How And Why To Avoid The Siren Call Of Cynicism | Dr. Jamil Zaki

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This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
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Hello, my fellow suffering beings.
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How we doing? It is easy, very easy in these
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turbulent times, in this post-truth era, to succumb to the
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siren call of cynicism. But cynicism... where you lose faith
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in other people, is bad for your health. The science
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shows it can lead to depression, heart disease, and isolation.
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It can also make you more likely to fall for
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conspiracy theories. Today, we're going to talk to a Stanford
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scientist about a healthier and happier alternative, which he calls
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hopeful skepticism. I should say we're recording and releasing this
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episode in the middle of a tumultuous presidential election in
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the United States, but the wisdom here is evergreen and universal.
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So if you're listening to this later, or if you're
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listening from another country, it's still deeply relevant. My guest
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is Dr. Jamil Zaki. He's a professor of psychology at
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Stanford and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab.
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He came on the show several years ago to talk
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about a previous book that he wrote called The War
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for Kindness, Building Empathy in a Fractured World. His new
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book is called Hope for Cynics, The Surprising Science of
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Human Goodness. We talked about what cynicism is exactly and
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why it's so appealing, his own history as a recovering cynic,
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how to know if you're a cynic, a step-by-step guide
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to developing the hopeful skeptic mindset, how to get better
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at disagreeing with other people, including some rules of engagement,
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and how to encourage kids not to become cynical. Dr.
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Jamil Zaki coming up right after this.
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Dr.
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Jamil Zaki, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me. Great to see you again.
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I don't know why I said welcome to the show.
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I should have said welcome back to the show. You're
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a frequent flyer, so nice to have you back. What is,
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I'm starting with a very basic question here, what is cynicism?
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Cynicism, you can think of as a theory about the
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world and about people in particular. It's the theory that humanity,
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at our core, is a selfish species. That's not to
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say that every single action we take will be selfish.
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A cynic can believe that somebody will donate to charity
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or help a stranger. It's just that underneath all of
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that veneer, who we truly are is an animal that
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fundamentally looks out for ourselves above anybody else.
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This is a debate that has been raging in political science, science, science, philosophy,
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religion for a long time. In science, you have people
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like Richard Dawkins arguing that he wrote a book called
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The Selfish Gene. We are inherently selfish. You have political
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philosophers like Hobbes, who said life is nasty, brutish, and short.
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And then on the other side of the coin, you
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have people like Rousseau, who argued that we have a
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natural compassion to us. It sounds like you're taking a
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side in this long-running debate.
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I think that this perennial question about who we are,
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whether our species is kind or cruel, compassionate or callous,
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good or bad, I'm not sure that I want to
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take a position in that debate. I think it's one
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of the most unanswerable questions that we have, because whatever
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answer you want to come up with, you can marshal
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tons of evidence for it. If you want to decide
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that people are awful, just turn on the news and
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you can support your claim. If you want to decide
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that people are wonderful, look around you and you'll find
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helpers everywhere. I think what I've become more fascinated with
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recently as a psychologist is what happens to us when
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we choose to answer the question one way or the other.
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So a cynic chooses to answer that question in a
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bleak way. They choose to say, well, I think my
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theory is the Hobbesian notion, the idea that life is nasty, brutish,
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and short, and I'm going to run with that. And
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it turns out that making that decision about how we
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view the world, our answer to the question matters for
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the life that we live, the way that we treat
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other people.
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Right. But what's interesting to me is that you've written
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a book, invading against cynicism, laying out all the dangers
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on a micro level and a macro level. And yet
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you seem to acknowledge from the jump in this interview
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that the cynics might be right about human nature.
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I think that human nature is not a binary construct.
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I think that it's potentially too simplistic to try to
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decide whether at our core we are good or bad.
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My own view as a psychologist is is that we
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are adaptive, that we change in response to our environment,
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and that people are capable of horrible cruelty if you
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put them in the wrong circumstances, and they're capable of
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incredible beauty if you place them in the right circumstances.
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I don't want to put my thumb on the scale
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too much here. It's also, maybe Dan has to do
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with the fact that I myself, although I wrote a book,
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as you said, invading against cynicism, struggle mightily with it myself.
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In fact, one of the passages that I opened the
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book with is confessing that even though I've been what
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you could call a positive psychologist studying empathy and compassion
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and kindness for 20 years now, that sometimes internally, privately,
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I have a hard time seeing the best in people.
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So I kind of wrote this book, at least at
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the beginning, to explore what was happening with me and
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why I was struggling to believe the science that I
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and many other researchers were putting out into the world.
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Did it help? Are you less of a cynic now?
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I consider myself a recovering cynic, not an ex-cynic. I
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think I still have the bias in my mind that
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many of us have, which is to pay attention to
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threats in my environment, to remember the negative things that
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people say to me more than the compliments, to focus
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on and really ruminate over terrible things that I read
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about and see. So I still have those biases. There's
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a few things that are different for me personally now
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compared to when I started. One is that I can
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see those biases as they operate. I'm more aware of
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the triggers and mental reflexes that drive me and I
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think drive so many other people. Two, I know what
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those instincts are doing to me. I know the ways
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that that that worldview is harming me. And three, I've
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become more open to evidence that runs counter to my
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sometimes cynical default mode.
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What are the ways in which cynicism can harm you
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and everybody else?
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Oh man, it's really easy to make the case that
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cynicism is harmful. There's decades of research now that find
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that cynics suffer in terms of their mental health. They're
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more prone to depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Their physical health
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is worse. They tend to have more heart disease, diabetes.
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Cynics even die younger than non-cynics. And their relationships suffer
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as well. You mentioned this Thomas Hobbes quote, which is
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maybe the most famous encapsulation of a cynical view of
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the world, that life is nasty, brutish, and short. Ironically,
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I think that phrase best applies to cynics themselves whose
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lives turn out that way in part because of the
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way that they see the world. And again, this is
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not at all to lay judgment at the feet of
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cynical people as I myself have often been one, but
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it's more to acknowledge that there's a real consequence to
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viewing the world in this way. You also asked about
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what does it do not just to us as individuals,
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but as communities. And it turns out that it hurts
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us there as well. One of the things that we
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need most in order to form connections with people, but
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also to build communities, whether those are families or classrooms
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or companies or nations, is a sense of trust, belief
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that we can be vulnerable to people in small or
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large ways and that they will have our back, that
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they will honor our expectations. If you have a cynical worldview,
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placing a bet on other people in that way, which
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is what trust really is, is for suckers. You will
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be a chump more times than not if you count
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on other people. And so cynics withdraw from those social contracts.
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But guess what happens? As cynicism rises, and it is rising,
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more people pull away. And that, in turn, makes it
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much harder to maintain a functioning social fabric, again, at
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any level that we measure, whether that's a town, a family,
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a country. even internationally. So it turns out that cynicism
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is pretty poisonous for us as individuals, for our relationships,
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and even at the broadest levels.
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Just to pick up on that, I'm going to read
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a bracing quote from you in your book. If cynicism
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were a pill, you write, its warning label would list depression,
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heart disease, and isolation. In other words, it would be
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a poison. Yeah, it's pretty strong warning against falling prey
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to Or actually, I would argue, because I'm less of
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a cynic than you, being suckered by this seductive argument.
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I completely agree. And I have been suckered by it myself.
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And I'm not the only one. Unfortunately, more of us are.
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taking this even though it's poisonous than ever before. In 1972,
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about half of Americans believed that most people can be trusted.
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By 2018, that had fallen to a third of Americans.
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So to put that in perspective, that drop is about
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as big a hit as the stock market took during
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the financial collapse of 2008. So we are in a
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national trust deficit now. And at the same time as
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we've lost faith in ourselves and each other, we've lost
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even more faith in our institutions, whether that's public education, science,
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the media, business, government, you name it. I mean, all
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of the graphs for trust and faith in people and
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institutions go in the same direction. down and to the right.
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It's a massive social trend and one I think we
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need to pay a lot of attention to.
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Couldn't you make the case that some of the degradation
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in trust of institutions is richly deserved?
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Absolutely. And again, I in no way am making the
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case here that we should trust all politicians or send
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our bank information to princes who email us with offers
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of $ 17 million or influencers who say that there's one
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weird trick that will give us passive income and clear
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up our skin at the same time. You know, rejecting
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cynicism is not the same as trusting naively. And I
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think that's one of the mistakes that a lot of
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people make. And really, one of the ways that our
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culture has glamorized cynicism in a way that, as you
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put it, suckers us into accepting it. We are taught
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that really, there are two poles. On one side, You
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can disbelieve everybody and imagine that human beings are generally
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out to get each other. On the other side, you
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can be really naive and put on rose-colored glasses. I
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don't think that those are actually so different from one another.
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I think that people who are naive credulously, unthinkingly put
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their faith in people, and that's a huge mistake. And
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people who are cynical credulously and unthinkingly remove their faith
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from people And I think that's also a mistake. And
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I think there are very similar mistakes. In fact, I
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think what is different than both cynicism and naivete is skepticism,
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taking a more scientific perspective and opening ourselves to the data.
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And if you do that, then as you're saying, it
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might be that we don't trust certain institutions or politicians,
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for instance, but we do learn that we should trust
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our fellow citizens more, right? We all have to make
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these decisions But I think we can make them based
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on data as opposed to black and white assumptions about
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what the world is like and what people are like.
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I can't believe I'm going to say this. I always
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make fun of myself for saying this. Let me double
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click on that for a second. In the book, you
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make quite a point of arguing for skepticism as a
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sort of middle path to use Buddhist speak between the
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poles of naivete and cynicism. Can you say more about
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skepticism and how it differs from cynicism?
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Absolutely. Yes. So cynicism, again, is this general theory about people.
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I'll speak as a researcher here. In science, we have
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theories and they guide what we do and what we
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predict about the world. But the rest of us do
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that too. You have a theory of gravity, which is
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that objects with mass attract each other. And even if
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you don't think about that theory... You know that if
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you drop a bowling ball, it's going to fall faster
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than if you drop a feather. And that's because you're
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using that theory to predict the world. Well, sometimes when
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you have a theory, you make predictions and you kind
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of get stuck to them. Like you start to think, well,
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my predictions are probably right. And then you start looking
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at evidence in a biased way, right? You try to
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confirm your initial assumptions. And I think cynics do that
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quite a bit, right? And it's not just what I think.
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There's a lot of evidence for this. So a cynic,
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for instance, if you show them a video of one
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person consoling another, they're likely to suspect that kind-looking person,
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they actually have ulterior motives. If you ask them, how
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much faith do you have that somebody will honor your
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trust in an economic game? They say, oh no, I
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think that person will run away with the money, even
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if they have evidence to the contrary. I think that
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when you have a theory and lean into it too hard,
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you start to be less like a scientist and and
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more like a lawyer. You start to have a point
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that you're trying to make and you start to look
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at the world and experience it through your argument as
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opposed to what it's bringing to you. So that's how
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I see cynicism as sort of being on the prosecution
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in a trial against humanity. Skepticism, instead of thinking like
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a lawyer, involves thinking like a true scientist. That is,
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of course you have views about the world. You're not
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totally naive. but you're open to new information. You're open
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to your theories and your predictions being disconfirmed. In fact,
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one of the great joys of science is being wrong
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and using evidence to become a little bit less wrong
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over time. I love, though, the way that you're describing this,
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which is a middle path, because I think that's actually
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a really powerful way of viewing it. Openness to evidence
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is something that science and I think Buddhist traditions have
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in common. right? You try to detach from what you
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are bringing to the world and just listen, just be
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aware and allow what the world brings to you to
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enter into your mind freely.
