neuroscientist. A lot of people don't know that that's something you can do because he sort of invented it.

He used tools from neuroscience to study why people fall into conflict and pioneered new ways to help them reconnect and rediscover each other's humanity. His own life was also incredibly inspiring. He was one of the more positive and hopeful people I ever knew. And

I and some of his other friends would sometimes think, what's with this guy? How is he so positive all the time, given what he studies? Hatred and division. I thought maybe he's really sheltered.

But it turned out he was the opposite. His mother, when he was born, developed severe schizophrenia and was unable to raise him. And actually, it was in the forge of that pain and adversity that Emil made a decision as an adolescent that he would live intentionally and try to find the good in others. And he did that throughout his life, even when his life was tragically cut short by brain cancer at the age of 47. So he...

was just an inspiring figure and somebody who was larger than life and whose mission many of us are trying to carry on. And someone who inspired you to think about your own cynicism. So you're cynical, Dr. Zaki?

It does surprise some people. So as you know, Mina, I've been studying the science of kindness and empathy and connection for 20 years. And a lot of people imagine that if you study something, you must exude it. So they think that I must be blissed out all the time witnessing human goodness.

It turns out that in secret, I do struggle a lot with cynicism. There's a big difference between knowing something scientifically and feeling it. And oftentimes I find myself suspecting people or feeling quite hopeless. So after Emil's death...

I kind of felt like I needed to challenge myself to grow beyond what I was stuck in and to try to emulate him even just a little tiny bit. And so that set me on this journey to try to explore what was happening inside me and what I could do about it. And I quickly learned cynicism is by no means only my problem. It's a massive and growing problem for many of us.

Was that hard to admit or to share in this book, the fact that you do try to talk to people about how kind and empathetic they are and the importance of those virtues, but yet at the same time found yourself kind of questioning whether people have the capacity to solve big problems or address or act in their better natures or best interests? That's a really good question. Yeah.

I think it was hard, yes. I think as a scientist, I often feel pressure to present a positive message. And I do think there's such a positive message coming from the science. And so I feel pressure to then feel positively myself all the time. And I sort of can police my own emotions. But this book has been very freeing, frankly, because to open up and say, hey, I struggle with the same thing as many of you do, I think, has been a very

has allowed me to, well, one, work on myself more actively and openly, and two, be there with my students and my readers in a more honest and authentic way. I mean, the message of this book is not, hey, you cynics, you need to change.

It's I'm right there with you, but we don't have to feel this way. Right. And I don't think that I could have delivered that message without being honest about my own struggles. Being cynical, you say, is not just your problem. You learn this, that it's a very widespread problem. And part of the reason that

We have become so cynical, you say, is that we've actually glamorized cynicism. How have we done that? That's right. We have glamorized cynicism in at least three ways. So the first is that we act as though it's really smart.

You know, there's this sort of, I guess, cool factor to sitting on the sidelines and pointing at other people, expressing negativity and hopelessness. In fact, in research, we find that if you tell people about a very cynical person and a non-cynical person and ask them which one of these people will be better at a variety of tasks, 70% of people think that a cynic will be smarter than a non-cynic.

85% of people think that a cynic will be socially smarter, for instance, better able to tell who's lying and who's telling the truth.

So a lot of us put faith in people who don't put faith in people, in other words. But that's wrong. I mean, psychologists call this the cynical genius illusion. And it turns out that, in fact, cynics do less well on cognitive tests and are worse at spotting liars and figuring out who's actually telling the truth. So it turns out that cynicism appears much wiser than it really is. But that stereotype nonetheless encourages us

to act cynically because we think that it might make us look smart.

And then you said there are other ways. One of them is also that cynics are somehow safe from risk or loss. This one resonates a lot with me personally, because I think that's the form that my cynicism takes. I think many of us have been betrayed or hurt by other people, disappointed. And it's the most natural thing in the world to react to that by going in a sort of defensive crouch saying, well, I don't want to feel that way again.

And that's reasonable, again. But I think many of us go from being disappointed, that is lowering our expectations of people who have let us down, to being pre-disappointed, lowering our expectations of everyone, because that's the only way to be sure that you'll never be let down.

