Why cynicism is bad for you
Summary
In this episode of The Gray Area, host Sean Illing speaks with Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki, author of Hope for Cynics. The conversation explores the psychological definition of modern cynicism—a belief that people are fundamentally selfish, greedy, and dishonest in their motives. Zaki distinguishes this from ancient philosophical cynicism and from healthy skepticism, which is an evidence-based openness to updating beliefs.
Zaki and Illing discuss the origins of cynicism, noting it can stem from personal experiences like insecure childhood attachment, but is also heavily influenced by environmental and cultural factors, such as economic inequality and competitive social structures. They examine the self-fulfilling prophecy of cynicism: cynical assumptions lead to behaviors (like micromanaging or mistrust) that push others away or bring out their worst, thereby confirming the cynic’s negative worldview.
The episode delves into the significant costs of cynicism. Research shows cynical individuals have worse physical health, including higher rates of heart disease and earlier mortality, largely due to impaired social connection and chronic stress. Cynicism also corrodes civic and political life, as cynics are less likely to vote, protest, or engage in community action, making cynicism a tool that reinforces the status quo rather than a force for change.
Zaki offers practical advice for overcoming cynical instincts. He recommends adopting a skeptical mindset to fact-check one’s own cynical conclusions, conducting small “behavioral experiments” (like talking to strangers to test assumptions), and cultivating a “reciprocity mindset” that recognizes how trusting others can actually make them more trustworthy. He emphasizes hope—a belief that the future could be better, which involves uncertainty and active effort—over fragile optimism.
The conversation concludes with Zaki’s vision for large-scale “anti-cynicism interventions,” similar to cognitive behavioral therapy principles applied broadly, which would involve giving people more accurate data about human kindness and creating opportunities for positive social risks.
Recommendations
Books
- Hope for Cynics — Jamil Zaki’s book, subtitled ‘The Surprising Science of Human Goodness,’ which explores the psychology of cynicism, its costs, and the science behind cultivating hope and trust.
Concepts
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — Recommended as a powerful tool for combating cynicism. It involves treating life like an experiment, testing negative assumptions, and collecting evidence to update biased beliefs.
- The Trust Game — An economic game used in psychology research to measure trust, where one person sends money to a stranger and sees how much is returned. It’s cited as evidence that people systematically underestimate others’ trustworthiness.
- Reciprocity Mindset / Earned Trust — The understanding that when you trust someone, you don’t just learn about them—you change them, often making them more trustworthy. This mindset can encourage more trusting behavior.
People
- George Bernard Shaw — Quoted for the line: ‘The characteristic of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven’t got it,’ which represents the stereotype that cynicism equals realism.
- George Carlin — Referenced for his famous line, ‘Scratch any cynic and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.’ Zaki suggests the line is clever but psychologically inaccurate, and that ‘disappointed optimist’ might be more fitting.
- Vanessa Bonds — A psychologist at Cornell whose work on ‘influence neglect’ is cited—the idea that we underestimate how much we affect and shape the behavior of the people around us.
Practices
- Encounter Counting — A personal behavioral experiment Zaki conducted where he committed to talking to every person where a conversation seemed possible during a trip, predicted the outcomes, and then recorded the actual results to challenge his cynical expectations.
- Behavioral Experiments (from CBT) — A therapeutic technique where you design a small test for a cynical belief (e.g., asking 10 friends to the movies if you think everyone hates you) to gather concrete evidence and update your assumptions.
Topic Timeline
- 00:03:05 — Personal origins of cynicism and the host’s motivation — Sean Illing introduces the episode’s personal significance, sharing his own lifelong battle with cynicism. Guest Jamil Zaki joins and explains his motivation for researching the topic, linking it to his own childhood experiences of insecurity and his parents’ acrimonious divorce. They establish a shared understanding of cynicism as a personal struggle, not just an abstract concept.
- 00:06:20 — Defining modern cynicism versus ancient philosophy — Zaki provides a precise psychological definition of cynicism as a ‘general theory about humanity’—the belief that people are fundamentally selfish, greedy, and dishonest in their motives. He distinguishes this from the ancient philosophical school of Cynicism. He explains that cynicism is unfalsifiable because it focuses on impenetrable motives, allowing cynics to explain away kindness and confirm their bias when people act selfishly.
- 00:08:36 — Cynicism vs. realism and the myth of cynic intelligence — Illing asks how to distinguish a cynic from a realist. Zaki debunks the common stereotype that cynics are smarter or more socially astute. He cites research showing cynics actually perform worse on cognitive tests and are worse at detecting liars than non-cynics. The glamorization of cynicism as hard-earned wisdom is a cultural myth that conflates it with realism.
- 00:12:15 — The crucial difference between cynicism and skepticism — The discussion clarifies the key difference between cynicism and skepticism. Cynicism is a rigid theory that biases perception, while skepticism is a hunger for evidence and a willingness to update prior beliefs like a Bayesian. Zaki argues skepticism can be an antidote to cynicism, as it involves open-minded inquiry rather than a preconceived negative conclusion about human nature.
- 00:13:54 — What causes cynicism: nature, nurture, or choice? — Exploring the roots of cynicism, Zaki notes it has a small heritable component but is relatively stable without intervention. He suggests cynicism is often ‘chosen’ by our experiences—both personal disappointments and structural environments like competitive or unequal societies. Situational cynicism can change quickly based on context, indicating a level of malleability.
- 00:18:45 — The self-fulfilling prophecy and negative feedback loop — Zaki explains how cynical beliefs create a toxic, self-reinforcing cycle. If you believe people are untrustworthy, you treat them with suspicion (e.g., micromanaging). This behavior often offends others or makes them more likely to betray your trust, which then confirms the original cynical assumption. This ‘influence neglect’ means we underestimate our power to shape others’ behavior through our expectations.
- 00:23:51 — How American culture engineers rising cynicism — Illing asks if American culture actively breeds cynicism. Zaki confirms, citing a dramatic drop in social trust since 1972. He links higher cynicism to economic inequality, competitive environments, and media that promotes two-dimensional, mistrustful views of humanity. He compares the U.S. to more trusting Nordic nations and highly unequal, mistrustful societies like Brazil.
- 00:31:31 — Cynicism as a disease: health impacts and social malnutrition — Zaki discusses whether cynicism is akin to a psychological disease, given its severe consequences. Cynics suffer more heart disease, die earlier, and experience chronic stress. The mechanism is a lack of nourishing social connection; cynics are unwilling to be vulnerable, leaving them ‘psychologically malnourished.’ They learn too well from past betrayals and not enough from missed opportunities for connection.
- 00:36:12 — Research on underestimating others’ kindness and empathy — Zaki details his Stanford research showing students systematically underestimate the empathy and friendliness of their peers. Follow-up experiments where strangers conversed revealed people consistently found others to be kinder than expected. Broader studies, like a wallet-return experiment in Toronto, show people vastly underestimate others’ honesty and trustworthiness, suggesting a widespread cynical bias.
- 00:40:03 — Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as an anti-cynicism tool — The conversation turns to solutions, highlighting Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) as a proven method for challenging cynical thoughts. CBT uses ‘behavioral experiments’ to test negative assumptions (e.g., ‘everyone hates me’) against evidence. Zaki shares his personal ‘encounter counting’ experiment, where he forced himself to talk to strangers and document the positive outcomes, which helped rebalance his social expectations.
- 00:46:17 — Cynicism as a tool of the status quo, not radical change — Zaki challenges the idea that cynicism is morally superior or politically radical. While cynics are aware of social problems, they often see them as reflections of an unchangeable human nature. Consequently, cynics are less likely to vote, protest, or engage in civic life. Hope—the belief things could improve—is what drives activism, whereas cynicism fosters a ‘dark complacency’ useful to those benefiting from the status quo.
- 00:48:31 — Hope vs. optimism: why hope is more robust and practical — Zaki explains why his book focuses on ‘hope’ rather than ‘optimism.’ Optimism is the expectation that the future will be good, which can be complacent and fragile. Hope is the belief the future could be better, embracing uncertainty. This uncertainty makes hope hardier and creates room for personal agency and action, making it a more powerful driver for people facing adversity or engaged in social change.