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There's a quote from the Buddha that I like. I'm
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not a dogmatist, but instead an analyst.
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That's beautiful. And I think absolutely consistent with the skeptical worldview, right?
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You don't need to believe everybody, but you don't have
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to believe in nobody either. You can be an analyst instead.
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In the book, you talk about some of the myths.
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I kind of think of them as like the siren
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calls of cynicism. They include, well, actually, I'll let you
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list them. Why do we fall for cynicism? What are
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the myths?
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Yeah, I think cynicism, unfortunately, has become very de rigueur.
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It's sort of cool and seems interesting, and it's clearly
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very popular. So why is that? There are three myths
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that I lay out in the book, as you say.
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The first is that cynicism is smart. So in surveys,
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if you ask people to imagine a very cynical person
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and a very non-cynical person, 70% of people in those
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surveys report that the cynic would be smarter than the non-cynic.
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And 85% of people think that the cynic would be
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socially smarter than the non-cynic. So for instance, would do
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a better job figuring out who's lying and who's telling
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the truth. So in other words, most of us put
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faith in people who don't put faith in people, which
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turns out to be a mistake. The data cut in
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the opposite direction. Cynics do less well on cognitive tests
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than non-cynics. And they're worse at spotting liars than non-cynics.
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Because again, if you have an assumption that people are terrible,
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you stop paying attention to the actual evidence. for who
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might be honest and who might be dishonest. This is
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what psychologists call the cynical genius illusion, the sort of
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veneer of smarts that we have. If you look at
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everybody askance, if you're kind of sneering, it seems as
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though you've got hard-earned wisdom, but it turns out that's
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not always the case. So that's myth number one. Myth
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number two is that cynicism is safe. And this goes
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back to this idea of taking social bets. that we
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were talking about earlier, right? Trust in people requires becoming
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vulnerable and you can absolutely be hurt when you trust others.
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I think we can all remember times that somebody has
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let us down and those experiences live for a long time,
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in many cases, quite painfully in our memory and they
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shape us. And one way that they shape us is
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that they make us less willing to take risks in
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the future. George Carlin once said, if you scratch a cynic,
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you'll find a disappointed idealist. And I think that that's true.
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I think a lot of cynics might have bluster, might
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seem like they're really confident, but in fact, they're actually
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responding to pain and they're trying to stay safe. They're
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trying to prevent themselves from being hurt again. The reason
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I think of this idea of that cynicism is safe
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as a myth is because when you close yourself off
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to other people, yeah, sure, you might not get hurt again,
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But you'll also lose out on so much of what
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makes life beautiful, the ability to connect with people, to
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discover new relationships, and to learn from each other. So
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that's myth number two. And then myth number three is
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the idea that cynicism is moral. These days, when I
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talk about hope and trying to build hope as a
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skill and a practice, a lot of people tell me,
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come on, Zaki. You're the definition of privilege. You're a
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professor at a fancy university. You've succeeded in all these ways.
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Of course, you can be hopeful. That's toxic. You're telling
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me to be hopeful, but I've lived a very different
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life than you. There is this sense that hope is
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a privilege, that it's a way of shutting off conversation
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about the difficult parts of life, and that cynicism has
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a laser view of those same difficulties, that cynics are
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radical and maybe hopeful people are, I don't know, in
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some way uncaring, that they're not focused on problems and
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therefore don't do anything about them. This again turns out
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to be basically the opposite of the truth. It turns
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out that cynics are less likely to do things like
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vote or take part in social movements. They see problems,
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but they don't imagine that those problems are solvable because
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they imagine that we ourselves are the problem, our whole species.
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And it turns out that people who reject cynicism are
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actually much more likely to take action to support causes
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that they believe in. And that hope is especially important,
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not for people with lots of privilege, but in times
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of struggle. So a long answer, but I hope that's
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helpful in unpacking these myths.
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Long answers are fine. So you talked about hope. Well,
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first of all, you mentioned George Carlin, who there's some
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evidence that he himself was a cynic. One of his
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jokes is, we claim to be good people, but we
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take bread from the middle of the loaf. So he
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had a dim view of human nature, at least from
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what I can tell. But anyway, back to hope. What
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do you mean by hope? That seems like something we should,
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to use this term again, double click on.
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I use that term all the time myself, Dan, and
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my friends make fun of me because I don't know
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about you, I have not actually double-clicked on a mouse
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in probably 15 years. I remember double-clicking all the time,
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but it's a very Clinton-era memory, maybe.
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Yes, yes, showing our age.
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We are. Yeah, I think another big distinction that I
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want to make, we've differentiated between cynicism and skepticism. I
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also want to differentiate between hope and optimism. So optimism
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is the belief that things will turn out well, generally
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a positive view of the future. Hope is the belief
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that things could turn out well. And I know that
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sounds subtle, but it's actually a pretty huge difference. If
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you think that things will turn out well, that can
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be a pretty complacent perspective. And also, again, like optimism,
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cynicism and like naive faith sort of makes an assumption.
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It enforces your assumptions on the world, in this case
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on the future. Hope is much more uncertain. It acknowledges
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that we have no idea what's going to happen and
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yet that things could turn out better, right? It allows
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us to envision a future that we might want, not
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that will happen, but that could. And therefore, if optimism
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is complacent, hope is much more action-oriented. Research finds that
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when people experience hope more than when they experience optimism,
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they are driven to act in ways that make that
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possible future that they want more likely to happen. You
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can think of hope as sort of a magnet pulling
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us towards the version of the world that we want
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to see unfold. And I think that oftentimes when people say,
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that hope is toxic, or when they talk about hope washing,
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they actually are talking about optimism. When you think about
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an issue like climate change, I think it would be ridiculous,
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in my opinion, to be optimistic about climate change. To say, oh, actually,
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I think that everything is going to turn out fine.
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The evidence is really frightening. But I don't think it's
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ridiculous at all to be hopeful about climate change because...
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When we think, well, there is a world in which
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we turn the ship more towards a sustainable future, that
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actually inspires people, evidence shows, to work much harder on
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actions themselves that help mitigate climate change and on pressuring systems, governments,
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and elites to help with that as well.
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Coming up, Dr. Zaki helps me figure out if I'm
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actually a cynic and you can answer some of these
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questions yourself and assess your own level of cynicism. He
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also talks about why cynicism can arise from our natural
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impulse to keep ourselves sane. How can I tell if
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I'm a cynic? Is there a way to self-diagnose?
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Yes, there actually is a test that psychologists developed in
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the 1950s called the Cook-Medley Cynical Hostility Scale that was
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developed back in the 1950s by two psychologists. They wanted
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to make a test for teachers who might or might
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not get along with their students. They had teachers fill
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out 50 statements, and they were asked whether in general
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they agree with each of these statements. I'll give you
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three of these, Dan, now, and you can tell me
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if you agree with them, okay? Here's the first one.
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In general, do you agree or disagree that no one
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cares much what happens to you?
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I disagree. Okay.
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In general, do you agree or disagree that most people
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dislike helping others?
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Disagree. Okay.
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And in general, do you agree or disagree that most
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people are honest chiefly through fear of getting caught?
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I disagree with that.
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Okay.
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That might be the one I would be most tempted
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to slightly agree with, but I still disagree with it.
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But I think numbers are closer to 65-35 on that one. Yeah, yeah.
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So you, as you said, are pretty uncynical in that regard.
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And people can find this test online. It's called the
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Cynical Hostility Scale. And it turns out that most people...
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answer affirmatively to about a third of the questions here.
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If you were to have answered one of those positively,
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you'd be generally as cynical as the population. But a
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lot of people answer most of these questions positively, and
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they would be on the high end of cynicism. So
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that's one way is just to ask yourself your general
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theories on the world and on people. But for people
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who don't want to go online and take a whole questionnaire,
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I think another thing you can do is just notice
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your reaction to other people. If you find that when
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somebody does something nice, you're wondering whether they really mean
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it or whether they're actually, you'd have some ulterior motive,
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that's a clue that you might be feeling cynical. If
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you find that when you decide whether or not you
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want to trust somebody, whether you have a new acquaintance
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and you want to open up about your struggles with them,
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whether you want to loan somebody your bike, when you
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want a new babysitter to come and watch your kids,
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if you find yourself going to all the things that
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person could do wrong and feeling really hesitant and anxious,
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that's another sign that maybe you're on the cynical side.
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There's all sorts of signs that our mind sends to
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us that really the cynicism talking to us through those signs. Yeah.
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I mean, I'm thinking about all of those examples, specifically the,
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am I suspicious or cynical of somebody when they do
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something nice for me or give me a gift? I mean,
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generally speaking, no, but I'm not, I'm not naive and I,
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I'm free to use my intuition. Sometimes my intuition is
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polluted by my biases. It's not like I'm willfully blind.
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I think I've just have a healthy skepticism and sometimes
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I miss things. Sometimes I catch them. Sometimes I, over-index
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on the skepticism. But generally speaking, it's not my first
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instinct anytime I get a gift to think, oh, somebody
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wants something for me.
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I would say, Dan, it sounds like you're a hopeful skeptic,
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which is the mindset that I try to advocate for
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in the book, right? Which is to have an open mind,
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to take in evidence about people, not at all to
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be naive, to trust your intuition, but also to test
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your intuition. And ask yourself whether what you're receiving from
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the world matches it. That's the skepticism part. And then
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the hopeful part is that your default seems to be
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relatively positive, right? That in a vacuum, before somebody gives
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you evidence otherwise, you think, yeah, if you're doing something nice,
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it's probably because you're a nice person or you have
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positive intention.
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How do we develop the mindset that you're recommending, which
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is hopeful skeptic? Is that what? Yeah.
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Hopeful skepticism. Yeah.
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Hopeful skepticism. How do we develop that? And I'm curious
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just to come back to you because it sounds like
476
00:28:51.960 --> 00:28:53.720
you've made a bit of a round trip on this.
477
00:28:53.980 --> 00:28:55.759
I stole that expression from my brother. He used that
478
00:28:56.000 --> 00:28:57.480
phone call with me yesterday. I'm going to use it
479
00:28:57.500 --> 00:29:01.029
a lot now that you, your sort of factory settings
480
00:29:02.069 --> 00:29:06.380
bend towards cynicism and you still retain the some of
481
00:29:06.420 --> 00:29:10.099
those proclivities, and yet you hold out this North Star
482
00:29:10.180 --> 00:29:13.440
of hopeful skepticism. How can we work toward that?
483
00:29:14.710 --> 00:29:17.910
Cynicism certainly is one of my factory settings. And so
484
00:29:18.109 --> 00:29:21.849
I know personally what it's like to try to grow
485
00:29:21.950 --> 00:29:24.470
out of it. And one of the things that I
486
00:29:24.490 --> 00:29:28.349
would say is, again, it's important to be aware of
487
00:29:28.390 --> 00:29:31.819
what your factory settings are. And Dan, I think you
488
00:29:31.839 --> 00:29:35.019
might be blessed with relatively positive factory settings. I think
489
00:29:35.039 --> 00:29:39.210
mine turned out to be pretty common. Researchers and psychologists
490
00:29:39.250 --> 00:29:42.779
talk about negativity bias. This is the idea that it's
491
00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:48.289
really quite easy to pay more attention to negative information
492
00:29:48.329 --> 00:29:51.910
than to positive information. And that's probably smart from an
493
00:29:52.009 --> 00:29:57.170
evolutionary perspective. If something's threatening our life, we better pay
494
00:29:57.210 --> 00:29:59.109
a lot of attention to it. And if something just
495
00:29:59.150 --> 00:30:03.190
happens to be beautiful or remarkable, it's kind of okay
496
00:30:03.230 --> 00:30:05.490
if you miss it. It's not great, but you're not
497
00:30:05.509 --> 00:30:08.910
gonna die from ignoring a sunset. You might die from
498
00:30:08.970 --> 00:30:12.829
ignoring a tsunami, right? So I think because of that,
499
00:30:13.269 --> 00:30:16.369
a lot of us are set to look for threats.