But it turns out that pre-disappointment is really not safe at all. It's very dangerous in the long term, right? I mean, yes, it defends you from someone taking advantage of you, but it also blocks you from friendship, collaboration, connection, and love, so much of what makes life worthwhile. Made me think about how much it's connected to, say, early childhood experiences of people disappointing you or not having your needs met by the people who were in a position to meet those needs previously.

playing a role in cynicism. That's exactly right. And that's my own experience, right? So we talk about in psychology attachment style. Do you learn early in life that you can count on your caregivers and by extension that the world is a safe and dependable place? For a variety of reasons, I was not securely attached as a kid. And I think that led a lot to my own cynicism. And we find in the research as well that children who are insecurely attached are

more often go on to become adults who have trouble trusting others and depending on them. And again, it's totally reasonable, but that doesn't mean it's helping us. The third myth around cynicism, you say, is that somehow it's more moral.

That's right. So I think that when I talk about hope these days, oftentimes I hear back, well, sure, you can talk about hope. You're a professor at a fancy university. You're privileged. And the idea is that hope is not just naive, but maybe is privileged or even toxic.

a way of looking away from our problems, putting on rose-colored glasses in a very gray world, and maybe ignoring other people's problems especially, people who have less privilege than you do. There's so much suffering. There's so much trauma. Yeah, maybe cynics are the ones who focus on it. But it turns out that this, again, is somewhat backwards.

Yes, cynics can see the world's many, many problems, but they don't see any solutions to those. And if you think that our broken systems, which of course are broken in so many ways, reflect our broken human nature, that the worst of us is who we really are, then it's silly to try to make anything better. And indeed, cynics vote less often, protest less often, and take part less often in social movements than non-cynics.

So again, we can see cynicism as moral, but actually if you look at the history of social movements, the people fighting to make things better are the ones who have hope that it can be better.

We're talking with Jamil Zaghi, professor of psychology at Stanford and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. We're talking about cynicism, and I want to hear your questions and comments, listeners, about it and what tends to bring out your cynicism or what helps you keep cynicism at bay. You can tell us by emailing forum at kqed.org, finding us on our social channels, or calling us 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786.

This listener on Discord writes, cynicism is a terrible master, but can be a great and useful servant. To me, it is merely an appreciation of the extent to which humans can follow their self-interests. Until I became a little cynical, humans' treatment of me and each other was completely inexplicable to me.

So Dr. Zaki, is there a level of cynicism that is healthy or valuable? I love this comment, and it's a great chance to do some clarification and maybe some work around definitions. Yeah. Right. So cynicism is the broad idea that humanity as a whole is selfish, greedy, and dishonest. It's a generalization, a stereotype about our entire species. What your listener is talking about, I would argue, is not being, quote unquote, a little cynical, but rather being skeptical about

So these two terms are often confused, but skepticism is really different. If cynics think like lawyers in the prosecution against humanity, just focusing single-mindedly on everything terrible about us, skeptics are more like scientists. They're not naive at all.

But rather, they take data from each new situation and person and decide, well, who can I trust and who can't I trust? So I think, if I may, that your listener is actually describing being skeptical, which is, in my opinion, and according to the research, a much healthier and more agile way of moving through the social world. Until I read your book, I didn't realize the extent to which cynicism isn't just about thinking that things aren't going to work out or thinking that this is not going to

this is not going to go well, essentially, in terms of a particular election, or that it actually is much more about your faith in people's ability to make it go well. That's right. And, you know, your hope for the future, your pessimism about the future depends a lot on who you think we are now, because the future depends on what we can all do together. We'll have more with Jamil Zaki and his book, Hope for Cynics, and with you listeners after the break. I'm Nina Kim. Ooh.

Support for Forum comes from Broadway SF and Some Like It Hot, a new musical direct from Broadway from Tony Award-winning director Casey Nicholaw.

Set in Chicago during Prohibition, Some Like It Hot tells the story of two musicians forced to flee the Windy City after witnessing a mob hit.

Featuring Tony-winning choreography and an electrifying score, Some Like It Hot plays the Orpheum Theatre for three weeks only, January 7th through 26th. Tickets on sale now at broadwaysf.com. Support for Forum comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment.

From wielding the power of the law to protect people's health, preserving magnificent places and wildlife, and advancing clean energy to combat climate change, Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer. Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking with Jamil Zaki this hour, professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. His website is jamilzaki.com. He's the author of Hope for Cynics, The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. He's with us now, and you, our listeners, are invited to join your questions, comments, experiences with cynicism. What tends to bring out your cynicism? What helps you remain cynical?

hopeful or become less cynical. The email address is forum at kqed.org. You can find us on X, Facebook, Instagram at KQED Forum. You can join our Discord community. You can call us 866-733-6786. And Rick writes, as a person with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and multiple disabilities, a lot of people feel that there is no human goodness in me. I'm at the point of mental burnout, which involves feelings of cynicism. Oh, Rick.