- 00:50:47 — Practical steps to overcome cynical instincts — Zaki offers actionable advice: 1) Adopt skepticism to fact-check cynical conclusions. 2) Cultivate a ‘reciprocity mindset,’ understanding that trusting others can make them more trustworthy (‘earned trust’). 3) Conduct small behavioral experiments to test assumptions. 4) Take more calculated social risks, focusing on potential gains in relationships rather than just avoiding potential hurt. He acknowledges the high opportunity cost of living in a cynical, untrusting state.
- 00:53:27 — The future of anti-cynicism interventions and research — Zaki discusses the ‘gray area’ of his research: the lack of large-scale clinical trials for anti-cynicism interventions. He describes a successful mini-intervention at Stanford where showing students real data about their peers’ kindness reduced cynicism and increased social connection. He envisions broader applications of CBT-like principles—giving people better information and chances to act on it—as a form of ‘CBT for the world.‘
Episode Info
- Podcast: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
- Author: Vox
- Category: Society & Culture Philosophy News Politics News Commentary
- Published: 2024-09-09T09:00:00Z
- Duration: 00:58:23
References
- URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d/episode/3e4ba627-23f9-47d6-b988-6c5a0918aa2e/
- Episode UUID: 3e4ba627-23f9-47d6-b988-6c5a0918aa2e
Podcast Info
- Name: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
- Type: episodic
- Site: https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast
- UUID: 1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d
Transcript
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[00:00:57] You can succeed or can’t happen.
[00:01:00] If no one immediately springs to mind,
[00:01:03] I regret to inform you that it’s possible that you’re this person in someone else’s life.
[00:01:12] And if that’s the case, what I want to say to you is, stop it.
[00:01:22] Stop being so damned cynical.
[00:01:24] It’s annoying.
[00:01:25] And it doesn’t help you.
[00:01:27] Or anyone else.
[00:01:29] That’s what I want to say.
[00:01:32] But it’s not so easy.
[00:01:35] Cynicism is everywhere.
[00:01:37] In fact, you can make the case that cynicism is becoming a default setting for people in our society.
[00:01:44] But why?
[00:01:46] Why are so many of us cynical?
[00:01:48] And does it make any sense to be this way?
[00:01:54] I’m Sean Illing, and this is The Gray Area.
[00:01:57] Today’s guest is Jamil Zaki.
[00:02:16] He’s a psychologist at Stanford and the author of Hope for Cynics.
[00:02:22] When I read his book, I was struck by how Zaki explores the consequences of cynicism.
[00:02:27] Both for cynical individuals and cynical societies.
[00:02:32] And he explains why cynicism is so destructive to both.
[00:02:37] But he also punctures the conventional wisdom that says cynicism is a reasonable response to the world.
[00:02:45] It turns out that just isn’t true.
[00:02:48] Though it’s very easy to believe it is.
[00:02:52] As someone who battles cynicism in my own life,
[00:02:55] this was a book I needed to read.
[00:02:57] And I invited Zaki on the show to talk about it.
[00:03:05] Jamil Zaki, welcome to the show.
[00:03:07] I’m thrilled to be here.
[00:03:09] I should say, this one’s pretty personal for me.
[00:03:11] A lot of these episodes are personal for me, as anyone listening knows.
[00:03:16] I’ve battled cynicism most of my adult life.
[00:03:20] I still do.
[00:03:21] And if it’s possible for me to be less cynical,
[00:03:26] I want that.
[00:03:27] And I know plenty of people listening feel the same way.
[00:03:31] Anyway, that’s just part of my motivation for having you here.
[00:03:35] And I don’t know, it felt worth saying at the top.
[00:03:38] So, there it is.
[00:03:39] I appreciate that and I want to join you in that.
[00:03:42] I mean, in psychology we say research is me-search.
[00:03:47] That you study things not just because they’re interesting,
[00:03:50] but because they have been personally meaningful and important to you in your life.
[00:03:55] And that’s certainly true of me.
[00:03:57] I started this project because I was drowning in cynicism and wanted to see what it was doing to me and if I could overcome it in my own life.
[00:04:07] And the more I did research, the more I realized I was not alone and that a lot of us are in that exact situation.
[00:04:14] Have you always been that way?
[00:04:16] For me, it’s really an early life origin story from my cynicism.
[00:04:22] I’m an only child and my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents, my parents.
[00:04:25] My parents are from different cultures and had a long and acrimonious divorce.
[00:04:32] So, my sort of early life was, you wouldn’t really describe me as the most securely attached child probably.
[00:04:40] Yeah, I can relate.
[00:04:41] Yeah, I should say my parents, wonderful and loving people who were doing their very best.
[00:04:47] But just the chaos in that home and in our relationships left me with this embedded sense that,
[00:04:55] it’s kind of not that easy to count on people and that in order for people to be there for me,
[00:05:02] I kind of had to be entertaining or interesting or smart in some way.
[00:05:07] And that led to really two very different experiences.
[00:05:11] One was an outward positivity.
[00:05:14] I ended up studying kindness and empathy and all these good features of human nature.
[00:05:19] And I think of myself as hopefully a relatively friendly person.
[00:05:23] So, on the outside,
[00:05:24] I sort of projected this anti-cynicism, I suppose.
[00:05:28] But internally, I did doubt people a lot.
[00:05:31] Suspicion comes more naturally to me than trust.
[00:05:35] And so, there’s been, for as long as I can remember,
[00:05:38] this split between what I’m trying to give to people on the one hand and what I expect of them on the other hand.
[00:05:44] And I’m not alone here.
[00:05:46] Research suggests that people who are insecurely attached in early childhood do have a harder time trusting
[00:05:53] friends, relationship partners, family.
[00:05:57] Yeah.
[00:05:58] I can relate to a lot of that.
[00:06:00] Well, I think everyone listening will have a vague idea of what it means to be cynical.
[00:06:09] I think we all certainly know what a cynical person looks and sounds like.
[00:06:15] But what’s a more precise way of thinking about cynicism?
[00:06:20] Give me a proper definition.
[00:06:23] Really important question.
[00:06:25] And especially for your listeners,
[00:06:27] I think it’s important to separate ancient cynicism from modern cynicism.
[00:06:32] So, when I talk about cynicism and when psychologists do,
[00:06:35] we are not talking about the philosophical school led by Antisthenes and Diogenes,
[00:06:40] but rather about a general theory that people have about humanity.
[00:06:47] The idea that overall and at our core,
[00:06:51] people are selfish, greedy,
[00:06:53] and dishonest.
[00:06:54] Now, that’s not to say that a cynical person would be shocked
[00:06:57] if they witnessed somebody donating to charity or helping a stranger, right?
[00:07:02] But they might question the person’s motives.
[00:07:04] They might say,
[00:07:05] ah, you’re probably in it for a tax break,
[00:07:08] or maybe they’re trying to look good.
[00:07:10] Cynicism is not a theory about human action.
[00:07:13] It’s a theory about human motives.
[00:07:15] That ultimately, we are self-interested beings.
[00:07:19] And because of that,
[00:07:21] we can’t be trusted
[00:07:22] to truly have each other’s best interests in mind.
[00:07:26] And the worst and best part about that approach is how unfalsifiable it is, right?
[00:07:31] I mean, how can you disprove or prove someone’s motivations?
[00:07:34] It’s purely a choice to believe that.
[00:07:36] And because it’s unfalsifiable and ineffable in a way,
[00:07:41] you know, you’re looking for mens rea,
[00:07:43] you’re looking for the inside of somebody else’s mind,
[00:07:46] which is by definition inaccessible,
[00:07:49] it means that cynical people,
[00:07:51] and here, I don’t, I’m not trying to name-call,
[00:07:54] I’m including myself,
[00:07:56] can upload evidence in asymmetric ways.
[00:08:01] We can discount and explain away people’s kindness,
[00:08:05] and then when people act in ways that are selfish,
[00:08:08] or greedy, or dishonest,
[00:08:10] have an aha moment where we say,
[00:08:12] you’ve now revealed your true colors.