500
00:30:16.470 --> 00:30:19.049
And one of the biggest threats in our environment can
501
00:30:19.109 --> 00:30:23.029
be other people and their desire to take advantage of
502
00:30:23.190 --> 00:30:27.769
us or their untrustworthiness. So to me, and I think
503
00:30:27.950 --> 00:30:32.210
the evidence backs this up, getting beyond cynicism is first
504
00:30:32.269 --> 00:30:35.450
acknowledging it, first being mindful of the fact that, hey,
505
00:30:35.630 --> 00:30:37.630
a lot of us, this is the way that we
506
00:30:37.690 --> 00:30:41.509
see the world. Second is to realize that other people
507
00:30:41.650 --> 00:30:46.150
also talk in ways that brings out our cynicism. We
508
00:30:46.529 --> 00:30:50.880
have antenna up for negative information, and we also tend
509
00:30:50.960 --> 00:30:55.720
to emit lots of negative information. One-star Yelp reviews are everywhere,
510
00:30:55.759 --> 00:30:57.619
and I think a lot of people go around giving
511
00:30:57.759 --> 00:31:02.829
one-star reviews Yelp reviews of life itself. If we look at,
512
00:31:02.930 --> 00:31:05.539
in my own lab, we've looked at what causes people
513
00:31:05.579 --> 00:31:09.980
to gossip. So we give people examples of folks acting
514
00:31:10.539 --> 00:31:13.599
in generous ways and in selfish ways. And we ask,
515
00:31:13.960 --> 00:31:16.349
who do you want to talk about to another participant
516
00:31:16.369 --> 00:31:18.569
who you're not going to meet? Which of these people
517
00:31:18.809 --> 00:31:20.869
do you want to share a story about? And we
518
00:31:20.910 --> 00:31:25.269
find that people gossip three times more often about selfish
519
00:31:25.309 --> 00:31:28.240
people than about generous people. So not only do we
520
00:31:28.400 --> 00:31:32.990
think negatively, we share negatively. And of course, we do
521
00:31:33.029 --> 00:31:37.869
that as individuals, but our media ecosystem does that even more.
522
00:31:38.049 --> 00:31:41.630
So we've got this kind of toxic combination between a
523
00:31:41.869 --> 00:31:45.890
bias in our minds for negativity and a bunch of
524
00:31:46.029 --> 00:31:51.230
chatter all over our screens that plays into that negativity
525
00:31:51.619 --> 00:31:54.900
and makes it stronger, right? So I think for me,
526
00:31:55.240 --> 00:31:59.190
one big step in overcoming cynicism was being quite aware
527
00:31:59.250 --> 00:32:03.569
of that. You know, fighting our biases is an ongoing process.
528
00:32:03.609 --> 00:32:05.970
It's not something where you can take a day off
529
00:32:06.109 --> 00:32:08.549
because they will come back for you, right? If you
530
00:32:08.869 --> 00:32:12.269
stop thinking about your biases, it's like stopping moving forward
531
00:32:12.309 --> 00:32:15.390
on a treadmill. You won't stay still, you'll be pulled backwards.
532
00:32:15.890 --> 00:32:18.170
And I think that's one of the most important things.
533
00:32:18.190 --> 00:32:21.680
What I try to do is encourage people to fact
534
00:32:21.759 --> 00:32:26.680
check their cynical feelings to be skeptical about their cynicism.
535
00:32:27.140 --> 00:32:29.920
And I do this myself as well. If I find
536
00:32:29.960 --> 00:32:35.390
myself being suspicious of people or coming to enormous black
537
00:32:35.430 --> 00:32:38.849
and white conclusions about how terrible the world is or
538
00:32:38.890 --> 00:32:42.609
how terrible people are, I ask myself, well, wait a minute, Jamil,
539
00:32:42.839 --> 00:32:45.740
what evidence do you have for this claim? I try
540
00:32:45.779 --> 00:32:49.880
to bring that analyst perspective back towards my own mind.
541
00:32:52.059 --> 00:32:55.190
And again, there's a self-interested case for doing this. It's
542
00:32:55.259 --> 00:32:57.180
not like, uh, you're just doing it to be a
543
00:32:57.220 --> 00:32:59.720
good citizen. You're doing it because your life is going
544
00:32:59.759 --> 00:33:03.299
to improve and your decision-making will get better as well.
545
00:33:04.720 --> 00:33:08.099
Oh yeah. I think that's right. And so one, I
546
00:33:08.140 --> 00:33:11.240
think skepticism is a much smarter way of going through
547
00:33:11.269 --> 00:33:13.230
the world and you end up learning so much more,
548
00:33:13.269 --> 00:33:16.569
but as you said, life improves. And I would say
549
00:33:16.589 --> 00:33:21.059
it improves not just in terms of, wow, you, uh,
550
00:33:21.549 --> 00:33:24.410
are just blissed out all the time. It improves because
551
00:33:24.430 --> 00:33:27.619
you're able to more deeply connect with people, which is
552
00:33:27.720 --> 00:33:31.940
one of the most powerful experiences in life. You know,
553
00:33:31.960 --> 00:33:35.940
there's this really interesting and to me quite sad study
554
00:33:36.099 --> 00:33:40.869
where people were asked to give a speech, impromptu speech
555
00:33:40.930 --> 00:33:42.769
about a subject they don't know very much about, which
556
00:33:42.809 --> 00:33:46.569
of course is not fun at all and raised everybody's
557
00:33:46.589 --> 00:33:50.359
blood pressure. Half of these people had a cheerleader next
558
00:33:50.380 --> 00:33:53.700
to them, a stranger who just was there to be
559
00:33:53.740 --> 00:33:55.720
supportive and said, you got this. I know you can
560
00:33:55.779 --> 00:33:58.339
do it. You're going to crush this speech. Just a
561
00:33:58.380 --> 00:34:02.440
friendly stranger. And it turns out that non-cynics, when they
562
00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:05.960
had this friendly person around them, their blood pressure rose
563
00:34:06.019 --> 00:34:09.340
half as much as when they were alone. But cynics,
564
00:34:10.010 --> 00:34:12.010
when they had this friendly stranger around them, their blood
565
00:34:12.050 --> 00:34:14.610
pressure was just as high as when they were alone.
566
00:34:15.690 --> 00:34:18.449
And I've experienced this in my more cynical moments and
567
00:34:18.489 --> 00:34:21.769
more cynical years. I've also been lonelier because I think
568
00:34:21.809 --> 00:34:27.199
social connection is this deep psychological nourishment and cynicism makes
569
00:34:27.239 --> 00:34:30.739
it impossible for us to metabolize it. It just makes
570
00:34:30.780 --> 00:34:33.840
it hard to internalize the care that other people feel
571
00:34:33.920 --> 00:34:36.880
for us and to share our care with them. So
572
00:34:36.940 --> 00:34:39.449
to me, overcoming cynicism, as you said, it's got this
573
00:34:39.469 --> 00:34:42.130
great business case, but the business case for it is
574
00:34:42.190 --> 00:34:46.150
also about citizenship and about relationships, because it turns out
575
00:34:46.170 --> 00:34:48.469
that being there for other people is one of the
576
00:34:48.489 --> 00:34:49.960
best ways to be there for ourselves.
577
00:34:50.380 --> 00:34:52.440
Exactly. I don't want to take up too much airtime
578
00:34:52.679 --> 00:34:54.579
here talking about myself, but just to make sure I'm
579
00:34:54.860 --> 00:34:58.539
fully honest, I do think that my factory settings may
580
00:34:58.599 --> 00:35:02.559
resemble yours. It's just that I've now, I think, made
581
00:35:02.599 --> 00:35:06.139
the same round trip you've made by practicing a lot
582
00:35:06.179 --> 00:35:09.400
of meditation, specifically loving kindness meditation and working on the
583
00:35:09.420 --> 00:35:11.780
quality of my relationships and working on my mind, which
584
00:35:11.820 --> 00:35:13.840
of course is a way to work on your relationships.
585
00:35:14.139 --> 00:35:18.000
And so I think I've gotten to hopeful optimist, but
586
00:35:18.239 --> 00:35:19.590
I don't want to pretend that I came out of
587
00:35:19.610 --> 00:35:20.389
the womb that way.
588
00:35:21.389 --> 00:35:25.889
And actually that's much more powerful because you and the
589
00:35:26.090 --> 00:35:28.469
contemplative work you've done and that you share with others
590
00:35:29.429 --> 00:35:32.769
is a commitment to the idea that we are malleable
591
00:35:32.789 --> 00:35:36.469
and that our factory settings don't have to be the
592
00:35:36.530 --> 00:35:39.889
only settings that we ever operate under. And I think
593
00:35:39.909 --> 00:35:43.650
that's one of the core messages of actually all of
594
00:35:43.710 --> 00:35:47.010
psychology and neuroscience over the last century is that we
595
00:35:47.070 --> 00:35:50.630
change much more than we realize. And that can be
596
00:35:50.670 --> 00:35:53.530
a kind of destabilizing notion for people, but to me,
597
00:35:53.590 --> 00:35:57.309
it's incredibly empowering. We can choose the direction that we
598
00:35:57.369 --> 00:35:59.829
sail the ship of our life in. And, you know,
599
00:35:59.849 --> 00:36:03.079
I actually am curious, you of course have practice metta
600
00:36:03.199 --> 00:36:05.780
a lot and a lot of other types of techniques
601
00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:10.900
as well. Do you see contemplative techniques as, in your experience,
602
00:36:11.079 --> 00:36:16.619
as directly combating cynicism? Have you seen the way that
603
00:36:16.699 --> 00:36:20.369
those techniques change your openness to evidence, for instance, about
604
00:36:20.429 --> 00:36:20.969
other people?
605
00:36:21.730 --> 00:36:24.809
Metta, M-E-T-T-A, just for people who've never heard of this,
606
00:36:25.090 --> 00:36:27.969
it's also called loving kindness meditation. It's a specific form
607
00:36:28.030 --> 00:36:33.730
of meditation where you envision a series of people or animals, beings,
608
00:36:34.449 --> 00:36:38.130
and send them good vibes by repeating silently in your
609
00:36:38.170 --> 00:36:41.690
mind phrases like maybe happy, safe, healthy, live with ease.
610
00:36:42.369 --> 00:36:44.090
And as I've said a million times on the show,
611
00:36:44.110 --> 00:36:46.610
it can be very annoying to a cynic or a
612
00:36:46.630 --> 00:36:50.929
skeptic because it feels quite forced. And yet there's a
613
00:36:50.969 --> 00:36:54.409
ton of data to show that it can have physiological, psychological,
614
00:36:54.469 --> 00:36:58.000
and behavioral benefits. I have not seen any data on
615
00:36:58.440 --> 00:37:02.099
cynicism specifically, but I can just talk about what's happened
616
00:37:02.119 --> 00:37:05.949
in my own N of one laboratory, which is, I
617
00:37:06.010 --> 00:37:08.789
do think it kind of gives you a new, or
618
00:37:08.989 --> 00:37:12.630
for me, it has given me a new baseline. Deny
619
00:37:12.670 --> 00:37:16.969
me of sleep, give me news that provokes anxiety, and
620
00:37:17.650 --> 00:37:21.570
I'll go back to old baselines or worse. It's not magic,
621
00:37:22.030 --> 00:37:27.000
but it's pretty magical that you can, generally speaking, turn
622
00:37:27.019 --> 00:37:28.340
the dial toward warmth.