Thanks for sharing that. Sorry you're feeling that way. What does tend to cause or amplify cynicism? Well, first I want to just express solidarity and compassion for Rick as well. That's a tough situation. And there are lots of situations that can raise our cynicism, some personal that we've talked about, like betrayal in our past, insecure attachment, but some are more global as well. So, for instance, research is really clear that people

places and times that are more economically unequal tend to be more cynical and less trusting. The U.S. has been through a major trust deficit over the last 50 years, declining faith in one another, and that coincides with a huge rise in economic inequality. And likewise, more unequal countries, states, and counties are less trusting because unequal environments put us in a

mindset of zero-sum competition with one another, where if you get something, maybe I won't get it. So that's one big picture factor. And then another is

is the media, not you, Mina, and not the great people at KQED. That's kind of you to say. But I think that the data are clear. So the incidence of anger in headlines has increased by over 100% in the last 20 years, the incidence of fear more than 150%. And I think we often focus a lot on

harmful and threatening information instead of positive information. That's a natural bias in our mind, an ancient bias. But now that's been combined with a hyper-modern media ecosystem that feeds us whatever keeps us clicking and watching and scrolling, which oftentimes doubles down on that negativity bias.

Well, Vicky on Discord writes, I wonder if this world of fakes and advertising and scams, cynics are skeptics going down an extreme path. What is the inverse of cynicism? Positivity? That doesn't seem super useful all the time either. What's the middle ground? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think of the middle ground as what I call hopeful skepticism, right? And that's not blanket positivity, right? I think that a naive, gullible person trusts people unthinkingly.

a cynic mistrusts people unthinkingly. The middle ground to me is not to have one blanket approach to everybody, but again, to apply a more scientific lens. The hopeful part of hopeful skepticism is also understanding that our default assumptions tend to be too negative. So people in general tend

are more trustworthy, more generous, more open-minded and friendlier than we realize. That's not to discount the many horrible things that happen every day, but the average person does underestimate the average person. Yes. So you described how important skepticism is. You're describing how important adding that

element of hopefulness or being hopeful is, you actually found that it can be physically harmful to be cynical. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of data finding that, of course, maybe unsurprisingly, cynicism tracks mental health issues, depression and loneliness, but it also tracks things like cellular aging, heart disease, and

and even early mortality. Why would that be? Well, there's evidence that one of the healthiest things for us is connection with other people. When we can be vulnerable and open with others, that helps to de-stress us, helps keep us physically healthy. So I often think that if social connection is a psychological form of nourishment, it's like cynicism stops you from being able to digest those calories and to actually have that sustenance of social life inside you.

Let me go to caller Alice in Berkeley. Hi, Alice, you're on. Yeah, I wanted to know how do we help our friends who suffer from depression to be more positive instead of cynical? Like, I have depression and some point along my life path, I just decided I had to be more positive. But my son, who's 9 years old,

He's just such a cynic and doesn't really want to get out of the bed. Alice, thanks for the comment. I guess maybe also we should talk about the difference between depression and cynicism, but then also your thoughts for Alice. Yeah, thanks, Alice, for the call. And I really, again, resonate with you at

have experience with mood disorders myself. I think that one thing to remember is that there actually are a lot of things, Mina, to your point, in common between depression and cynicism. I often think about cynicism as a social form of depression because it feels really terrible and also often tends to be built on assumptions that we make.

The depressed person makes assumptions maybe about themselves. I'm worthless. Nobody likes me. The cynical person maybe makes assumptions about other people. Other people are selfish. They're only interested in their personal gain. In both cases, we can use tools from cognitive behavioral therapy.

So CBT is this great practice where you write down what your assumptions are and try to think more like a scientist. So reality testing is a tool in which you ask yourself, what evidence do I have for these claims? If I think nobody likes me, has anybody ever said something nice to me? Has anybody ever been kind? Well, maybe that's counter evidence to the claim. So sort of rethinking, fact-checking our assumptions can be a tool for both

combating cynicism and depression. And then another is trying to treat our lives more like an experiment. So in depression, that's what's known as behavioral activation, where you actually just go and do something instead of waiting to feel like doing it. And for cynicism, that can be socially experimenting, giving people a chance to show us who they are. Mm-hmm.