[00:08:15] And that’s what you see in the psychology of cynicism,
[00:08:18] that really, this is sort of like
[00:08:21] a starting premise that people have
[00:08:24] that changes or filters
[00:08:26] the way that they take in evidence about other people,
[00:08:29] leading to vast amounts of confirmation bias.
[00:08:32] So how do you know you’re a cynic,
[00:08:36] and not just what we might call
[00:08:39] an old-fashioned realist?
[00:08:42] This is a great question,
[00:08:44] and one that a lot of people,
[00:08:47] since I’ve started working on this topic,
[00:08:49] write to me or tell me,
[00:08:51] you know, you are calling us cynics,
[00:08:54] but we’re realists.
[00:08:56] Cynicism is really just understanding
[00:08:58] what people are really like.
[00:09:00] I think it was George Bernard Shaw
[00:09:02] who said,
[00:09:03] the characteristic of accurate observation
[00:09:06] is commonly called cynicism
[00:09:08] by those who haven’t got it.
[00:09:10] So there’s an old stereotype.
[00:09:12] I mean, it’s clever.
[00:09:14] I have to give it to him.
[00:09:16] There’s this stereotype
[00:09:18] that cynicism is the same as realism.
[00:09:21] In fact, even non-cynics believe this.
[00:09:23] If you survey people
[00:09:24] and describe a cynic and a non-cynic to them
[00:09:26] and say, who’s smarter?
[00:09:28] 70% of people think that cynics are smarter,
[00:09:31] and 85% of them think that cynics
[00:09:34] are socially smarter,
[00:09:36] that they’ll pick up on who’s lying
[00:09:39] versus telling the truth, for instance.
[00:09:41] The fact is that we’re wrong on both counts.
[00:09:44] Cynics actually turn out to do less well
[00:09:47] on cognitive tests than non-cynics
[00:09:49] and have a harder time.
[00:09:50] Picking out liars from truth-tellers.
[00:09:52] And that, I think, points to a disjunction
[00:09:55] between what we think realism is
[00:09:57] and what it actually is.
[00:09:59] That was actually
[00:10:01] something that surprised me a little
[00:10:03] in the book,
[00:10:04] and maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me.
[00:10:06] Maybe it surprised me because I’m
[00:10:08] riddled with all these
[00:10:10] biases that you’re talking about.
[00:10:12] But I mean, speaking of Georges,
[00:10:14] there’s another George you quote
[00:10:16] in the book on this point.
[00:10:17] It’s George Carlin.
[00:10:19] And, you know, he had that great line,
[00:10:22] you know, scratch any cynic
[00:10:23] and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.
[00:10:26] Now, that’s funny, obviously, and clever,
[00:10:29] but it’s wrong, I guess.
[00:10:31] And it was useful to see you
[00:10:34] dispel that in the book.
[00:10:36] There are so many myths
[00:10:38] that we carry around about cynicism,
[00:10:40] and I think that we’ve, in a way,
[00:10:43] glamorized it in our culture,
[00:10:45] as realism, as a sort of hard-fought,
[00:10:48] wisdom.
[00:10:50] It feels hard-earned.
[00:10:51] It feels as though
[00:10:52] you’ve gained it from experience.
[00:10:54] There’s this sense that
[00:10:56] if you are contemptuous,
[00:10:58] if you are judgmental,
[00:10:59] it’s because you’ve been here before.
[00:11:01] But again, I want to return
[00:11:03] to this distinction between
[00:11:04] cynical thinking and realism,
[00:11:06] because it turns out that, again,
[00:11:08] if we have a blanket assumption
[00:11:10] about people,
[00:11:12] it turns out that we’re not being
[00:11:13] very realistic about them
[00:11:15] because we take in information
[00:11:17] in biased ways,
[00:11:19] and we draw biased conclusions.
[00:11:21] That’s why cynics are bad
[00:11:23] at detecting liars,
[00:11:24] because they assume liars
[00:11:25] are everywhere,
[00:11:26] so stop actually paying attention
[00:11:28] to cues that could help them understand
[00:11:30] who they can trust and who they can’t.
[00:11:33] In the book, I talk about skepticism
[00:11:36] as an alternative to cynicism.
[00:11:38] And again, here I’m not talking about
[00:11:40] the ancient philosophical school
[00:11:41] of skepticism,
[00:11:42] but a modern psychological definition,
[00:11:45] which is an alternative
[00:11:47] of hunger for evidence,
[00:11:49] a desire to think not like a lawyer,
[00:11:51] but like a scientist.
[00:11:53] And it turns out that
[00:11:55] if anything is realistic,
[00:11:57] in my opinion, it’s skepticism.
[00:11:59] It’s trying to dispense
[00:12:02] with preconceived ideas
[00:12:04] about what people are like
[00:12:05] and let the evidence come to us.
[00:12:08] If you put a gun to my head
[00:12:10] and ask me to tell you the difference
[00:12:12] between skepticism and cynicism,
[00:12:15] I’m not sure I could do it.
[00:12:16] I think I use those words interchangeably,
[00:12:19] or at least I have,
[00:12:20] but maybe it would be helpful
[00:12:22] to draw that distinction out a little bit.
[00:12:24] What is the difference
[00:12:25] between those two things?
[00:12:26] It’s super important,
[00:12:28] and I think a lot of people
[00:12:29] use the terms interchangeably.
[00:12:31] And I think we should stop,
[00:12:34] because they are not just different
[00:12:36] from one another,
[00:12:37] but one can be used to fight the other.
[00:12:39] So if cynicism is a theory,
[00:12:42] what theories do is they structure
[00:12:44] our perception of the world,
[00:12:46] and often bias our perception of the world.
[00:12:49] If you think that things are a certain way,
[00:12:52] you will pay lots of attention
[00:12:54] to any information that accords
[00:12:56] with that perspective
[00:12:58] and ignore or discount evidence that doesn’t.
[00:13:01] So you end up, through your worldview,
[00:13:04] finding confirmation for it
[00:13:06] and doubling, tripling, quadrupling down.
[00:13:09] Skepticism really doesn’t allow for that.
[00:13:12] A true skeptic is open to evidence
[00:13:15] whether or not that evidence
[00:13:17] matches their preconceived ideas,
[00:13:20] and they’re willing, in fact,
[00:13:22] to update even relatively basic assumptions
[00:13:26] that they have
[00:13:27] if the evidence comes in on the other side.
[00:13:29] In my corner of the world,
[00:13:31] we talk about Bayesians,
[00:13:32] people who update their prior beliefs
[00:13:35] based on new information.
[00:13:37] And I think of skeptics
[00:13:39] as more like Bayesians,
[00:13:41] as actually being willing to learn,
[00:13:44] even when that learning is uncomfortable
[00:13:46] and clashes with what they thought before.
[00:13:50] Do we know what makes people cynical?
[00:13:54] Is it a personality thing?
[00:13:56] Is it a genetic thing?
[00:13:57] Is it a neurochemical thing?
[00:13:59] Do any of us choose to be cynical
[00:14:02] in any meaningful sense?
[00:14:04] Well, cynicism is relatively stable
[00:14:08] across people’s lives
[00:14:10] in the absence of any intervention.
[00:14:12] So if you’re cynical,
[00:14:13] cynical now,
[00:14:15] it’s likely that you’ll stay that way
[00:14:16] if you don’t do anything about it.
[00:14:18] There is some heritable components
[00:14:21] to cynicism.
[00:14:22] So identical twins are slightly closer
[00:14:25] in their cynicism
[00:14:26] than fraternal twins, for instance.
[00:14:28] But the genetic and heritable component
[00:14:30] seems pretty small.
[00:14:31] So then there’s the other fascinating thing you ask.
[00:14:34] Do we choose cynicism?
[00:14:37] I don’t know, Sean, if we choose it
[00:14:39] or if it chooses us
[00:14:42] based on our experiences.
[00:14:45] And I guess I would describe those experiences
[00:14:47] at a couple of different levels.
[00:14:49] The first is our personal experiences,
[00:14:51] especially our negative personal experiences,
[00:14:54] the disappointments
[00:14:55] that George Carlin was talking about.