623
00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:33.219
I've experienced the same thing when I practice loving kindness.
624
00:37:33.739 --> 00:37:38.090
It's remarkable how you can harness your own mind and
625
00:37:38.130 --> 00:37:41.469
point it in a way that is more pro-social. And
626
00:37:41.869 --> 00:37:45.250
it turns out that there is evidence that the times
627
00:37:45.269 --> 00:37:47.670
that we are most cynical is often the times that
628
00:37:47.710 --> 00:37:51.360
we're most stressed and least able to connect with ourselves.
629
00:37:51.780 --> 00:37:55.599
Cynicism is actually one of the four main components of burnout.
630
00:37:56.179 --> 00:38:00.420
Christina Maslach, the sort of scientific godmother of burnout, talked about, well,
631
00:38:00.519 --> 00:38:04.000
when you're depleted, you have no room for other people
632
00:38:04.400 --> 00:38:07.420
in your mind or in your heart. And it's very
633
00:38:07.519 --> 00:38:09.699
easy to feel like everybody's out to get you in
634
00:38:09.760 --> 00:38:14.489
some way. Interestingly, research finds that when we ask people
635
00:38:14.909 --> 00:38:18.030
to pause and not to say, well, how do you
636
00:38:18.070 --> 00:38:19.829
feel about this person? Or how do you feel about
637
00:38:19.989 --> 00:38:22.829
people in general? Actually, if you want to evoke cynicism
638
00:38:22.869 --> 00:38:26.510
from somebody, Ask them about people in general. If you
639
00:38:26.550 --> 00:38:30.269
want to evoke skepticism and hope from people, ask them
640
00:38:30.329 --> 00:38:34.130
about an individual, especially somebody who they know, but even
641
00:38:34.150 --> 00:38:36.969
a stranger. There's a bunch of research that finds if
642
00:38:37.010 --> 00:38:41.550
you ask people, what is a person like deep down?
643
00:38:42.050 --> 00:38:44.510
Who are they really? You hear a story about somebody
644
00:38:44.530 --> 00:38:47.840
and you say, who is this person really? People believe
645
00:38:47.889 --> 00:38:53.539
that an individual's true self is generally good, right? So cynicism...
646
00:38:54.159 --> 00:38:57.860
is really prevalent on our screens and in our generalities.
647
00:38:58.550 --> 00:39:01.389
In abstractions, it's very easy to be cynical. When there's
648
00:39:01.409 --> 00:39:03.570
a real human being in front of us, when we're
649
00:39:03.590 --> 00:39:06.670
paying attention to them and looking at the totality and
650
00:39:06.809 --> 00:39:11.840
complexity and really bewildering beauty of just a human life,
651
00:39:12.519 --> 00:39:15.519
it's much harder to be cynical and much easier to
652
00:39:15.579 --> 00:39:19.119
feel open. I've always thought that that finding relates to
653
00:39:19.159 --> 00:39:22.159
me a little bit to contemplative practice also, because when
654
00:39:22.199 --> 00:39:26.969
you are really when you're meditating and focusing on somebody
655
00:39:27.010 --> 00:39:30.530
else in a meditative way, you are forgetting. your assumptions
656
00:39:30.610 --> 00:39:32.809
about what people are like, and you're focusing on that
657
00:39:32.889 --> 00:39:35.710
life in front of you. And it's hard not to
658
00:39:35.750 --> 00:39:36.530
see the beauty there.
659
00:39:36.550 --> 00:39:41.469
I think that's true. It just kind of inexorably scales,
660
00:39:41.530 --> 00:39:44.320
at least for me. As I think this through, I
661
00:39:44.340 --> 00:39:48.119
think the mechanism is less about seeing the good and
662
00:39:48.159 --> 00:39:52.809
potential in individuals, although for sure that's there. It's more
663
00:39:52.849 --> 00:39:56.969
like our capacity for warmth, for caring, for giving a shit,
664
00:39:57.010 --> 00:40:00.550
for love, whatever you want to call it, is a muscle.
665
00:40:02.489 --> 00:40:06.510
And this is a way to improve that muscle. And
666
00:40:06.969 --> 00:40:10.059
to me, again, I'm not speaking as a scientist. You're
667
00:40:10.119 --> 00:40:13.599
the scientist. I'm just speaking as a practitioner. That feels
668
00:40:13.679 --> 00:40:16.960
like what's happening more than learning to see the good
669
00:40:16.980 --> 00:40:19.960
in one person and then that leads to you know,
670
00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:23.900
an omnidirectional warmth, which I do think happens too, but
671
00:40:23.940 --> 00:40:25.780
it's more the former than the latter. Am I making
672
00:40:25.840 --> 00:40:27.260
any sense? Is that any of that land for you?
673
00:40:28.280 --> 00:40:32.469
Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that in general, when we
674
00:40:32.619 --> 00:40:37.050
work the muscles of our own care, we also, well,
675
00:40:37.090 --> 00:40:40.809
a bunch of things happen. One, we become more open
676
00:40:40.929 --> 00:40:44.889
to humanity in general, right? And two, I think maybe
677
00:40:45.030 --> 00:40:49.150
we also open ourselves to common humanity and right? I mean,
678
00:40:49.510 --> 00:40:53.210
if I'm working on my awareness, my connection, my sense
679
00:40:53.250 --> 00:40:56.869
of care, if I'm building that muscle, I'm also realizing
680
00:40:57.329 --> 00:41:01.940
how much I have in terms of shared experience with really,
681
00:41:02.119 --> 00:41:04.280
I mean, one could argue every human being or even
682
00:41:04.340 --> 00:41:07.760
every being. And that sense of universality, I think, is
683
00:41:07.800 --> 00:41:14.739
another way to overcome cynical thinking. Beyond what we think,
684
00:41:14.840 --> 00:41:18.099
there's also actions that we can take to try to
685
00:41:18.139 --> 00:41:23.500
build a muscle of hopeful skepticism. I often think about
686
00:41:23.559 --> 00:41:26.860
and try in my own life to take calculated leaps
687
00:41:26.929 --> 00:41:31.469
of faith on other people. Ernest Hemingway once wrote, if
688
00:41:31.510 --> 00:41:33.389
you want to find out if you can trust somebody,
689
00:41:34.409 --> 00:41:39.230
trust them. If you think about a skeptical worldview as
690
00:41:39.710 --> 00:41:43.320
being open and saying, well, wait, what are my assumptions
691
00:41:43.380 --> 00:41:47.139
based on? And fact-checking and wondering what evidence you would
692
00:41:47.199 --> 00:41:51.610
need in order to really believe a claim, leaps of
693
00:41:51.670 --> 00:41:54.610
faith are a way of gathering that evidence, of doing
694
00:41:54.730 --> 00:41:57.929
science in your own life. And the only way to
695
00:41:58.050 --> 00:42:01.519
do science with your own life is to take chances.
696
00:42:02.199 --> 00:42:05.920
And they don't have to be enormous chances. But in general,
697
00:42:06.079 --> 00:42:08.639
what I try to do these days is I look
698
00:42:08.659 --> 00:42:13.730
for opportunities where I feel just a bit apprehensive. If
699
00:42:13.769 --> 00:42:16.260
I have a person who I'm getting to know And
700
00:42:16.280 --> 00:42:18.559
I ask myself, should I go with small talk here?
701
00:42:18.579 --> 00:42:21.559
Or should I disclose this thing that's really been on
702
00:42:21.579 --> 00:42:24.320
my mind that's maybe a little bit difficult or complicated?
703
00:42:25.139 --> 00:42:28.340
Or if somebody in my lab wants to start a
704
00:42:28.480 --> 00:42:30.940
new project and say, well, should I really make sure
705
00:42:30.980 --> 00:42:32.860
that they're doing everything right? Or should I give them
706
00:42:33.300 --> 00:42:37.239
more freedom? I try to catch myself being nervous about
707
00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:40.639
what other people will do and then jump in anyways.
708
00:42:41.000 --> 00:42:44.710
And I found that the data that I get back
709
00:42:44.789 --> 00:42:50.309
from those little tiny experiments is enormously hopeful, full of
710
00:42:50.409 --> 00:42:54.789
pleasant surprises, and acts as a countermeasure to my cynicism
711
00:42:54.849 --> 00:42:56.809
the next time. Because I can say, well, wait a minute,
712
00:42:57.190 --> 00:42:59.789
what did I learn a week ago when I took
713
00:42:59.809 --> 00:43:03.050
that leap of faith on somebody? Well, they responded beautifully.
714
00:43:03.449 --> 00:43:05.929
So maybe my apprehension this time, I don't have to
715
00:43:05.969 --> 00:43:06.929
listen to as much.
716
00:43:08.239 --> 00:43:11.130
Isn't it possible that what's going on here That there
717
00:43:11.150 --> 00:43:13.150
are two things going on here simultaneously. On the one,
718
00:43:13.869 --> 00:43:16.150
on your side, when you take a leap of faith,
719
00:43:16.849 --> 00:43:20.150
there's the leap of faith that's happening. On the other side,
720
00:43:20.710 --> 00:43:24.090
people generally, and I'm taking this line from an old movie,
721
00:43:24.349 --> 00:43:27.320
Lean on Me, where the principal of the school says,
722
00:43:27.949 --> 00:43:31.059
people tend to rise to the level of expectation. If
723
00:43:31.099 --> 00:43:34.840
the expectation is, I trust you, that tends to call
724
00:43:34.920 --> 00:43:38.320
forth people's better angels. Am I speaking with some degree
725
00:43:38.360 --> 00:43:39.059
of accuracy here?
726
00:43:40.030 --> 00:43:43.349
That is absolutely accurate. In fact, economists have a term
727
00:43:43.389 --> 00:43:47.800
for that, earned trust. That is, you know, we tend
728
00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:50.500
to think that some people are trustworthy and others are not.
729
00:43:51.239 --> 00:43:53.780
And that's true to some degree, but it's also true
730
00:43:53.820 --> 00:43:57.719
that our actions matter in shaping the way that other
731
00:43:57.760 --> 00:44:01.449
people behave, right? As the quote from Linan Migos, people
732
00:44:01.550 --> 00:44:04.789
rise to our expectations, but they also fall to the
733
00:44:04.829 --> 00:44:09.150
level of our expectations if those expectations are low. So one...
734
00:44:09.750 --> 00:44:12.760
finding from the science of cynicism is that cynics often
735
00:44:13.440 --> 00:44:18.039
treat people as though they are untrustworthy and selfish. So
736
00:44:18.079 --> 00:44:23.219
they might threaten them or micromanage them or spy on them,
737
00:44:23.360 --> 00:44:27.449
for instance. And that brings out the very worst in people.
738
00:44:28.110 --> 00:44:31.289
Cynics tell a story full of villains and end up
739
00:44:31.349 --> 00:44:35.690
living inside it because they create the conditions for their
740
00:44:36.050 --> 00:44:40.360
bleak prophecies to come true. But That has some power
741
00:44:40.460 --> 00:44:43.099
to it as well, because if we can acknowledge and
742
00:44:43.480 --> 00:44:47.639
own our own influence over other people, then we can
743
00:44:47.699 --> 00:44:50.340
wield it to bring out the best in them by
744
00:44:50.440 --> 00:44:53.139
taking those leaps of faith. Absolutely. And in my lab,
745
00:44:53.159 --> 00:44:56.630
we actually find that even teaching people what we call
746
00:44:56.690 --> 00:45:01.610
a reciprocity mindset that is telling people, hey, your actions matter.