You share an example or a way of illustrating how cynicism takes root or functions with the trust game. Do you want to talk about that game? Yeah, absolutely. The trust game is a game played by two people who are usually anonymous strangers on the Internet. One of them starts with $10, and they can send as much of that money over to the second person as they want.

the amount that they send is then tripled, and the second person can send back however much they want.

So just to break out the logic, if the first person trusts completely and sends $10, the second person has $30. If they split it, both people profit. Everybody wins. But the second player could also cheat the first player and keep all the money for themselves. So it turns out that in general, people send about half of the money over and they tend to make a little bit of money from that. Cynics send much less money.

The thing is that we also see in the data that the amount you send doesn't just show you whether the other person is trustworthy. It changes them. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So when people are trusted...

Player two, that person feels great and they want to reciprocate so they pay more back. When they're mistrusted, they feel angry and they send less back. So cynics... Or they take the whole thing. Or they take the whole thing, exactly. So cynics, by treating other people suspiciously, actually bring out their worst, sort of a toxic, self-fulfilling prophecy. And by trusting more, we can bring out other people's best instead. So you're sort of treating the world a bit more...

Like a scientist, Patrick writes that they do this. As a scientist, I approach new situations as experiments. I gather facts, I look for missing information, and I try to piece together a hypothesis of the situation. Is this person kind or falsely nice for their self-benefit? This makes me want to engage more and dive deeper, but I do often feel like a cynic.

Well, I mean, it sounds like you're using the exact right strategies and, you know, treating your life like an experiment. This reminds me of the nun and author Pima Chodron has beautiful sort of writing around how we can all experience

treat our lives like experiments. What does that mean? It means interrupting the normal flow of thoughts. We all have these instincts that we run with in a very credulous way. I have got bad vibes here. You know, this is giving me a bad feeling, so I'm just going to run with that. Well, oftentimes our instincts are wrong and it's better for us to examine them a little bit more closely. Yeah. I'm wondering if you think we are in

a much more cynical time than in the past, because it's a hard thing to measure, right? But you have looked at tools that have tried to measure features of this. Yeah. One is how much... So it turns out that for the last 70 or more years, social scientists in the US have asked big groups of Americans, do you think most people can be trusted? And because of the strong correlation between trust and cynicism, you can make some assumptions about that. Exactly. We can use that as a proxy. And it turns out that

You know, in 1972, about half of Americans agreed with that statement. And by 2018, that had fallen to about a third of Americans, which is a drop that's as big as the stock market took in the financial collapse of 2008. So we're living in a real trust deficit now.

But one thing that I want to be clear on is that it doesn't have to be a one-way street to greater cynicism. When I started this book, one of my friends challenged me and said, is there any place in the world where trust has gone up instead of down? And it turns out, yeah, right here.

The early 20th century and late 19th century in the U.S., the Gilded Age, was an incredibly mistrustful and cynical time. And in the first half of the 20th century, through a lot of social movements, the so-called progressive era, we became a much more integrated and trusting nation. That's not to say things were perfect, but we have gained trust in the past, and I think that means we could do it again. So is fighting cynicism...

A political act, in your view? Because you have some pretty strong words. You say cynicism is not a radical worldview. It's a tool of the status quo. This is useful to elites and propagandists who sow distrust to better control people. Corrupt politicians gain cover by convincing voters that everyone is corrupt. Media companies trade in judgment and outrage. Our cynicism is their product, and business is booming.

Yes, I think that cynicism is a tool of the status quo. And you see this in, well, in a reciprocal sort of way. So first, cynical people who don't trust their fellow citizens are more open to so-called strongman leaders who will say, I'll keep you safe from each other and all you have to give up is a little bit of your freedom.

And second, I think you can see that authoritarians around the world use cynicism. There's a lot of evidence. And one of my favorite writers on this is Hannah Arendt, who in her book on totalitarianism says, and I'm paraphrasing here, the goal of a totalitarian leader is not to get you to believe them, but to get you to believe nothing. Because a population that doesn't believe in anything is easier to control.

What role do you think social media has played in the high of mistrust that you have documented and found in studies? A powerful and harmful role, I would say. Unequivocally. Unequivocally. There is a lot of evidence here that, in particular, on social media platforms, the type of content that goes viral is often antagonistic,

and involves intergroup conflict, right? So when you tweet or X, whatever you call it now, post on that site in outrage, often towards people who are different from you, especially ideologically, you end up receiving more retweets and likes from people on your own side. And there's great research

out of Northwestern that finds that when you do that, when people reward you, you're more likely to ramp up your outrage even when you don't feel it.