[00:14:58] But there’s a second level here as well,
[00:15:00] which is the structures around us.
[00:15:02] So environments that are really competitive,
[00:15:05] for instance,
[00:15:06] are more likely to increase people’s cynicism.
[00:15:09] And environments that are cooperative
[00:15:11] tend to decrease cynicism.
[00:15:13] And that’s a level of flexibility
[00:15:15] that I think is faster.
[00:15:17] Our childhoods affect us for many years,
[00:15:20] but your situational cynicism
[00:15:22] can change very quickly, right?
[00:15:24] If you are at a high-stakes poker table,
[00:15:27] there’s absolutely no reason
[00:15:29] for you to trust the people around you.
[00:15:31] But if you’re among a set of neighbors
[00:15:33] that you have long-standing warm relationships with,
[00:15:36] there’s lots of reasons to trust.
[00:15:38] Yeah, I mean, I think the reason
[00:15:40] I’m asking what makes us cynical is,
[00:15:45] I have this experience of,
[00:15:47] many experiences of thinking cynically
[00:15:50] or speaking cynically,
[00:15:51] and there’s a part of me in real time
[00:15:54] that knows it’s unhelpful,
[00:15:56] that doesn’t want to think that way
[00:15:58] or speak that way,
[00:15:59] and yet I still do it.
[00:16:01] And so when that happens enough,
[00:16:03] you start to wonder,
[00:16:04] well, shit, is this just my constitution?
[00:16:07] Is this just my brain?
[00:16:08] Or do I have,
[00:16:09] do I have freedom to do otherwise?
[00:16:13] Can I actually change?
[00:16:15] And I think the answer has to be yes, right?
[00:16:17] I mean, it just has to be.
[00:16:18] You wouldn’t write the book
[00:16:19] if it wasn’t yes.
[00:16:20] Yes.
[00:16:21] I mean, the answer is yes.
[00:16:22] I do want to just commend
[00:16:24] your introspection here, Sean.
[00:16:26] I feel like you’re a 2.0 level cynic.
[00:16:30] I think that the first-
[00:16:32] That’s the nicest thing anyone
[00:16:33] has ever said to me on the show.
[00:16:34] Thank you.
[00:16:37] I mean, the first level is,
[00:16:38] I mean, the first level is being cynical
[00:16:40] and believing your cynicism, right?
[00:16:42] That’s the kind of more sneering,
[00:16:44] even sometimes superior attitude
[00:16:48] that a cynic might have
[00:16:49] where they’re making fun of gullible rubes
[00:16:51] who don’t think everybody is on the take.
[00:16:53] The second level is to say,
[00:16:55] wait a minute,
[00:16:56] this is kind of hurting me.
[00:16:57] And it does.
[00:16:58] I mean, cynicism is terrible for our health
[00:17:00] and relationships and communities.
[00:17:02] And to say,
[00:17:03] well, can I do something about it?
[00:17:05] And,
[00:17:06] but to get to your question,
[00:17:08] yeah, the answer is yes.
[00:17:09] In fact, I would say that the central
[00:17:13] and most profound insight
[00:17:14] from the last hundred years
[00:17:16] of neuroscience and psychology
[00:17:18] is that people change more than we realized
[00:17:21] and more than psychologists
[00:17:22] and neuroscientists realize we change
[00:17:25] at a physiological level,
[00:17:26] at the level of our intelligence
[00:17:28] and our personalities.
[00:17:30] And we can change on purpose too.
[00:17:32] You know, the thing is that
[00:17:33] people don’t generally make long-term attempts
[00:17:37] to change their cynicism on its own.
[00:17:40] What they typically do
[00:17:41] is they feel depressed and anxious and lonely
[00:17:44] in part because of their cynical attitudes.
[00:17:47] And they go, for instance,
[00:17:48] to therapy to deal with those issues.
[00:17:51] But it turns out that if you look under the hood
[00:17:54] of, for instance,
[00:17:55] cognitive behavioral therapy,
[00:17:57] a lot of it is a treatment
[00:17:59] for our cynical views about ourselves
[00:18:02] and about each other.
[00:18:04] I have always been interested.
[00:18:06] In the relationship between beliefs and behavior.
[00:18:11] You see this a lot in the debates
[00:18:14] between atheists and religious people
[00:18:18] where atheists obsess over empirical truth claims
[00:18:22] in a way that blinds them to the power of belief
[00:18:26] and how believing in something
[00:18:28] can create a kind of motive force
[00:18:32] that is its own justification.
[00:18:34] And that seems relevant
[00:18:36] to this conversation about cynicism.
[00:18:40] And you may have alluded to this a minute ago,
[00:18:42] but you wrote something in the book.
[00:18:44] You said,
[00:18:45] cynics land in a negative feedback loop.
[00:18:48] Their assumptions limit their opportunities,
[00:18:51] which darken their assumptions even further.
[00:18:55] What is the point you’re trying to make there?
[00:18:57] I think you summed it up beautifully.
[00:19:00] Our beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecies
[00:19:03] because they structure
[00:19:05] how we interact with the world
[00:19:08] and what we do in the world
[00:19:10] structures how it responds to us.
[00:19:13] In the case of cynicism,
[00:19:15] if you believe that people are untrustworthy,
[00:19:18] you will treat them that way.
[00:19:20] And there’s lots of evidence
[00:19:21] that generally more cynical people
[00:19:23] compared to less cynical people
[00:19:25] do things like micromanage their friends and family
[00:19:29] and monitor people, spy on them in various ways
[00:19:32] because they’re trying to defend themselves.
[00:19:34] Against a selfish world.
[00:19:36] I call these preemptive strikes.
[00:19:39] But more often than not,
[00:19:41] in an attempt to keep ourselves safe,
[00:19:44] we actually just offend other people
[00:19:47] and even harm them.
[00:19:49] And people are a deeply reciprocal species.
[00:19:52] So if we treat people as though they are selfish,
[00:19:56] two things happen.
[00:19:57] One, they become cynical of us.
[00:19:59] They don’t trust us
[00:20:01] and they’re less likely to connect deeply with us.
[00:20:03] But two, we bring out the worst in them.
[00:20:07] There’s evidence that when people mistrust others
[00:20:11] in economic games and in personal relationships,
[00:20:14] the people that they don’t trust
[00:20:16] actually are more likely to betray them
[00:20:19] because they feel the relationship is already broken.
[00:20:22] So cynics often end up treating people poorly,
[00:20:26] being treated poorly,
[00:20:28] and then confirming that they were right
[00:20:30] about people all along.
[00:20:32] It’s this kind of toxic cycle
[00:20:35] of assumption, confirmation, and then reinforcement.
[00:20:39] So it’s actually true
[00:20:41] that people tend to become what we think they are.
[00:20:45] That always seemed like a bit of a cliché,
[00:20:48] but there’s actually a real profound truth in that.
[00:20:51] Oh yeah.
[00:20:53] And I think this is something that we neglect a lot.
[00:20:57] In fact, my friend and the great psychologist
[00:21:00] Vanessa Bonds at Cornell,
[00:21:02] has a bunch of work on what she calls
[00:21:04] influence neglect.
[00:21:06] That people, A, affect each other
[00:21:10] and affect who other people become
[00:21:12] in really important ways,
[00:21:14] and B, we have no idea that we’re doing that.
[00:21:16] So there’s this sense that we assume
[00:21:18] that the way that somebody acts around us
[00:21:20] reflects who they really are.
[00:21:22] We underestimate how much the situation affects them,
[00:21:25] and then we underestimate as well
[00:21:27] how much we are a part of that situation.
[00:21:30] And I think,
[00:21:32] we should own, or can own,
[00:21:35] more often and with more intentionality,
[00:21:39] how much power we have in shaping the people around us
[00:21:42] and try to use that power in a positive way
[00:21:44] instead of a cynical one.
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[00:23:19] So cynicism is connected to certain beliefs,
[00:23:23] certain assumptions we make about the world.
[00:23:26] But I think it’s also true that we’re not really
[00:23:29] the authors of our beliefs and values
[00:23:32] and the way we think we are.