747
00:45:01.829 --> 00:45:05.150
If you trust somebody, yeah, you're taking a chance, but
748
00:45:05.170 --> 00:45:09.139
you're also giving somebody a gift. And they're more likely
749
00:45:09.179 --> 00:45:12.940
to repay that gift. Just teaching people that makes them
750
00:45:13.039 --> 00:45:16.630
more willing to trust and makes the people around them
751
00:45:16.690 --> 00:45:19.750
more trustworthy. So I think you're exactly right. There's this
752
00:45:20.190 --> 00:45:23.150
self-fulfilling prophecy angle to these leaps of faith that I
753
00:45:23.150 --> 00:45:25.969
think is really important for people to understand.
754
00:45:29.719 --> 00:45:32.619
Coming up, Jamil talks about some of his own missteps
755
00:45:33.300 --> 00:45:36.300
on the path toward hopeful skepticism. and how to get
756
00:45:36.340 --> 00:45:39.460
better at disagreeing with other people while not assuming the worst.
757
00:45:39.860 --> 00:45:42.539
Something that is especially useful in the middle of a
758
00:45:42.579 --> 00:45:52.610
turbulent election. Let me reset for a second here. So
759
00:45:52.809 --> 00:45:55.909
the first half of your book really is this evidence-based
760
00:45:56.130 --> 00:45:59.809
thundering against the pernicious impacts of cynicism. The second half
761
00:45:59.829 --> 00:46:03.139
of the book really turns to sort of ways that
762
00:46:03.179 --> 00:46:08.880
we can internally and externally develop this hopeful skepticism. You
763
00:46:08.940 --> 00:46:12.579
just listed a few of the examples there, the reciprocity
764
00:46:12.619 --> 00:46:16.659
mindset and leaps of faith, but there's more. One thing
765
00:46:16.679 --> 00:46:19.619
that really stuck out to me was how to build,
766
00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:23.500
you use the term cultures of trust in your world.
767
00:46:23.599 --> 00:46:26.039
That can be in a workplace, it can be your family,
768
00:46:26.059 --> 00:46:27.659
it can be your friend group, it can be in
769
00:46:27.820 --> 00:46:30.510
your community. So I want to hear a a lot
770
00:46:30.550 --> 00:46:33.230
about how to do that, but maybe start by saying
771
00:46:33.289 --> 00:46:36.190
how you screwed this up, because I related to that
772
00:46:36.250 --> 00:46:38.530
as somebody who has screwed up in worse ways. So
773
00:46:38.570 --> 00:46:39.380
I'll hand you the mic.
774
00:46:40.500 --> 00:46:43.400
Yeah, I screw up all the time. And one of
775
00:46:43.440 --> 00:46:46.000
those big screw ups was when I had a chance
776
00:46:46.039 --> 00:46:48.400
to build a culture of my own for the first time.
777
00:46:48.519 --> 00:46:51.429
So I've been at Stanford now for 12 years, and
778
00:46:51.989 --> 00:46:54.369
this was my first job. It was my first academic job.
779
00:46:54.630 --> 00:46:57.670
I worked all sorts of jobs in high school and college,
780
00:46:57.730 --> 00:47:01.900
but After getting my doctorate and finishing my training, I
781
00:47:02.679 --> 00:47:06.239
just landed really the job that I'd been dreaming about
782
00:47:06.300 --> 00:47:08.039
for most of my adult life, which is to be
783
00:47:08.059 --> 00:47:12.719
a professor at this institution. And I was so excited,
784
00:47:13.309 --> 00:47:16.110
but for every ounce of excitement, there were at least
785
00:47:16.230 --> 00:47:20.889
three and a half ounces, the airport maximum of fear
786
00:47:21.070 --> 00:47:25.429
and anxiety. I was terrified of screwing up this one
787
00:47:25.510 --> 00:47:28.889
shot that I had to contribute as a scientist to
788
00:47:28.929 --> 00:47:31.530
do work that mattered. For folks who are not in
789
00:47:31.550 --> 00:47:34.380
the academic world, jobs like the one I got are
790
00:47:34.400 --> 00:47:37.760
also temporary. You're an assistant professor. You've got a few
791
00:47:37.820 --> 00:47:40.699
years to do the very best work you can. And
792
00:47:40.739 --> 00:47:44.340
then a bunch of people who you don't know, who
793
00:47:44.559 --> 00:47:47.170
are much older and more powerful than you, get to
794
00:47:47.210 --> 00:47:50.690
look at that work and they secretly tell your bosses
795
00:47:51.230 --> 00:47:53.590
whether you should keep your job or not. That's called tenure.
796
00:47:53.949 --> 00:47:57.800
But it really feels more like going through some tunnel
797
00:47:57.960 --> 00:48:01.920
of pain and torture. It's very anxiety provoking. And I
798
00:48:01.980 --> 00:48:05.300
know it's also an extremely privileged position to be in,
799
00:48:05.960 --> 00:48:07.929
but it was really hard for me as an anxious
800
00:48:07.969 --> 00:48:10.989
person as well. One of the things that made me
801
00:48:11.050 --> 00:48:15.190
most anxious was that I didn't have control anymore. As
802
00:48:15.309 --> 00:48:18.750
a student, I was the one doing all of the research.
803
00:48:19.489 --> 00:48:21.389
If I screwed up, it was me screwing up. And
804
00:48:21.429 --> 00:48:23.639
if I did well, it was me doing well. Now
805
00:48:23.679 --> 00:48:26.110
that I was a professor, I had to hire people,
806
00:48:26.429 --> 00:48:30.760
graduate students, postdocs, research assistants, and I had to count
807
00:48:30.820 --> 00:48:34.619
on them to do good work. I couldn't do it
808
00:48:34.679 --> 00:48:37.599
for them. If they did good work, then that was
809
00:48:37.619 --> 00:48:39.320
going to be good for them and for me. And
810
00:48:39.340 --> 00:48:42.139
if they didn't, then my shot at Stanford was up.
811
00:48:43.059 --> 00:48:44.760
And I reacted to this in a way that I
812
00:48:44.840 --> 00:48:49.070
am deeply unproud of, which is, I think I pressured
813
00:48:49.179 --> 00:48:52.710
these folks a lot. I think that I micromanaged them.
814
00:48:53.110 --> 00:48:57.179
I sort of probably made it too obvious when I
815
00:48:57.219 --> 00:49:00.920
was disappointed in their performance. Honestly, Dan, even talking about
816
00:49:00.940 --> 00:49:03.760
this many years later, I feel that sort of flush
817
00:49:04.519 --> 00:49:07.860
in my face of shame. Your listeners might not know this,
818
00:49:07.880 --> 00:49:10.539
but the irony is that what I do for a
819
00:49:10.579 --> 00:49:13.690
living most of the time is study empathy. Here I
820
00:49:13.730 --> 00:49:18.090
was running an empathy lab in a toxic way. Again,
821
00:49:18.170 --> 00:49:20.460
you can't make this up. One of the people in
822
00:49:20.480 --> 00:49:23.239
my lab ended up coming to me and saying, hey,
823
00:49:23.619 --> 00:49:26.340
this is just too stressful. The lab had been open
824
00:49:26.360 --> 00:49:28.210
for less than a year. And she said, if you
825
00:49:28.250 --> 00:49:31.170
can't find a way to make this a more healthy workplace,
826
00:49:31.429 --> 00:49:34.889
I'm going to leave. And that was like a bucket
827
00:49:34.909 --> 00:49:37.329
of cold water on me. I'm so grateful to her,
828
00:49:37.590 --> 00:49:40.340
but it really shone a light on everything that I
829
00:49:40.380 --> 00:49:41.059
was doing wrong.
830
00:49:42.469 --> 00:49:47.949
I've had very similar experiences. I would argue probably significantly worse,
831
00:49:48.130 --> 00:49:51.969
but so you have my empathy to be a little cute. Okay,
832
00:49:51.989 --> 00:49:54.210
so you learned the hard way. You've got a bucket
833
00:49:54.230 --> 00:49:55.989
of ice water thrown on top of you. So you
834
00:49:56.010 --> 00:49:57.570
learned you were screwing it up. How do you not
835
00:49:57.590 --> 00:49:59.219
screw it up? How do all of us not screw
836
00:49:59.239 --> 00:49:59.400
it up?
837
00:50:00.340 --> 00:50:03.019
I'll talk about what I did, and then I'll try
838
00:50:03.039 --> 00:50:06.000
to extrapolate from that to some principles about what any
839
00:50:06.039 --> 00:50:09.679
of us can do to build empathy more, I guess,
840
00:50:10.239 --> 00:50:14.190
hopeful and trusting cultures. The first thing I did was
841
00:50:14.349 --> 00:50:17.429
try to own up to it. I went to different
842
00:50:17.449 --> 00:50:21.070
members of my lab and apologized and basically said, I'm
843
00:50:21.230 --> 00:50:24.949
really stressed and that's not an excuse, but I clearly
844
00:50:24.989 --> 00:50:29.590
have been letting my stress explode all over this community.
845
00:50:29.710 --> 00:50:32.550
And if you've got shrapnel from it stuck in you,
846
00:50:32.590 --> 00:50:35.739
that's my fault. I think that as a person who
847
00:50:35.760 --> 00:50:38.940
had relative power, it was important for me to take
848
00:50:38.980 --> 00:50:44.579
responsibility first. Then I asked the lab to come together
849
00:50:44.760 --> 00:50:48.780
and we wrote a manual for all of our expectations.
850
00:50:48.940 --> 00:50:51.519
And it started not just with what time do we
851
00:50:51.539 --> 00:50:53.639
show up to work or what's the code for the printer?
852
00:50:53.659 --> 00:50:56.809
It started with what are our core values that we share?
853
00:50:57.610 --> 00:51:01.829
And so we circulated this document where people could talk about, well,
854
00:51:01.869 --> 00:51:04.949
what values do we want represented in this community? What
855
00:51:04.969 --> 00:51:07.309
do we care about? And how are we going to
856
00:51:07.489 --> 00:51:11.389
show those values in our actions. And that was a
857
00:51:11.429 --> 00:51:15.070
conversation that after having it, I couldn't believe we hadn't
858
00:51:15.110 --> 00:51:17.730
started there. But I think a lot of communities don't
859
00:51:17.789 --> 00:51:20.750
start there. A lot of communities start with, well, what
860
00:51:20.769 --> 00:51:23.789
are we doing today? What are our action items? As
861
00:51:23.849 --> 00:51:26.960
opposed to why are we here? What is the point
862
00:51:27.039 --> 00:51:30.099
of this work? And that was a sort of a
863
00:51:30.179 --> 00:51:33.199
North Star that we've kept since then. And then the
864
00:51:33.260 --> 00:51:37.239
third step that I took was to be really conscious
865
00:51:37.300 --> 00:51:39.829
about these leaps of faith. And I think that we
866
00:51:39.849 --> 00:51:41.730
can all take leaps of faith as we've been talking
867
00:51:41.750 --> 00:51:44.840
about as individuals. But I think if you're a leader anywhere,
868
00:51:45.280 --> 00:51:48.559
those leaps of faith, their power is amplified by an
869
00:51:48.639 --> 00:51:54.219
enormous amount. So I have become very intentional about giving
870
00:51:54.519 --> 00:51:58.329
all the people who work in my lab lots of freedom.
871
00:51:58.389 --> 00:52:00.329
That's not to say that I'm not there for them.