So there's evidence that really on social media, we are encouraged to perform our most extreme selves. And then because of that, when we're on social media as consumers, the rest of us just doom scrolling, we end up with a extremely warped view of what people are like and what they want.

We think people are much more extreme, much more violent, and much more hateful than they really are because we're drawing off of the tales of the distribution, highly extreme examples that social media is feeding us instead of a representative view of who we really are. And so I guess therein lies the hope, right? If it's not representative, then it means we are kinder, less outraged than it appears. This is one of the surprising things about this journey for me over the last...

few years, you know, you'd think that spending months and months and years marinating in the science of suspicion and mistrust and hopelessness would make me feel bad. It's actually been one of the best things for my own mental health because I've realized that cynicism is not just harmful. I've realized how mistaken it often is and how when you actually look at the data, people are so much better on a variety of dimensions than we give them credit for.

We'll give some advice to listener Carrie here, who says, one of the things that makes me feel cynical is dating. To say nothing about the apps, the repeated letdowns have left me feeling little to no hope that I'll meet the right person. How should I approach dating as a hopeful skeptic? I mean, this is, Carrie, I first of all resonate with this. And a lot of people have told me about this. I think that

Dating apps have been pretty potentially detrimental to our ability to trust. They're built, you know, I've heard from interviews with some founders of dating apps that they're built purposefully like casinos to make people kind of treat people.

love as a game, really. And that's maybe not the way that we want to. But I would say, you know, getting old fashioned, meeting people through friends and slowing down the process can be helpful. And then I think, again, focusing on the difference between disappointment and pre-disappointment. Yes, it's really easy after you've been let down to figure that everybody in a particular group will let you down all the time. But we know that that's not true.

So focusing on, hey, this is one case where it didn't go the way I wanted to, on to the next. I know that that's easier said than done, but that's what I would offer to carry. That is the one thing is what you're describing seems intuitive, but so hard to put in place. I think a lot of things that are worthwhile are hard, you know, and...

exercising regularly is hard. Staying hopeful is hard, but the fact that it's hard doesn't mean that it's not worth the effort. Let me go to Judith in Palo Alto. Hi, Judith, you're on. Yes, I was brought up in the

And that was a very positive time. I just wanted to say that I think we need to be disappointed a little more as a child. I had the perfect childhood. Everything was a big pool party.

You know, Eisenhower, that period of time. And I had to learn after some betrayals to be, what did you call it, hopeful? Skeptic? Skeptic.

I will not give up hope, but I'm a little more practical now and a little more discerning before just getting into a relationship and trusting that that person will understand me. There are many doors we can go in, and I've learned to be a little more wary, not scared, not nervous, just discerning.

And I think it's done me well. I'm in my 80s, so I hope I've learned something. And I have not.

Wonderful friends, support system. But those are people, yes, like-minded. But I try to be open and talk with others. I actually read the news on the other side, the opinion. Just keep open. Yeah. Well, Judith, I'm glad to hear that. But I am struck by this earlier point about almost...

Like it's possible to be too positive or over positive. Absolutely. And, you know, she talks about her childhood. And I think one thing that we're maybe doing too much is protecting our kids from disappointment early and making it more likely that they get disappointed later. So allowing kids to make their own mistakes, learn their own lessons can be part of building new skeptics. New skeptics, new hopeful skeptics.

We'll have more on Hope for Cynics with Dr. Jamil Zaki of Stanford right after the break, and we'll have more with you listeners. Stay with us. I'm Mina Kim. Don't stop believing. Streetlight, don't stop. Don't stop believing.

Support for Forum comes from Broadway SF and Some Like It Hot, a new musical direct from Broadway from Tony Award-winning director Casey Nicholaw. Set in Chicago during Prohibition, Some Like It Hot tells the story of two musicians forced to flee the Windy City after witnessing a mob hit. Featuring Tony-winning choreography and an electrifying score, Some Like It Hot plays the Orpheum Theatre for three weeks only, January 7th through 26th.

Tickets on sale now at broadwaysf.com. Support for Forum comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment. From wielding the power of the law to protect people's health, preserving magnificent places and wildlife, and advancing clean energy to combat climate change, Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer.

Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org. Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking about cynicism this hour, how it can undermine our relationships and lead to an unhealthy, divisive society. We're also talking about how to quiet your inner cynic and become a hopeful skeptic with Jamil Zaki, professor of psychology at Stanford and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. The book is Hope for Cynics.