[00:23:33] These things are largely products of our culture
[00:23:37] and environment,
[00:23:39] which is a long way of asking,
[00:23:42] do you think our culture,
[00:23:43] and by our I mean American culture,
[00:23:45] because that’s where we are,
[00:23:47] do you think our culture engineers cynicism?
[00:23:51] I do.
[00:23:52] And I think it’s doing so more now than it used to.
[00:23:56] What do you mean?
[00:23:57] Well, cynicism is on the rise.
[00:23:58] In 1972, about half of Americans believed
[00:24:02] most people can be trusted.
[00:24:04] And by 2018, that had fallen to a third of Americans.
[00:24:07] We’re experiencing a massive drop in faith in one another
[00:24:13] and in our institutions.
[00:24:14] And with that comes a rise in cynicism.
[00:24:17] So I think not only are we engineering cynics,
[00:24:20] but we’re doing so more efficiently now
[00:24:22] than we were in the past.
[00:24:24] I’ve never really liked theories of cynicism.
[00:24:27] Theories of human nature,
[00:24:29] because often the embedded assumption there
[00:24:31] is that there’s this fixed thing called human nature
[00:24:35] and that that is what we are always and everywhere.
[00:24:39] And I tend to think we’re a lot more plastic than that.
[00:24:43] So when I see those statements that you have in the book
[00:24:47] on the, you know, the, are you a cynic test?
[00:24:50] Like, do you agree that most people dislike helping others?
[00:24:53] Do you agree most people are honest cheaters?
[00:24:57] Briefly through the fear of getting caught.
[00:24:59] You know, that kind of thing?
[00:25:00] I would probably circle disagree.
[00:25:01] But I also think a lot of people do behave that way.
[00:25:04] But it’s not because of some inherent wickedness.
[00:25:06] I think it’s because we’ve built a world
[00:25:08] that breeds those beliefs and behaviors.
[00:25:10] I mean, I guess it’s also true that some people just suck.
[00:25:13] But you get the point I’m making.
[00:25:15] Of course. Yeah.
[00:25:17] And I think that I too find general questions
[00:25:20] about human goodness or badness unanswerable,
[00:25:24] But I do think that
[00:25:25] it matters
[00:25:26] when our answers change for all the reasons that we’re talking about, right? I mean, we are
[00:25:32] less and less discounting people’s negative actions in the way that you just did. You just
[00:25:38] applied a very generous framework. You said, well, when somebody does harm, when they act in a way
[00:25:43] that I don’t like, there’s so many reasons that could be. It’s not because they’re awful to their
[00:25:49] core. But I do think that there are situations and cultural structures that flatten our
[00:25:56] representations of each other and make us more likely to use black and white thinking.
[00:26:01] Really unequal places and times, economically unequal places and times, tend to lead to less
[00:26:07] trust and more of this black and white thinking. And I think our media, too, has been driving
[00:26:13] a really two-dimensional version of humanity and making people more mistrustful and suspicious of
[00:26:21] one another. That relationship you just mentioned between
[00:26:25] humans and humans, I think it’s a very important relationship.
[00:26:26] high levels of inequality and higher rates of cynicism was a little surprising to me too but
[00:26:33] i guess it shouldn’t have been surprising to me because of that the sort of competitive doggy dog
[00:26:39] individualistic culture that breeds right i mean you should expect more people to be more cynical
[00:26:45] in that kind of world i did some uh research on the gilded age for the book and it’s interesting
[00:26:54] to see how people with great wealth defended inequality at that time using the premises and
[00:27:02] ideals of social darwinism right the idea was hey it’s okay for robber barons to control
[00:27:10] vast amounts of resources because people are red in tooth and claw just like every other animal we
[00:27:16] are born to fight one another and to look out only for our personal interests and
[00:27:24] okay
[00:27:24] and
[00:27:24] and
[00:27:24] and
[00:27:24] So it’s really silly and naive to even try to fight that at all.
[00:27:29] So we should have an absolutely free and unfettered market where a few people can dominate.
[00:27:36] It almost is a morality in some very unequal cultures or settings that people are that way.
[00:27:43] You know, this idea of homo economicus has been really leveraged to both justify and to increase inequality over time.
[00:27:56] Are Americans unusually cynical?
[00:28:00] How does our cynicism level stack up against peer nations?
[00:28:05] We’re relatively in the middle of the pack there.
[00:28:08] So again, inequality is a great metric.
[00:28:11] There are a few other things that correlate.
[00:28:13] With cynicism across countries.
[00:28:15] But really, if you were to use one metric as a predictor of cynicism, you’d want inequality.
[00:28:22] And there are, of course, nations that are much more unequal than the U.S.
[00:28:27] And those are also much more mistrustful.
[00:28:30] A nation like Brazil, for instance.
[00:28:33] So if a third of Americans believe that most people can be trusted, the same question when asked in Brazil,
[00:28:38] I believe you get something around 6% of people answering affirmatively that most people,
[00:28:43] can be trusted, and there are other very unequal nations with similar single-digit responses to that question.
[00:28:52] You may not know this off the top of your head, but what’s the least cynical society that you know of?
[00:28:59] And why?
[00:29:00] That’s actually, it’s a really interesting question.
[00:29:03] I think it’s the same as these sort of global happiness surveys.
[00:29:07] You see a lot of the Nordic countries coming in as very trusting and who knows why.
[00:29:13] I mean, they’re,
[00:29:13] economically equal, strong social safety net, also, you know, relatively, sometimes culturally more homogenous.
[00:29:21] So there could be an in-group sort of trust there as well.
[00:29:24] But that’s generally similar to happiness.
[00:29:28] You see a lot of the top ranking countries pooling in that section of the world.
[00:29:33] I should ask, how do we make these determinations about cynicism levels in a society?
[00:29:39] Is it just self-reported surveys?
[00:29:41] Is it that simple?
[00:29:42] Or is there more?
[00:29:43] Or are there more sophisticated techniques for making these judgments about how cynical either individuals or societies are?
[00:29:51] In psychology, many of us still think that the best way to find out about people is to ask them about themselves.
[00:29:58] And there are questionnaires that any of your listeners can take to assess their cynicism.
[00:30:03] The most famous is what’s known as the Cook-Medley hostility scale.
[00:30:07] It was developed in the 1950s and it asks people questions like,
[00:30:12] do you agree?
[00:30:13] Do you agree or disagree that most people are honest chiefly through fear of getting caught or that people generally don’t like helping each other?
[00:30:22] And I know that these questions can seem really broad in general, but the fact is that they do track a bunch of outcomes in people’s behavior and in their lives.
[00:30:33] If you want to go further, though, you can also test people’s at least levels of trust in a bunch of different ways.
[00:30:40] One that’s very famous is an economics test.
[00:30:43] It’s an economic game known as the trust game, where one person decides how much money they want to send to an internet stranger, an anonymous person who they’ll never meet.
[00:30:52] Whatever they send is tripled.
[00:30:54] And then the second player can choose how much of that money they want to send back to the first.
[00:31:00] So both people can do better economically if the first one trusts and the second one is trustworthy.
[00:31:06] And so you can assess somebody’s willingness to be vulnerable, their belief, their faith in that other person.
[00:31:13] And I suppose in people, because this is a random representative of the species, you can assess their trust by how much they choose to send.
[00:31:23] Disease is a strong word, but is it helpful to think of cynicism as a psychological disease?
[00:31:31] Or is that too strong?
[00:31:34] It certainly has some qualities that we would associate with disease.
[00:31:38] It harms our physical health.
[00:31:41] Cynics suffer from more heart disease.
[00:31:44] They’re more likely to die earlier than non-cynics.
[00:31:48] So to the extent that disease is life negative, that fits the bill.
[00:31:54] And it also comes to us unbidden, just like a virus might.
[00:31:59] We catch it from our environment and we often experience it unwillingly.
[00:32:06] At least you and I do, Sean.
[00:32:08] We yearn to get rid of it, which is another thing that many people do.
[00:32:13] People who are sick want.
[00:32:15] I don’t want to sort of stretch the metaphor too far, but I think that those aspects of illness are notable and shared with a cynical worldview.