872
00:52:00.349 --> 00:52:04.849
I call it underbearing attentiveness, right? I try to be
873
00:52:05.809 --> 00:52:10.400
really super present and available and but not pushy about
874
00:52:10.440 --> 00:52:12.699
that availability, right? To say, you come to me when
875
00:52:12.719 --> 00:52:15.150
you need something, otherwise I'm going to trust you to
876
00:52:15.190 --> 00:52:17.750
do it. Last thing I'll say, I also try to
877
00:52:18.409 --> 00:52:22.269
trust loudly. That is not just say, hey, why didn't
878
00:52:22.309 --> 00:52:24.269
you do this entire project and just come to me
879
00:52:24.309 --> 00:52:27.570
whenever you need help? It's why don't you take the
880
00:52:27.590 --> 00:52:31.860
first major steps, the creative steps in this project, come
881
00:52:31.889 --> 00:52:34.119
to me if you need help with anything. But the
882
00:52:34.159 --> 00:52:37.059
reason I'm telling you to start is because I know
883
00:52:37.119 --> 00:52:39.420
you can do it, right? Because I've seen your work
884
00:52:39.480 --> 00:52:41.280
so far and I really believe that you have the
885
00:52:41.320 --> 00:52:45.000
capacity to do this. I'm trusting you because you've given
886
00:52:45.039 --> 00:52:48.320
me enough evidence to trust you already. I think that
887
00:52:48.449 --> 00:52:51.949
we've talked about this reciprocity, this earned trust that people
888
00:52:52.429 --> 00:52:55.309
step up to meet your expectations. They do so even
889
00:52:55.349 --> 00:52:58.929
more if you make those expectations clear, right? If you
890
00:52:58.989 --> 00:53:02.090
say them out loud instead of letting them sit inside
891
00:53:02.130 --> 00:53:02.489
your mind.
892
00:53:05.650 --> 00:53:07.809
So that's what you did. You mentioned there may be
893
00:53:07.849 --> 00:53:09.829
some things that the rest of us could consider.
894
00:53:10.829 --> 00:53:14.630
Yeah, I think that this loud trust is really quite important,
895
00:53:15.150 --> 00:53:18.929
especially anybody in leadership. We might trust people more than
896
00:53:18.949 --> 00:53:21.630
they even know that we do. And people might feel
897
00:53:21.650 --> 00:53:24.429
really skittish around us. And so it's important, I think,
898
00:53:24.510 --> 00:53:28.530
to be pretty explicit about your belief in people, especially
899
00:53:28.570 --> 00:53:31.599
when you're acting in a way that shows that belief.
900
00:53:32.989 --> 00:53:36.170
Another sort of general principle that we can draw from
901
00:53:36.269 --> 00:53:39.469
the values statement that my lab did is to help
902
00:53:39.530 --> 00:53:43.960
people see each other's principles. I work with a lot
903
00:53:44.000 --> 00:53:48.280
of communities, school systems, hospital systems, companies. And one of
904
00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:50.400
the first things that I do, let's say that they
905
00:53:50.440 --> 00:53:54.199
want to build a more collaborative culture, is I'll survey
906
00:53:54.260 --> 00:53:57.010
them anonymously. And I'll say, how much do you want
907
00:53:57.510 --> 00:54:00.699
collaboration to be at the center of your work? And
908
00:54:00.739 --> 00:54:03.250
how much do you think the average person in this
909
00:54:03.289 --> 00:54:06.849
community wants that? And every single time, Dan, I get
910
00:54:07.030 --> 00:54:14.630
completely different answers. Secretly, people desperately yearn for collaboration, for empathy,
911
00:54:14.730 --> 00:54:18.659
for connection, but they don't realize that everybody else is
912
00:54:18.739 --> 00:54:22.219
secretly yearning for that as well. So we sort of
913
00:54:22.280 --> 00:54:27.420
hide oftentimes the more positive qualities that we have because
914
00:54:27.480 --> 00:54:33.719
they seem cringeworthy. or weird. And through our hiding, we
915
00:54:33.760 --> 00:54:36.260
induce everybody else around us to hide theirs as well.
916
00:54:36.860 --> 00:54:39.260
So one of the things that I encourage people to
917
00:54:39.300 --> 00:54:42.079
do is to unhide those qualities. And a good way
918
00:54:42.119 --> 00:54:45.440
to do that is by collecting data. Again, I think
919
00:54:45.460 --> 00:54:51.869
that hope and skepticism and positivity, they sound so silly
920
00:54:52.150 --> 00:54:54.170
and warm and fuzzy. And I know, Dan, you feel
921
00:54:54.210 --> 00:54:56.809
this way sometimes about things that you learn about meditation
922
00:54:56.849 --> 00:54:58.929
and happiness. And I feel the same way about some
923
00:54:58.949 --> 00:55:02.510
things that I study, and they seem silly because they
924
00:55:02.550 --> 00:55:05.880
seem like they're counterculture. Like that's not what people want,
925
00:55:06.079 --> 00:55:08.900
but it is what people want. So collecting data, again,
926
00:55:08.960 --> 00:55:12.099
being empirical and showing people, hey, did you know that
927
00:55:12.199 --> 00:55:14.559
if you look around you, nine out of 10 people
928
00:55:14.579 --> 00:55:18.239
in this room want more connection and collaboration. That's an
929
00:55:18.260 --> 00:55:20.440
incredibly powerful experience for people to have.
930
00:55:22.510 --> 00:55:24.769
Well, that kind of gets me to another sort of
931
00:55:24.929 --> 00:55:28.840
action point in the book, which pertains to how it's
932
00:55:28.860 --> 00:55:33.659
kind of citizenship, how we can orient toward current events
933
00:55:33.840 --> 00:55:36.039
in whatever society we happen to live. You and I
934
00:55:36.079 --> 00:55:39.239
are recording this in the midst of an incredibly tumultuous
935
00:55:39.460 --> 00:55:42.699
presidential campaign in the United States, and we're not going
936
00:55:42.719 --> 00:55:45.989
to get too into the details on that if you're
937
00:55:46.010 --> 00:55:48.070
listening to this at some point in the future and
938
00:55:48.449 --> 00:55:51.090
that race has ended. But it's always tumultuous somewhere, and
939
00:55:51.110 --> 00:55:55.730
it's actually probably always tumultuous to some degree or another everywhere.
940
00:55:56.099 --> 00:55:59.070
So let's talk about polarization. You have this term, or
941
00:55:59.389 --> 00:56:02.869
you mentioned this term, false polarization, which kind of rhymes
942
00:56:02.929 --> 00:56:05.090
with what you were talking about there in your surveys
943
00:56:05.110 --> 00:56:08.329
that you do internally at Corporate Cultures, is that we
944
00:56:08.389 --> 00:56:11.949
tend to think that the opposite tribe is more extreme
945
00:56:12.050 --> 00:56:14.969
on the issues than it actually is. Can you say
946
00:56:15.010 --> 00:56:15.880
a little bit more about that?
947
00:56:16.889 --> 00:56:21.519
Yeah, absolutely. And so let's be clear that there is
948
00:56:21.960 --> 00:56:25.860
enormous and growing and very troubling division in in the
949
00:56:25.960 --> 00:56:28.679
US and around the world. So to say that there
950
00:56:28.719 --> 00:56:31.000
is such a thing as false polarization is not the
951
00:56:31.039 --> 00:56:36.460
same as saying that polarization is imaginary. It's real and
952
00:56:36.719 --> 00:56:39.440
we also imagine it to be much more intense than
953
00:56:39.480 --> 00:56:42.559
it is. And when we imagine division to be more
954
00:56:42.599 --> 00:56:45.300
intense than it is, it's because we imagine, as you said,
955
00:56:45.909 --> 00:56:49.409
the other, whoever that is for us, to be much
956
00:56:49.469 --> 00:56:53.050
more extreme than they really are. So research suggests or
957
00:56:53.110 --> 00:56:55.719
finds that if you ask people, and this is mostly
958
00:56:55.760 --> 00:56:57.860
done in the US, so I want to be clear about,
959
00:56:57.940 --> 00:56:59.960
we have a lot of evidence about the US and
960
00:56:59.980 --> 00:57:01.860
then some about the rest of the world, but a
961
00:57:01.900 --> 00:57:03.119
lot of what I'll be talking about is in an
962
00:57:03.159 --> 00:57:07.219
American context. So if you ask US Democrats and Republicans,
963
00:57:07.579 --> 00:57:11.760
what does the average person you disagree with think? They
964
00:57:12.099 --> 00:57:16.420
will give answers that actually represent the 80th percentile of
965
00:57:16.460 --> 00:57:19.039
the other group. So in other words, if you ask me,
966
00:57:19.380 --> 00:57:21.480
what does the average person on the other side feel?
967
00:57:21.920 --> 00:57:25.610
I tell you something that only the most extreme 20%
968
00:57:25.610 --> 00:57:28.550
of people on the other side actually feel. And it's
969
00:57:28.570 --> 00:57:33.230
not just our opinions about specific issues. We also imagine
970
00:57:33.269 --> 00:57:38.090
that the other side is about twice as hateful of
971
00:57:38.210 --> 00:57:41.230
us as they really are. We think the other side
972
00:57:41.769 --> 00:57:46.420
is about twice as willing to overthrow democratic norms as
973
00:57:46.440 --> 00:57:49.099
they actually are. And we think that the other side
974
00:57:49.119 --> 00:57:53.409
is four times more more supportive of political violence than
975
00:57:53.429 --> 00:57:58.280
they really are. These are scary realities. For one, they're
976
00:57:58.300 --> 00:58:01.219
scary in our minds, right? I mean, reading these data,
977
00:58:01.239 --> 00:58:04.940
I think, wow, my goodness, people who imagine a person
978
00:58:04.980 --> 00:58:08.809
they disagree with are really thinking about quite a frightening person,
979
00:58:09.670 --> 00:58:11.690
quite a frightening group of people. And this is, again,
980
00:58:11.710 --> 00:58:14.690
not to say that there are not really scary and
981
00:58:14.730 --> 00:58:17.590
extreme people in our political environment. Of course there are.
982
00:58:18.349 --> 00:58:21.889
The question is not Are there terrible people or people
983
00:58:21.949 --> 00:58:26.309
who have really extreme and even violent tendencies? The question is,
984
00:58:26.769 --> 00:58:31.219
is that most people? And we're answering that question incorrectly
985
00:58:31.519 --> 00:58:34.500
as a culture, right? We tend to imagine that way
986
00:58:34.539 --> 00:58:37.280
more people are extreme and violent than they really are.
987
00:58:37.320 --> 00:58:41.679
And the scary thing about that to me is this, again,
988
00:58:41.780 --> 00:58:46.789
idea of self-fulfilling prophecies. Because when you imagine that the
989
00:58:47.010 --> 00:58:51.510
other side is extreme and violent, that forecloses on any
990
00:58:51.570 --> 00:58:57.079
possibility of productive conversation, of compromise, and of peace, which
991
00:58:57.380 --> 00:59:02.099
it turns out a super majority of Americans want desperately, right?
992
00:59:02.219 --> 00:59:04.380
We are very divided, but in my lab, we find
993
00:59:04.420 --> 00:59:08.449
that more than 80% of Americans also despise how divided
994
00:59:08.489 --> 00:59:12.340
we are and wish that there was more opportunity for compromise.
995
00:59:13.000 --> 00:59:15.739
But when we imagine the other side is terrible, that
996
00:59:15.780 --> 00:59:19.449
opportunity disappears. And I think that's a tragedy because there
997
00:59:19.769 --> 00:59:23.050
is so much that we have in common, but we
998
00:59:23.090 --> 00:59:25.869
obscure that through our cynicism in a way that ends
999
00:59:25.909 --> 00:59:26.809
up making things worse.