And you, our listeners, are sharing your questions and comments about cynicism, what tends to bring it out in you, what tends to help you be less cynical. The email address, forum at kqed.org. The phone number, 866-733-6786. Our social channels are at kqedforum, and you can join our Discord community as well.

Paul writes, there's a quote I think encapsulates cynicism well. The power of accurate observation is often referred to as cynicism by those who have not got it. It's a classic from George Bernard Shaw that I quote in the book. Yeah, and it's a great example of the cynical genius illusion. This is what we think. The data say otherwise. Yeah. Janet writes,

I'm not sure I have a choice in my persistent optimism. I'm also persistently skeptical, but society misjudges me as naive rather than hopeful. The main problem with being optimistic rather than cynical is that I am more subject to disappointment. It makes sense that cynicism is more a form of protection. Thank you for helping me understand that optimism rather than cynicism can be helpful.

So take a moment, if you would, Jamil, to talk about the definition of optimism, especially optimism versus hope. Yeah, this is a great opportunity. And again, you know, a lot of what I'm trying to do with this book is help us clarify our language because I think it matters for the way that we live and the choices we make. Optimism is the belief that the future will turn out well and it can make us happier. But as your listener is saying, it can also make us disappointed.

and actually lead to cynicism, right? If I think everything's going to go well, first of all, I don't have to do anything so I can be complacent. And second, if they don't turn out well, well, my expectations are broken. Hope is the idea that the future could turn out well. And that's really an important distinction because in the uncertainty of the future, as a hopeful person sees it, there's room for our actions to matter. So

So whereas optimism might say, well, things are going to go great, so just sit on your couch, hope tells us things could be good, but you have to go out and do something to make that happen. So it's a much more active, fierce, and sturdy emotion.

This listener writes, I guess I'm a cynic. I work in the social and environmental fields, and I don't believe that many of these intractable concerns, particularly climate change, are problems that we can successfully contend with as a species. However, I will still work every day to fight them, to better ourselves, to better our world. I do this out of love for people and for the planet and for all the other species that we share this planet with, but I have no hope that we will be successful. It's

It's funny, you know, when this book was pitched to me, Jamil, I said, oh, maybe it'll teach me not to be a cynical journalist, right? Right. Because I do fall. But yet at the same time, I very much believe in the spaces that we can create to talk about the issues that we're dealing with because I have some faith in humanity, I think. It must be an expression there. But that's exactly what your book did try to address. So I'm wondering if...

You can talk about some other steps we can take to unlearn or quiet our inner cynic or unlearn cynicism besides maybe fact-checking. Yeah, I mean, I think that fact-checking is a step, but it's a really critical and important one. I do want to...

Yeah.

So I looked into the research and it turns out that most Americans believe that about 40 percent of their fellow citizens want aggressive policies to protect the climate. The actual number, depending on the policy, is between 65 and 80 percent of Americans who want that policy.

So if you want that type of policy, you're part of a supermajority that you don't realize is there. And that type of data, that type of knowledge, I think, can inspire action. Beyond fact-checking, though, one thing that I think we can do is what I call taking leaps of faith on people. That doesn't mean, you know, forwarding our bank information to a prince who's going to wire us $14 million. But it means small, calculated acts of trust.

Like in the trust game, but not economically, opening up to a new acquaintance or, you know, giving someone at work some new responsibilities. When we engage in those little social risks, yes, we're taking on some risk ourselves. We're also giving a gift to other people and making it more likely that they'll step up and meet our expectations. Let me go to caller David in San Francisco. Hey, David, you're on.

Hey, Mina. Thank you for your call. I'm really enjoying this. I'd like to just say something quickly about resilience. Resilience, I am sort of naturally a cynical, negative person, and that made me unhappy for a very long time. Resilience was how I changed that. Resilience is kind of...

another version of being a hopeful skeptic. It is the acknowledgement that there is hope, but all things are possible. Some things will go wrong, some things will go right, and the main thing is to be persistent and keep on moving forward. The connection between resilience and hopeful skepticism. Thanks, David.

Yeah, David, this is beautifully put, and it lines up with a lot of the science here as well. Again, we often stereotype hope as for the privileged. The opposite is true. In fact, hope is seen by psychologists as one of the most powerful coping mechanisms during adversity. So the researcher Dante Dixon in Michigan, he studies psychosis.

students from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds. And he finds that their ability to hope, to envision a future that they want and a path towards that future, knowing, as you said, David, that some things will go wrong and some will go right, that that hope made it more likely that students would persevere, that they would be resilient in the face of setbacks and ultimately do better in school. That's just one of many examples like it.