[00:32:25] I guess there are several variables at play here, but what’s the causal mechanism here?
[00:32:31] Why do cynical people live shorter lives?
[00:32:34] Why do they have more heart problems?
[00:32:36] Is it as simple as happy, hopeful people are healthier, less stressed out people?
[00:32:42] And therefore?
[00:32:43] They live longer?
[00:32:45] Yes, and I think there’s a mechanism here that matters, which is social contact.
[00:32:52] There’s decades of science now that demonstrate that one of the most nourishing things for us psychologically is connection to other people.
[00:33:03] So folks who feel connected, who feel like they have community, like they can depend on others, experience much less stress physiologically.
[00:33:12] They sleep better.
[00:33:13] Their cellular aging is slower than people who feel lonely.
[00:33:18] And cynical people who can’t trust others or feel that they can’t, who are unwilling to be vulnerable and open up, it’s almost like they can’t metabolize the calories of social life.
[00:33:34] And so they end up psychologically malnourished, which is toxic at many different levels.
[00:33:39] So again, if social contact is salutary, if it helps…
[00:33:43] If it helps us retain our health in all these ways, then we need to allow ourselves to be accessible in order for that to work, and cynics just don’t.
[00:33:54] And it’s a really tragic thing, because I think, like you and I, a lot of cynics don’t want to feel this way, but we experience life as more dangerous if you think that people are untrustworthy and think,
[00:34:06] wow, gosh, I need to stay safe.
[00:34:07] I need to not take a chance on people.
[00:34:09] But actually, by not taking chances on people, we are taking…
[00:34:13] We’re taking larger long-term risks with our well-being and missing out on lots of opportunities.
[00:34:18] The problem is that those missed opportunities are invisible, whereas the betrayals that we’ve suffered in the past are highly visible and palpable.
[00:34:27] And so again, we might learn too well from disappointment and not well enough from missed opportunities.
[00:34:35] We’re also in the midst of this loneliness epidemic, which you write about in the book.
[00:34:41] I mean, that does not portend.
[00:34:43] Well, for our future on this front, does it?
[00:34:47] No, I don’t think it does.
[00:34:48] And we have research at Stanford that finds that cynical perceptions might contribute to loneliness.
[00:34:55] So we asked thousands of students on campus two types of questions, one about themselves and one about their average peer.
[00:35:03] So for instance, how empathic are you and how empathic do you think the average Stanford student is?
[00:35:08] How much do you like helping people who are struggling?
[00:35:12] And how much do you think the average…
[00:35:13] How much do you think the average Stanford student does?
[00:35:15] And over and over again, we discovered two Stanfords.
[00:35:18] One was made up of real undergraduates who are extraordinarily friendly, warm, and compassionate.
[00:35:24] And the other one was made up of the students in students’ imagination.
[00:35:30] Students believed that their average peer was more prickly and callous and disinterested in connection than they really were.
[00:35:37] That’s a false perception, but it changed as we’re talking about, Sean.
[00:35:42] These beliefs changed.
[00:35:43] Changed people’s actions.
[00:35:46] Students who believed that their average peer was less friendly were less likely to open up, confide in new acquaintances,
[00:35:53] strike up conversations with strangers, and that left them less connected over the long term.
[00:36:00] So here again, we see a direct kind of self-fulfilling prophecy between the world that we see,
[00:36:06] the people that we imagine around us, and then the lives that we build in those communities.
[00:36:12] So what’s true here?
[00:36:13] So these students said they were empathetic and wanted connection, but their peers didn’t.
[00:36:20] So are they misjudging or misreporting themselves or their friends?
[00:36:25] Who’s wrong about whom?
[00:36:27] Or is everybody wrong about everybody?
[00:36:28] This is, of course, a huge and great question.
[00:36:32] Are people enhancing their perception of themselves?
[00:36:36] Are they unfairly negative in their perceptions of others or both?
[00:36:40] It’s hard to know.
[00:36:41] But we did conduct some follow-ups.
[00:36:43] We did some follow-up experiments at Stanford where we asked people to have conversations.
[00:36:48] We brought them together into conversations with strangers who were also undergraduates at the university.
[00:36:54] And we asked them, what do you think this conversation will be like?
[00:36:58] How empathic do you think this person, who you have never met, will be?
[00:37:02] How kind?
[00:37:03] How open-minded?
[00:37:04] Et cetera.
[00:37:05] And then we had them actually go through the conversations and report back.
[00:37:10] And what we found is that people underestimated.
[00:37:13] They underestimated each other such that they reported having been wrong about the other person, if that makes sense.
[00:37:20] They underestimated how empathic the person would be.
[00:37:23] And after the conversation, in essence, told us, well, shoot, I was wrong about that.
[00:37:27] That person was awesome.
[00:37:28] Many of them actually became friends afterwards.
[00:37:31] So that, to us, indicates that a good chunk of what’s going on here is actually underestimates of other people.
[00:37:39] And there’s other evidence for this as well.
[00:37:42] In the book I talk about, I talk about this as well.
[00:37:43] In the book I talk about this as well.
[00:37:43] I talk about an experiment that was conducted in Toronto, where people left wallets all around the city that had some money inside them and an ID,
[00:37:52] so that if a good Samaritan wanted to return them, they could.
[00:37:55] People in Toronto were surveyed and asked, what percentage of these wallets do you think will come back?
[00:38:00] And the average response was 25%.
[00:38:03] And in fact, 80% of them came back.
[00:38:06] Likewise, in trust games, people vastly underestimate how much money people will return.
[00:38:13] There’s…
[00:38:13] There’s dozens of examples like this, where, yes, we might be self-enhancing as well,
[00:38:18] but there’s a lot of evidence that we are, in concrete ways, underestimating the warmth, kindness, and open-mindedness of other people.
[00:38:30] So you’re telling me hell, in fact, isn’t other people?
[00:38:34] That’s not true?
[00:38:36] Sartre was wrong.
[00:38:37] I think hell is what we think people are more than it’s what they actually are.
[00:38:43] And this is one place where I think the science of cynicism, diving into this world, actually made me far less cynical,
[00:38:51] because I realized that a lot of our cynical perceptions are just wrong,
[00:38:56] and that there is enormous opportunity at so many levels in terms of our health, relationships, social movements, civic life.
[00:39:05] There are so many opportunities for us to improve things if we can simply awaken,
[00:39:13] to who other people really are, and just notice more effectively,
[00:39:18] as opposed to relying on our cynical assumptions, as powerful as they may be.
[00:39:23] So do you find evidence for that?
[00:39:24] Do you find that when people’s negative expectations of the world collide with reality and are proven incorrect,
[00:39:33] do they learn from that?
[00:39:35] Do they change and become less cynical?
[00:39:38] Or do we tend to kind of fall back into our default mode?
[00:39:43] It depends on how well we are willing to learn
[00:39:48] and how closely we are willing to pay attention to those experiences.
[00:39:53] Again, I want to go back to one of the domains in which long-term change is most studied,
[00:39:59] which is cognitive behavioral therapy.
[00:40:03] CBT often applies skepticism as an antidote to cynicism.
[00:40:08] A person with social anxiety will go to therapy and say,
[00:40:12] I think all my friends hate me.
[00:40:14] And the therapist won’t say, tell me about your mother, right?
[00:40:18] They’ll say, wait a minute, let’s interrogate that claim.
[00:40:21] You know, what evidence do you have that everybody hates you?
[00:40:24] Has people told you they hate you?
[00:40:26] Has anybody ever said they liked you?
[00:40:28] And they force the person to do a fair, and at least as well as they can,
[00:40:34] unbiased accounting of the evidence that they have.
[00:40:38] Typically, when we suffer from depression and anxiety,
[00:40:41] we don’t have evidence.
[00:40:42] We don’t have evidence to back up our black and white claims.
[00:40:44] So then a therapist will say, okay, we’ll go get some evidence.
[00:40:49] Treat your life a little bit more like an experiment.
[00:40:51] This is actually in CBT called behavioral experiments.
[00:40:55] Ask 10 people to go to the movies with you, 10 people who you know.