1000
00:59:28.670 --> 00:59:30.800
So the The question I'm coming to, and I suspect
1001
00:59:30.820 --> 00:59:32.760
a lot of people are coming to, is, so what
1002
00:59:32.780 --> 00:59:35.360
do we do about this? And you have a whole
1003
00:59:35.400 --> 00:59:39.199
long section about how to be better at disagreeing with
1004
00:59:39.340 --> 00:59:44.210
other people. What specific advice can you give? Because this
1005
00:59:44.269 --> 00:59:47.349
may be very relevant to people's, both the conversations they're
1006
00:59:47.369 --> 00:59:49.909
having in their mind with people they're disagreeing with, but
1007
00:59:50.010 --> 00:59:52.449
also the conversations they may be having with their family
1008
00:59:52.489 --> 00:59:54.710
members around the dining room table.
1009
00:59:55.530 --> 00:59:58.539
Well, actually... think that a lot of people are avoiding
1010
00:59:58.579 --> 00:59:59.559
those conversations.
1011
00:59:59.760 --> 01:00:00.400
That's true too.
1012
01:00:00.900 --> 01:00:06.070
There's this incredible study where scientists use geotagging information from
1013
01:00:06.170 --> 01:00:10.789
phones on Thanksgiving of 2016. You might recall that that
1014
01:00:10.829 --> 01:00:14.929
was a politically charged time as well. And what these
1015
01:00:15.110 --> 01:00:18.730
researchers looked at is whether people in driving to Thanksgiving
1016
01:00:18.789 --> 01:00:22.630
dinner crossed between a county that had voted blue in
1017
01:00:22.650 --> 01:00:26.099
the election to one that had voted red, or vice versa?
1018
01:00:26.159 --> 01:00:29.360
In other words, are you going to enemy territory for
1019
01:00:29.380 --> 01:00:33.530
Thanksgiving dinner? And they found that when people crossed political
1020
01:00:33.590 --> 01:00:36.469
lines to go to Thanksgiving dinner versus when they didn't,
1021
01:00:36.769 --> 01:00:42.449
they left 50 minutes earlier. So you've got people sacrificing pie.
1022
01:00:42.469 --> 01:00:46.050
I mean, pie of all things. They're letting go of
1023
01:00:46.110 --> 01:00:49.920
pie in order to not talk with somebody they disagree with.
1024
01:00:50.119 --> 01:00:54.099
And I think the first step in disagreeing better is
1025
01:00:54.139 --> 01:00:57.500
to have a better view of disagreeing. We think of
1026
01:00:57.579 --> 01:01:02.139
it as this really frightening, necessarily toxic thing. We imagine
1027
01:01:02.179 --> 01:01:05.690
that these conversations are gonna be horrible and threatening and
1028
01:01:05.750 --> 01:01:08.849
that no one will learn anything. In fact, in my lab,
1029
01:01:08.889 --> 01:01:11.150
we have a study where we ask people, what do
1030
01:01:11.190 --> 01:01:14.289
you think will happen if a Republican and Democrat come
1031
01:01:14.329 --> 01:01:17.789
together and talk about political issues? And generally, people think
1032
01:01:17.889 --> 01:01:21.409
either nothing will change or they think things will get worse.
1033
01:01:21.949 --> 01:01:24.989
People will despise each other even more after a conversation
1034
01:01:25.030 --> 01:01:28.389
than they did before. Well, we then also have people
1035
01:01:28.510 --> 01:01:31.489
engage in these conversations. We had this study where we
1036
01:01:31.510 --> 01:01:35.159
brought people together on Zoom to talk, again, about things
1037
01:01:35.199 --> 01:01:38.460
they disagree on, not about how the weather is. And
1038
01:01:38.480 --> 01:01:42.380
we find that after those conversations, people, when we asked
1039
01:01:42.420 --> 01:01:44.780
them to rate how pleasant was that conversation on a
1040
01:01:44.760 --> 01:01:48.320
1 to 100 scale, the most common response we get
1041
01:01:48.340 --> 01:01:53.440
is 100. Hmm. People are shocked at how positive these
1042
01:01:53.480 --> 01:01:57.699
conversations are and how reasonable people on the other side are.
1043
01:01:58.280 --> 01:02:01.980
So again, I think that just if we open ourselves
1044
01:02:02.019 --> 01:02:05.619
to having a disagreement, it will already be better than
1045
01:02:05.639 --> 01:02:09.340
we think it is. That said, there are also tools
1046
01:02:09.380 --> 01:02:13.719
we can use in those disagreements to point them in
1047
01:02:13.739 --> 01:02:23.619
a and get to people's stories. When I find myself
1048
01:02:23.659 --> 01:02:26.559
in a disagreement these days, it's usually, I don't know why,
1049
01:02:26.599 --> 01:02:28.900
it's usually with an uncle. I feel like everybody disagrees
1050
01:02:28.940 --> 01:02:31.670
with their uncle. Everybody's got a Facebook uncle that they
1051
01:02:31.710 --> 01:02:35.090
disagree with. And when I enter a conversation with somebody,
1052
01:02:35.110 --> 01:02:37.989
I realize that we disagree on something. I try my
1053
01:02:38.050 --> 01:02:42.250
best to turn down my sense of threat and turn
1054
01:02:42.289 --> 01:02:45.050
up my sense of curiosity, not about the person's opinion,
1055
01:02:46.099 --> 01:02:48.949
but about themselves. And I say, wow, How did you
1056
01:02:49.030 --> 01:02:52.280
start to feel that way? What's the origin story of
1057
01:02:52.340 --> 01:02:55.860
your perspective on this? And I find that that disarms
1058
01:02:55.900 --> 01:02:59.840
people enormously and makes them much more willing to share
1059
01:03:00.019 --> 01:03:03.199
and then to listen to me. Another thing I try
1060
01:03:03.239 --> 01:03:07.420
to do is to point out common ground when I
1061
01:03:07.480 --> 01:03:11.840
find some and to make sure that we at least
1062
01:03:12.000 --> 01:03:14.429
agree on what we disagree about. I think a lot
1063
01:03:14.449 --> 01:03:18.469
of times people... disagree about what a conflict even is,
1064
01:03:19.090 --> 01:03:21.449
which makes it much harder to have a productive one.
1065
01:03:21.550 --> 01:03:23.639
So I think setting out and being real clear, wait,
1066
01:03:23.920 --> 01:03:27.420
am I understanding you correctly? So that type of curiosity
1067
01:03:27.480 --> 01:03:30.400
on somebody's opinion, on where it came from, and then
1068
01:03:31.039 --> 01:03:33.099
being open to point out, hey, actually, I think we
1069
01:03:33.159 --> 01:03:37.000
do agree on XYZ, but not so much on ABC.
1070
01:03:37.519 --> 01:03:40.039
All of these tools, it turns out, which are known
1071
01:03:40.119 --> 01:03:45.429
as conversational receptiveness, can make for not just friendlier disagreements,
1072
01:03:46.300 --> 01:03:48.599
but more productive ones. What do I mean by productive?
1073
01:03:49.119 --> 01:03:51.860
Meaning that people actually do discover things that they share
1074
01:03:51.920 --> 01:03:57.329
in common. And when we are conversationally open, we turn
1075
01:03:57.389 --> 01:04:00.150
out to learn more from somebody else, but they also
1076
01:04:00.590 --> 01:04:03.789
turn out to learn more from us. So these are
1077
01:04:03.829 --> 01:04:06.289
all tools that I think many of us are very
1078
01:04:06.389 --> 01:04:09.650
reticent to use because we have this sense that any
1079
01:04:09.730 --> 01:04:12.849
conversation between people who disagree is going to be toxic
1080
01:04:12.909 --> 01:04:15.409
or is even a betrayal of our own side. And
1081
01:04:16.090 --> 01:04:17.789
I'd love for people to let go of that.
1082
01:04:19.050 --> 01:04:21.369
I'm going to list four of the rules for good
1083
01:04:21.710 --> 01:04:25.500
disagreement you list in the book. Some of them you've
1084
01:04:25.519 --> 01:04:27.860
already mentioned, but I just want to list them all
1085
01:04:27.940 --> 01:04:30.000
so that people have them. And then also, if there's
1086
01:04:30.039 --> 01:04:32.619
more you want to add, I'm very open to hearing it. One,
1087
01:04:32.800 --> 01:04:36.739
good disagreeers ask questions instead of making statements. Two, they
1088
01:04:36.780 --> 01:04:39.670
work to get underneath people's opinions to their stories, which
1089
01:04:39.690 --> 01:04:43.730
you referenced. Three, when they spot common ground, good disagreeers
1090
01:04:43.969 --> 01:04:47.530
name it. Four, When they're unsure about something, they say
1091
01:04:47.590 --> 01:04:49.789
so rather than pretending to be confident.
1092
01:04:51.289 --> 01:04:55.030
Much more succinct than I was. But yes, those are
1093
01:04:55.050 --> 01:05:00.010
exactly the principles of conversational receptiveness. And yeah, I do
1094
01:05:00.030 --> 01:05:04.650
want to double click on this idea that I think
1095
01:05:04.710 --> 01:05:11.070
oftentimes even expressing openness itself has gotten a bad rap.
1096
01:05:11.929 --> 01:05:14.139
There's this sense that we have that if I listen
1097
01:05:14.179 --> 01:05:19.349
to somebody I'm platforming them or I'm condoning their view
1098
01:05:19.989 --> 01:05:23.659
or I'm even losing the argument. I'm betraying my own
1099
01:05:23.760 --> 01:05:27.579
side by even listening to somebody who I disagree with.
1100
01:05:28.460 --> 01:05:33.380
That I think is an understandable but deeply unproductive way
1101
01:05:33.639 --> 01:05:37.639
to disagree, especially because we are so wrong about the
1102
01:05:37.739 --> 01:05:40.579
average person that we disagree with. I see this a
1103
01:05:40.639 --> 01:05:43.260
lot in our culture these days that listening itself is
1104
01:05:44.139 --> 01:05:46.760
seems to have gotten a negative reputation and it's a
1105
01:05:46.780 --> 01:05:50.059
real problem if there's one thing that i want to
1106
01:05:50.239 --> 01:05:52.809
yell from the rooftops it's that we need to be
1107
01:05:52.989 --> 01:05:54.670
at the very least i'm not saying that you have
1108
01:05:54.690 --> 01:05:57.710
to agree with anybody or decide that they're right at
1109
01:05:57.889 --> 01:06:01.139
all but at the very least we have to reclaim
1110
01:06:01.380 --> 01:06:05.199
openness and and curiosity as virtues as.