Well, Lemel writes, something I've been thinking about recently is the connection between negative mental states and capitalism. Is there research showing that cynics are more or less profitable than hopeful people? Are we purposely encouraging negative mental states for the sake of our consumer economy? This is such a great question. And here, gosh, I'll try to answer it briefly. I have so many thoughts. Cynicism is...

is often tied with a hyper-capitalistic mindset, which is that we are sole free agents who are just trying to maximize our own profit. And a lot of leaders in corporations and large organizations treat their people as though they are so-called homo economicus, just looking out for themselves.

It turns out, though, that cynics actually do less well even in capitalistic spaces. So they earn less money over the course of their careers and rise to leadership positions in their organizations less than non-cynics because it turns out we have, in essence, a broken view of what success means, including in a financial sense. We think that it means stepping over or on your colleagues to get ahead and

It actually requires building coalitions, collaborating and working together. Well, Dhruv writes, I'm curious what role you see cynicism playing in how individuals protect themselves. As a medical student, I've seen many physicians turn into cynics as a defense mechanism for extremely traumatic practice situations that they see every day. I'm wondering what proactive measures I can take or others can take or entering such fields as

to protect themselves, in your opinion. It sounds a little bit like the myth of being safe or safety if you're a cynic, you're playing out. And Dhruv is wondering about any advice you have as someone entering the field. Yeah, thanks, Dhruv. And there's some work by the psychologist Aysan Haque that examines defensive dehumanization techniques.

This is the idea that medical students and physicians, their emotional connection to their patients hurts them when their patient doesn't do well or when their patient passes away, for instance. So people think that the only way to protect myself is to never make that connection in the first place, which, of course, is counter to the noble mission of many physicians.

An alternative is to cultivate resilience not by disconnecting from other people, but by connecting better with ourselves. My friend and San Francisco resident Eve Ekman works with medical students and physicians on self-compassion.

And that training, it turns out, that type of training can help medical professionals be more resilient while still maintaining connections to their patients. Let me go to Sarah in San Jose. Hi, Sarah. You're on.

Good morning. Yeah, I'm a union organizer for the last 20 years with hotel workers. And so this conversation is something I think about every day of just how to bring people together to get over cynicism. And for me personally, I'm

It's always rooted in a sense of optimism, but also a sense of and just a belief in the goodness of every single person that people can come together as a community, as a union, and take collective action to support each other, to have empathy for their coworkers, no matter what country they come from, what language they speak.

to be able to have faith in each other, to have hope that what we're doing is building a better future, not for one person, but for the whole. So this conversation really resonates with having that faith and that hope every day of every single person we include in our actions and encouraged to participate.

I'm glad you've been able to maintain that, Sarah. Yeah, you know, I love this, Sarah. And, you know, I do want to draw again the connection between hope and collective action, right? So Martin Luther King gave a speech to the American Psychological Association where he said,

And he did it much more eloquently and much more kindly than I would. But he said, I'm paraphrasing, you all think way too much about being happy and well-adjusted. But we should not feel happy or well-adjusted in a world that is full of bigotry and violence.

We should never be adjusted to those things. He said instead we should be creatively maladjusted. We should have righteous fury for systems that harm people, but also creative faith in the people around us to challenge those systems. And it sounds like Sarah, with her union organizing, is doing that, finding faith in each other in the union, oftentimes to take collective actions that they need to support and advocate for their communities.

Let me go to Greg in Palo Alto. We've got lots of calls and comments. Greg, go ahead.

Hi, enjoying this. I tuned in late, but I have a quote I'd like to offer. I'm guessing your guest probably knows it. I think it's by Voltaire, and he distinguished the difference between an optimist and a pessimist in that an optimist believes we are living currently in the worst of all possible worlds, so therefore it can only get better. A pessimist believes we are living in the best of possible worlds, so it's bound to get worse.

Do you know that quote? Thanks, Greg. I have heard it before, yes. And it's interesting, right? It sort of inverts our usual understanding of these terms in a really creative way. Well, let me remind listeners, you are listening to Forum. I'm Nina Kim. We're talking about the book Hope for Cynics, The Surprising Science of Human Goodness by Jamil Zaki of Stanford, a psychology professor there and also director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab.