[00:40:59] If all 10 of them say no and give no reasons why, maybe they really do hate you.
[00:41:04] But if anybody says yes, try and keep up with that information.
[00:41:11] Try.
[00:41:12] Try to really internalize that information.
[00:41:16] And this is one of the most successful forms of therapy for depression and anxiety.
[00:41:20] And again, I think that’s because it overwrites some of our assumptions
[00:41:25] through careful attention to and collection of better data.
[00:41:30] Yeah, I actually started therapy recently myself.
[00:41:34] And one of the strategies my therapist recommended was, you know, when something goes wrong
[00:41:39] and the first instinct of my mind is to say,
[00:41:42] oh, yeah, well, here’s more evidence of the global conspiracy to fuck up Sean’s day, right?
[00:41:46] Everything’s like, you know, which is so narcissistic and deluded, right?
[00:41:51] But that’s where your mind can go.
[00:41:52] And you just start getting angry at everyone and everything.
[00:41:54] To just pause, take a beat, and just reframe that story just a little bit
[00:41:59] so that you’re not at the center of the cosmos and everyone’s not out to get you.
[00:42:03] And it actually does work.
[00:42:05] It actually does work.
[00:42:07] Oh, man.
[00:42:07] I mean, when I’m in a bad mood or burnt out or gloomy,
[00:42:11] I’ll go ahead.
[00:42:12] I didn’t take the weather personally, you know?
[00:42:15] The amount that we can extrapolate and over-claim that the world is out to get us
[00:42:24] is just astonishing.
[00:42:25] And it’s really just a deeply human response.
[00:42:28] But we don’t have to swallow it whole.
[00:42:32] We can choose to be more interrogative.
[00:42:36] We can choose to be more skeptical.
[00:42:38] And I do think it has long-term impacts.
[00:42:40] I mean, I think that…
[00:42:42] This is something that we can apply in our own ways to our cynical thinking.
[00:42:47] I did something because I tend to be more introverted than I sometimes want to be.
[00:42:53] I tend to shy away from conversations, probably miss a lot of opportunities because of that.
[00:42:58] So as an experiment of my own, I did this thing I call encounter counting,
[00:43:02] where on a trip that I took about a year ago,
[00:43:07] I committed to trying to talk with every person where there seemed to be an opportunity.
[00:43:12] for a conversation, which was so cringe.
[00:43:15] I mean, I was terrified.
[00:43:17] I was sure that these would be awkward and horrible conversations.
[00:43:21] But I committed not just to trying them,
[00:43:24] but to making predictions about what they would be like.
[00:43:27] And then writing down, really,
[00:43:30] like taking careful accounting of what they were actually like.
[00:43:34] And I found every single time that conversations with strangers exceeded my expectation.
[00:43:40] And now that could happen.
[00:43:42] And to any of us.
[00:43:43] But we allow those positive experiences too often
[00:43:46] to just float into the landfill of lost memories.
[00:43:50] And we remember with exquisite detail the conversations that went poorly,
[00:43:56] even if they’re in the minority.
[00:43:58] So by forcing myself to fully account for all of my social experiences
[00:44:03] over this kind of weekend-long period,
[00:44:06] I was able to rebalance my sense of,
[00:44:08] well, how often do these things go well?
[00:44:10] And how often do they go poorly?
[00:44:12] And how often do these things go wrong?
[00:44:12] And how often do these things go wrong?
[00:44:13] And how often do these things go wrong?
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[00:46:03] So
[00:46:04] something else that I found interesting in your book was the
[00:46:06] claim that you’re going to have to pay for wireless in 2026.
[00:46:07] Cynicism isn’t just a psychological plague or illness. It’s also a political problem.
[00:46:17] You write that cynicism is not a radical worldview. It’s a tool of the status quo.
[00:46:23] Why do you think of cynicism as a tool of the status quo?
[00:46:28] I think this is something that runs counter to a lot of people’s stereotypes yet again.
[00:46:34] And this is where I think it’s just so valuable to,
[00:46:37] to compare what we think of cynicism to the reality.
[00:46:41] Lots of people have told me, man, you’re writing a book about hope that is so privileged. Of course,
[00:46:47] you, as a professor at a fancy university, you can afford to have hope and look on the bright side.
[00:46:53] You know, you’re ignoring real problems. You’re engaged in toxic positivity.
[00:46:58] And the idea here is that cynicism is almost moral, that cynics point out problems,
[00:47:04] and therefore they are change makers.
[00:47:06] And the first half of that equation is right.
[00:47:08] I mean, cynics are very aware of major social problems, as we all should be.
[00:47:13] But the second half is incorrect.
[00:47:15] It turns out that cynics view our social problems as a reflection of who we really are.
[00:47:20] And if you think that a broken system, in whatever way you think it’s broken, reflects our broken nature,
[00:47:27] then there’s really nothing you can do about it.
[00:47:29] Cynics turn out to take part less in civic life.
[00:47:34] They’re less likely to vote.
[00:47:36] Protest, sign petitions, you name it.
[00:47:39] And so really, cynicism does turn out to be very useful for the status quo,
[00:47:45] because it’s almost a sort of dark complacency.
[00:47:48] If you don’t think things can change for the better, you don’t try.
[00:47:51] And people who are happy with how things are don’t need to contend with you, even if you disagree with them.
[00:47:58] Hope, by contrast, this belief that things could improve, is part of the psychological,
[00:48:05] social cocktail that drives activists and drives social change.
[00:48:10] It’s interesting that in this whole conversation, the word optimism hasn’t come up.
[00:48:17] And optimism isn’t in your book title, but the word hope is, and that’s pretty close to optimism.
[00:48:27] So the omission of optimism is by design for me?
[00:48:31] Why?
[00:48:32] Well, I actually think hope and optimism are more different.
[00:48:34] Why?
[00:48:35] Because optimism is different than most of us realize.
[00:48:37] Oh, how so?
[00:48:38] Well, optimism, as psychologists understand it, is the expectation that the future will turn out well.
[00:48:43] And that’s a very healthy and positive feeling so long as you’re right.
[00:48:49] But there’s two problems with it.
[00:48:51] One, if you think that things are just going to turn out well, you don’t have to do anything.
[00:48:56] Optimism can be somewhat complacent as an emotion.
[00:49:01] The second is that if things don’t turn out well,
[00:49:04] the disappointment is real and fierce.
[00:49:07] And in fact, I think that optimism can be a fragile sense.
[00:49:12] I think George Carlin might have better said,
[00:49:15] scratch a cynic and you’ll find a disappointed optimist.
[00:49:19] Because if you think things are just going to turn out groovy and they don’t,
[00:49:23] that can shatter your expectations very quickly.
[00:49:26] Hope is not the expectation that things will turn out well.
[00:49:30] It’s the belief that the future could turn out well.
[00:49:32] It’s a sensibility that involves a lot of uncertainty.
[00:49:40] And in that uncertainty, a couple of things happen.
[00:49:43] One, we are hardier.
[00:49:45] We know that nothing is guaranteed.
[00:49:47] And we can bounce back if things don’t turn out the way that we want.
[00:49:52] Two, and probably more importantly, in hope and in the uncertainty of hope,
[00:49:57] there’s room for our actions to matter.
[00:50:00] So where optimism can be complacent,
[00:50:03] hope is fierce and practical and drives us to do.
[00:50:08] There’s all sorts of evidence that hope is especially powerful
[00:50:12] for people facing adversity, people with chronic illness,
[00:50:16] students in lower socioeconomic status schools,
[00:50:20] and people in social movements like activists.
[00:50:24] So I think of hope as much more useful and much more robust.
[00:50:29] I try to encourage it much more than optimism.
[00:50:34] What’s your practical advice for people who are cynical
[00:50:40] or who have cynical instincts and want to overcome them?
[00:50:45] Where do you start?
[00:50:47] The first I think we’ve covered pretty well.
[00:50:50] It’s a shift in our mindset to be skeptical of our cynicism,
[00:50:54] to fact check our cynical conclusions.
[00:50:57] And also,
[00:50:58] I would add to that,
[00:51:00] to be more aware of our power.