1111
01:06:05.179 --> 01:06:09.340
Opposed to vices yes I sometimes think, and I've referenced
1112
01:06:09.440 --> 01:06:11.880
it before in the show, I sometimes think about a
1113
01:06:12.019 --> 01:06:14.480
tweet from Ian Bremmer, who's a political scientist. I believe
1114
01:06:14.900 --> 01:06:18.500
that's his title. Ian, if I screwed that up, I apologize. Anyway,
1115
01:06:18.519 --> 01:06:21.010
I admire Ian, and he had a tweet or X
1116
01:06:21.119 --> 01:06:23.010
or whatever you want to call it that said, if
1117
01:06:23.070 --> 01:06:27.070
you're only following people who you agree with, you're doing
1118
01:06:27.110 --> 01:06:32.469
it wrong. I really try to consume across the ideological spectrum,
1119
01:06:32.510 --> 01:06:34.369
and I recommend it to everybody. It can be frustrating,
1120
01:06:34.409 --> 01:06:38.210
but it's good for you. Can you settle a friendly
1121
01:06:38.230 --> 01:06:40.369
debate I've been having with my friend, Michael? I'm not
1122
01:06:40.389 --> 01:06:42.690
going to use Michael's last name because I didn't ask
1123
01:06:43.030 --> 01:06:47.489
for permission, but Michael and I, he keeps asking me
1124
01:06:48.159 --> 01:06:51.099
two things. One, like how do I convince people to
1125
01:06:51.159 --> 01:06:53.820
meditate who don't want to meditate? And two, how do
1126
01:06:53.880 --> 01:06:57.059
I talk to people with whom I disagree politically? He
1127
01:06:57.079 --> 01:06:59.260
and I seem to have the same views politically. And
1128
01:06:59.420 --> 01:07:02.130
when we're encountering somebody who disagrees with us, how do
1129
01:07:02.170 --> 01:07:04.900
I talk about it? And I keep telling him, I
1130
01:07:05.000 --> 01:07:07.590
try to do neither of those things. If I never
1131
01:07:07.710 --> 01:07:10.389
try to convince anybody to meditate, if somebody asks me
1132
01:07:10.449 --> 01:07:12.530
what my experiences are, I'll talk about it, but I
1133
01:07:12.570 --> 01:07:17.670
don't evangelize. And I have learned not to try to
1134
01:07:17.710 --> 01:07:20.699
talk people out of their points of view, but to
1135
01:07:20.739 --> 01:07:23.440
do more what you described, which is to get curious
1136
01:07:23.480 --> 01:07:26.019
about it. And if I'm asked, I'll say what my
1137
01:07:26.099 --> 01:07:28.480
points of view are, but not really in a dogmatic way,
1138
01:07:28.840 --> 01:07:31.840
even though I may believe them passionately. I just don't
1139
01:07:32.000 --> 01:07:34.619
think it's going to work to try to convince somebody
1140
01:07:34.659 --> 01:07:38.869
to see things my way. He actually, I think, agrees
1141
01:07:38.889 --> 01:07:40.969
with me in part, but he's like a dog with
1142
01:07:41.010 --> 01:07:44.369
a bone. I think part of him thinks that, in fact,
1143
01:07:44.409 --> 01:07:47.090
he has said to me, you, Dan, are not helping enough.
1144
01:07:47.429 --> 01:07:49.389
You need to be more aggressive to try to get
1145
01:07:49.469 --> 01:07:52.210
people to change their points of view. And I want
1146
01:07:52.230 --> 01:07:54.570
to be open to his point of view in this conversation.
1147
01:07:54.630 --> 01:07:56.690
So I'm throwing it to you as the arbiter.
1148
01:07:56.710 --> 01:08:01.630
It sounds like Michael has a certain missionary zeal, right?
1149
01:08:01.670 --> 01:08:05.329
That there's this sense that I've discovered something. It's a
1150
01:08:05.409 --> 01:08:08.329
crime not to share it with the world. And even
1151
01:08:08.389 --> 01:08:11.070
if the world isn't listening, I have to make them listen, right?
1152
01:08:11.110 --> 01:08:12.570
And I think a lot of us feel that way
1153
01:08:12.630 --> 01:08:15.570
about what we've discovered in our lives. I certainly feel
1154
01:08:15.610 --> 01:08:19.439
that way about hopeful skepticism, but I think that it's,
1155
01:08:20.439 --> 01:08:24.039
I would say, Dan, that the data fall more on
1156
01:08:24.060 --> 01:08:26.779
the side that you're expressing, which is that when we
1157
01:08:27.159 --> 01:08:31.079
try to convince somebody of something, they can tell that
1158
01:08:31.100 --> 01:08:34.460
we're trying to convince them of something. And that puts
1159
01:08:34.539 --> 01:08:38.279
up people's walls more quickly than almost any other conversational
1160
01:08:38.819 --> 01:08:41.670
experience they can have, right? When somebody is trying to
1161
01:08:41.770 --> 01:08:45.470
do something to your mind, a natural response is to
1162
01:08:45.510 --> 01:08:49.170
resist that, right? It turns out that that's true of
1163
01:08:49.350 --> 01:08:52.689
politics as well. There's a bunch of research on something
1164
01:08:52.710 --> 01:08:57.710
known as deep canvassing. This is a technique where canvassers,
1165
01:08:58.069 --> 01:08:59.949
you've heard of this, right? They go door to door
1166
01:09:00.010 --> 01:09:03.270
or phone to phone and they do the opposite of
1167
01:09:03.310 --> 01:09:06.069
what canvassers usually do, right? Typically a canvasser comes to
1168
01:09:06.100 --> 01:09:09.140
your door and they say, do you support issue X?
1169
01:09:09.619 --> 01:09:12.060
And you say, yes. And they say, okay, good. Or
1170
01:09:12.100 --> 01:09:14.600
you say no. And they say, how dare you? Here's
1171
01:09:14.600 --> 01:09:18.220
40 statistics and 90 facts that will make you feel
1172
01:09:18.260 --> 01:09:23.109
terrible for not supporting issue X and kind of browbeat
1173
01:09:23.149 --> 01:09:28.819
you into submission, right? This is sort of conversational wrestling
1174
01:09:28.899 --> 01:09:31.460
pin of sorts that they try to put you into.
1175
01:09:32.079 --> 01:09:35.260
That turns out to be much less effective than deep canvassing,
1176
01:09:35.319 --> 01:09:38.670
which is almost the opposite, right? Deep canvassers show up
1177
01:09:38.710 --> 01:09:40.909
and they say, hey, how do you feel about issue X?
1178
01:09:41.489 --> 01:09:43.869
And you tell them and they say, that's super interesting.
1179
01:09:44.010 --> 01:09:46.729
Tell me more about why you feel that way. What's
1180
01:09:46.750 --> 01:09:49.239
your story? Have you had an experience that led you
1181
01:09:49.279 --> 01:09:53.479
to feel this way? And then after you share your experience,
1182
01:09:53.659 --> 01:09:56.369
they share their experience. They say, that's really interesting. Would
1183
01:09:56.390 --> 01:09:58.529
it be okay for me to tell you about what
1184
01:09:58.550 --> 01:10:02.689
I've been through? And reciprocity being what it is, once
1185
01:10:02.729 --> 01:10:05.189
somebody listens to you, you feel much more inclined to
1186
01:10:05.229 --> 01:10:09.380
listen to them and canvassers then share their story. That
1187
01:10:09.699 --> 01:10:13.739
type of canvassing is much more compelling and is much
1188
01:10:13.779 --> 01:10:16.739
more likely to actually change people's attitudes than So in
1189
01:10:16.779 --> 01:10:19.279
a deep irony, one of the best ways to not
1190
01:10:19.319 --> 01:10:22.260
change somebody's mind is to try. And one of the
1191
01:10:22.300 --> 01:10:25.460
best ways to change somebody's mind is to not try.
1192
01:10:26.520 --> 01:10:30.189
Take that, Michael. I hope I'm changing your mind. Jamil,
1193
01:10:30.210 --> 01:10:31.829
this has been a pleasure. We only have a few
1194
01:10:31.850 --> 01:10:33.970
minutes left, and I have a few sort of final
1195
01:10:34.010 --> 01:10:36.890
questions I like to ask people. One is, was there
1196
01:10:36.930 --> 01:10:38.590
something you were hoping to talk about that we didn't
1197
01:10:38.630 --> 01:10:41.390
get to? Yeah, yeah.
1198
01:10:41.750 --> 01:10:43.689
I do want to talk about one other thing. It's
1199
01:10:43.949 --> 01:10:47.310
quite related to the themes that we've discussed. I'm a parent.
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01:10:47.510 --> 01:10:50.390
You are as well. And I think a lot of
1201
01:10:51.550 --> 01:10:54.130
cynicism for me and a lot of my mission to
1202
01:10:54.229 --> 01:10:57.340
fight my own cynicism comes from my experience as a parent.
1203
01:10:57.489 --> 01:11:00.699
I think a lot of what we do as parents
1204
01:11:00.760 --> 01:11:03.520
is to try to protect our kids. And I think
1205
01:11:04.420 --> 01:11:08.039
that protectionism can get us to a place where we
1206
01:11:08.119 --> 01:11:11.729
make them cynical by accident. Before I started working on
1207
01:11:11.770 --> 01:11:15.779
this book, I noticed that I was telling my daughters
1208
01:11:15.840 --> 01:11:19.220
a lot about threatening things in their environment. We live
1209
01:11:19.239 --> 01:11:21.800
in a big city. I'm telling them, hey, watch out
1210
01:11:21.859 --> 01:11:25.479
for people, watch out for cars, which I stand by.
1211
01:11:25.500 --> 01:11:29.159
I realized that the story I was telling them about
1212
01:11:29.199 --> 01:11:34.520
the world was a story full of threats and human
1213
01:11:34.560 --> 01:11:39.899
threats in particular. And there's evidence that we are creating
1214
01:11:40.119 --> 01:11:45.090
inadvertently a very untrusting world. and very cynical generation, by
1215
01:11:45.229 --> 01:11:49.449
trying to protect kids, we are shrinking their abilities to trust.
1216
01:11:49.609 --> 01:11:53.090
And anyways, there's lots of ways to push against that,
1217
01:11:53.170 --> 01:11:56.109
many of which we've already talked about, but basically applying
1218
01:11:56.170 --> 01:11:59.319
these same techniques of an open mind, leaps of faith,
1219
01:11:59.899 --> 01:12:04.020
and what I would call positive gossip, sharing positive information.
1220
01:12:04.039 --> 01:12:09.869
I think implementing that with the next generation is really important.
1221
01:12:11.989 --> 01:12:14.149
This is the final question. Can you remind everybody of
1222
01:12:14.170 --> 01:12:17.189
the name of your book and the book you wrote
1223
01:12:17.210 --> 01:12:19.390
before it and your website and where you are on
1224
01:12:19.409 --> 01:12:22.689
social media? Can you just plug everything, please? Sure.
1225
01:12:22.970 --> 01:12:26.409
My new book is called Hope for Cynics, The Surprising
1226
01:12:26.470 --> 01:12:29.979
Science of Human Goodness. Before that, I wrote a book
1227
01:12:30.100 --> 01:12:34.439
called The War for Kindness, Building Empathy in a Fractured World.
1228
01:12:35.000 --> 01:12:38.239
My lab is the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, and you
1229
01:12:38.260 --> 01:12:43.909
can find us at ssnl.stanford.edu. I'm on social media a
1230
01:12:43.949 --> 01:12:47.880
little bit. My drug of choice is the site formerly
1231
01:12:47.899 --> 01:12:50.500
known as Twitter. So you can find me there at
1232
01:12:50.720 --> 01:12:53.859
Zaki Jam, Z-A-K-I-J-A-M.
1233
01:12:56.319 --> 01:12:58.180
Thank you very much for coming on. Great job.
1234
01:12:59.239 --> 01:13:00.210
Dan, thanks so much for having me.
1235
01:13:04.239 --> 01:13:07.189
Thanks again to Dr. Jamil Zaki. Don't forget to check
1236
01:13:07.270 --> 01:13:10.029
out his new book, Hope for Cynics. Before I go,
1237
01:13:10.050 --> 01:13:12.590
I want to thank everybody who worked so incredibly hard
1238
01:13:12.609 --> 01:13:15.449
to make this show happen. Our producers are Tara Anderson,
1239
01:13:15.489 --> 01:13:18.909
Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is
1240
01:13:18.949 --> 01:13:21.350
handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren
1241
01:13:21.390 --> 01:13:25.350
Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer.
1242
01:13:25.369 --> 01:13:28.489
DJ Kashmir is our managing producer. And Nick Thorburn of
1243
01:13:28.510 --> 01:13:30.720
the band Islands wrote our theme.