Let me go to Sage in San Jose. Hi, Sage. Thanks for waiting. You're on. Hello. Thank you. I would propose that those listening who are interested seek psychotherapy because most of us are emotionally immature and we are opposing as adults. And that leaves us swinging emotionally between kind of this attached hope and optimism and then the crush, right?

when what our outcome doesn't happen. And in the middle of that is emotional maturity, which is a little bit of what your speaker is talking to, holding gently that I can improve things. I can help. Things can change. I'm not a child relying on somebody else to do it. And I can hold on to the outcome loosely.

Thanks. What do you think about Sage's point there? I mean, therapy has helped me enormously. And I think that I often refer to it as going to the gym for your emotional life, right? I mean, I think it's almost helpful to any person. But yeah, I think likewise, Sage is also describing a shift in mindset, right? One that we can pursue in therapy or in the rest of our lives.

And she's talking about this sort of gentle ability to hold different realities together at once. And I think that's critical, right? To be resilient and also to be open to what the world brings us. And again, if you do that,

It's really true that pleasant surprises will be everywhere. Well, Pat writes, I am a cynic and I am one of the kindest, thoughtful, generous, and involved people I know. Despite this, I know that the world is in deep peril and is becoming more full of evil than ever before. Non-cynics refuse to confront that people create the world we live in and are intent on worsening the situation for money and power. I remain with a little hope until I see some hope from leaders that actually have power to lead us out of this mess. Am I right that...

Some of the people who have been measuring our level of trust and hope are actually starting to see among young Americans a rebound from what you describe as a real peak of mistrust and so on, but a rebound back to the more hopeful side. I thought I saw a piece that you had published recently.

in Vox about this? So, uh, close. So there, there, there was, uh, a very well documented and famous decline in empathy among young people. And that has rebounded, um, which is not surprising to me as a college teacher. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, please continue. Um, I see my students as incredibly compassionate in part because they are, uh,

open to the world in a way that I never was. When I was 17, 18, 90% of what I cared about was in Framingham, Massachusetts. I didn't know what was happening on the other side of the world as much as these people do now. And so being open to the world, young people today, in my opinion, have

enormous amounts of compassion, but less trust. And in fact, Generation Z, for instance, is the least trusting that we have on record, whereas 33% of Americans believe most people can be trusted. As of a few years ago, only 18%

of late adolescence and early adults felt the same way. Thanks for clarifying. Yeah, I always do a quick check before any interview to see if I'm missing any of the latest, and I happen to see that piece. Is there a connection, though, between increased empathy and trust, and thus, hopefully, or no? It sounds like you're saying they can exist in...

you know, in parallel and opposition to each other? I think it depends on the level at which we're thinking. So one point that I want to make is that I think it's very easy to be cynical and hard to feel empathy on our screens. You know, when we think about the world at large, what are people like? What is the world, as your caller said earlier, filling with evil, right? I mean, these are grandiose claims that

that we make based on flattened representations that we see in the media or just in our minds, right? Our assumptions and stereotypes. When empathy and trust come much more naturally is in the real world. So for instance, only a third of Americans believe most people can be trusted. But if you ask them, well, how about the people you see? Not just your friends and family, but your neighbors, the shopkeeper that you see on a regular basis. It's more like two-thirds, right?

of Americans who say that those people can be trusted, right? There's a neighborhood-shaped hole cut out in cynicism. And I think that in that context, in real interpersonal connections, seeing each other more clearly, empathizing, also naturally leads us to see the good in others and to feel less cynical as well. So your hope for what your book will generate by really clarifying what cynicism is and can do is what?

I want to defrock cynicism. I want to take away its cultural glamour and make us realize what it really is and what it's doing to us. And then I'd like to re-inject hope with more cultural glamour. It's not naive. It's not privileged. It's fierce. It's not putting on a pair of rose-colored glasses. It's taking off the mud-colored glasses most of us are wearing already. ♪

Jamil Zaki, thanks so much for being with us. This has been an absolute joy. Thank you, Mina. The book is Hope for Cynics, and Jamil Zaki is professor of psychology at Stanford, and you can find more about him at jamilzaki.com. Forum is produced by Caroline Smith, Mark D'Edo, Francesca Fenzi, our digital community producer. Ashley Yang was our engagement producer this week. Susie Britton is our lead producer. Our engineers this week were Danny Bringer, Brendan Willard, and Christopher Beal. Our interns are Lauren Smith and Brian Vo. Katie Springer

is the operations manager of KQED Podcasts. Our vice president of news is Ethan Tobin-Lindsey and our chief content officer is Holly Kernan. I'm Nina Kim. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend. Don't look back in anger.

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