[00:51:03] In our lab,
[00:51:04] we taught people something called a reciprocity mindset.
[00:51:08] We said, hey,
[00:51:09] you know, when you trust somebody,
[00:51:11] you don’t just learn about them,
[00:51:12] you change them.
[00:51:13] The same way that cynical,
[00:51:15] self-fulfilling prophecies bring out the worst in people.
[00:51:18] When you put faith in people,
[00:51:20] they know and they step up.
[00:51:22] This is actually true.
[00:51:23] This is something that economists call earned trust.
[00:51:26] But we found that when we taught people about earned trust,
[00:51:27] they were more willing to trust others.
[00:51:31] And when they trusted,
[00:51:33] other people became more trustworthy.
[00:51:35] So I think that mindset shifts that you can use include
[00:51:38] applying skepticism to your cynicism
[00:51:41] and then being aware of your influence.
[00:51:44] Then I think behavioral experiments that we can try
[00:51:47] include things like encounter counting.
[00:51:49] What I did include things from CBT.
[00:51:52] But another that I would recommend
[00:51:55] is just trying to take more leaps forward.
[00:51:57] I think we’re too risk averse in our social lives.
[00:52:02] We focus too much on what could go wrong
[00:52:04] and not enough on the relationships we could build.
[00:52:07] I think that taking small and calculated chances
[00:52:11] on other people is a really powerful way
[00:52:14] of rebalancing our risk portfolio,
[00:52:17] opening ourselves up to other people
[00:52:20] and also giving them the gift of the chance
[00:52:23] to show us who they really are.
[00:52:25] I love that.
[00:52:26] And there is a kind of safety in cynicism.
[00:52:31] If you don’t trust people, you won’t get hurt.
[00:52:34] If you expect the worst, you’ll never be disappointed.
[00:52:37] That’s all true.
[00:52:38] But the opportunity cost of living like that
[00:52:41] is so high.
[00:52:44] Intolerably high.
[00:52:46] Without trust, there is no real love or friendship.
[00:52:50] And without a belief that things can be better,
[00:52:53] there’s no chance of progress.
[00:52:55] That’s just sort of the arithmetic of life.
[00:52:58] Nothing risk, nothing gain. All that.
[00:53:01] And when you remind yourself of that,
[00:53:03] cynicism does seem a little stupid and unwise.
[00:53:07] So I think you’ve persuaded me of that.
[00:53:10] Well, I’m glad.
[00:53:12] And it might be unwise,
[00:53:15] but again, it’s understandable.
[00:53:18] What else are you trying to learn about all of this?
[00:53:22] What haven’t you figured out yet?
[00:53:24] Where’s the gray area of this research for you?
[00:53:27] What are the big lingering questions for you?
[00:53:32] We’ve talked about CBT and about long-term change
[00:53:35] in experiences related to cynicism,
[00:53:37] like depression and anxiety.
[00:53:39] But there is no major clinical trial
[00:53:42] of an anti-cynicism intervention.
[00:53:45] And I really want that to happen.
[00:53:48] I’d like to take part in that.
[00:53:50] What would that entail?
[00:53:52] What would that look like?
[00:53:54] At Stanford, we tried a miniature version of this.
[00:53:57] We just showed students the data about themselves.
[00:54:02] So there were two steps in what we did.
[00:54:05] One, we kind of ran an ad campaign
[00:54:08] where the target audience was Stanford undergraduates
[00:54:11] and the product was also Stanford undergraduates.
[00:54:15] We picked a certain number of experimental dorms
[00:54:18] and we plastered them with posters presenting real responses
[00:54:22] that students’ peers had given.
[00:54:25] So for instance, did you know that 95% of people on this campus
[00:54:29] say that they would like to help their peers who are struggling?
[00:54:33] 85% of people here want to meet new students
[00:54:36] who they haven’t gotten to know yet.
[00:54:39] We also teamed up with this class called Frosh 101,
[00:54:42] which most first-year students take,
[00:54:45] and gave students in those dorms a chance to guess what the data were.
[00:54:49] And then we showed them what the data were.
[00:54:51] And then we asked them,
[00:54:52] what are some examples that you’ve seen
[00:54:54] of friendly or supportive people at Stanford?
[00:54:57] All this sort of social-psychological intervention
[00:55:00] that really just amounts to telling people the truth.
[00:55:03] I want to be abundantly clear about that.
[00:55:06] A lot of anti-cynicism work is not pointing people only to good things.
[00:55:10] It’s telling them the truth. It’s giving them real data.
[00:55:13] And we found that students who were in those dorms
[00:55:16] basically felt less cynical about their peers.
[00:55:19] They perceived them as more empathic and kinder.
[00:55:21] They took more social risks.
[00:55:23] And they also made more friends over the long term.
[00:55:27] So I really think an anti-cynicism intervention at a large scale
[00:55:31] would begin at least with giving people better information
[00:55:36] and then would follow on that
[00:55:38] with chances for them to act on that information.
[00:55:41] It would be like CBT for the world.
[00:55:44] Maybe that sounds grandiose,
[00:55:46] but I think that it’s ironic that we only turn to
[00:55:49] rigorous, systematic thinking about our own lives
[00:55:52] when we’re suffering from depression and anxiety.
[00:55:55] I think that we could use that type of thinking
[00:55:58] in all manner of situation,
[00:56:00] whether we’re moving to a new town
[00:56:02] and trying to make new friends
[00:56:04] or try to reconnect with our uncle
[00:56:07] who posts too much on Facebook.
[00:56:09] There’s a lot of times, a lot of situations
[00:56:12] where those tools of rigorous skepticism
[00:56:15] could be so powerful.
[00:56:17] So maybe all of that
[00:56:20] and then dropping psilocybin in the water supply
[00:56:23] and then boom, we’re all cooking.
[00:56:26] I’m kidding.
[00:56:28] Stanford professor Jamil Zaki does not endorse that policy.
[00:56:31] Neither does Vox for that matter.
[00:56:33] I’m just kidding.
[00:56:35] Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
[00:56:36] Couldn’t hurt. Couldn’t hurt, Sean.
[00:56:44] Once again, the book is called
[00:56:46] Hope for Cynics,
[00:56:48] The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.
[00:56:51] Jamil Zaki, thanks so much for doing this.
[00:56:53] It was a pleasure.
[00:56:55] This has been delightful.
[00:56:56] Thank you so much, Sean.
[00:57:03] Okay, listeners.
[00:57:05] Professor Zaki has given you an assignment.
[00:57:08] Pick a cynical belief and put it to the test.
[00:57:11] If you think everyone hates you,
[00:57:13] ask 10 friends to the movies.
[00:57:15] That’s an example he gave.
[00:57:17] But it could be anything.
[00:57:19] Whatever it is you think sucks about people,
[00:57:22] makes you feel like you can’t rely on them
[00:57:25] or they don’t care about you,
[00:57:27] design a small experiment to test it.
[00:57:30] And then write down the response.
[00:57:32] See what you find.
[00:57:34] And if it’s different than what you expected,
[00:57:36] then, and this is the crucial part,
[00:57:39] go to your phone.
[00:57:40] Make a voice memo saying who you are,
[00:57:43] why you think you’re a cynic,
[00:57:45] and what you did to test that theory.
[00:57:48] Send it to us at thegrayareaatvox.com
[00:57:51] with cynictest in the subject.
[00:57:53] And if it takes you six months to do that test,
[00:57:56] that’s fine.
[00:57:57] We’ll still be here.
[00:57:58] I’m hopeful at least about that.
[00:58:02] This episode was produced by Travis Larchuk,
[00:58:05] edited by Jorge Just,
[00:58:07] engineered by Patrick Boyd,
[00:58:10] fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch,
[00:58:12] and Alex Overington wrote our theme music.
[00:58:14] New episodes of The Gray Area drop on Mondays.
[00:58:18] Listen and subscribe.
[00:58:20] The show is part of Vox.
[00:58:22] Support Vox’s journalism by joining
[00:58:24] our membership program today.
[00:58:26] Go to vox.com slash members to sign up.