In 'Hope for Cynics,' researcher explores how seeing the good in others is good for you

At Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory, scientists have spent years studying kindness, connection and empathy. But those can all seem in short supply at a time of deep divisions. But the head of that lab offers a data-driven reason to be hopeful about each other and the future. Amna Nawaz spoke with Jamil Zaki about his latest book, “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.”

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Amna Nawaz: At Stanford’s Social Neuroscience Laboratory, scientists have spent years studying kindness, connection, and empathy. But those can all seem in short supply at a time of deep divisions and uncertainty.

The head of that lab, Jamil Zaki, offers a different view, a data-driven reason to be hopeful about each other and the future.

I spoke with Zaki recently about his latest book called “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.”

Jamil Zaki, welcome to the “News Hour.” Thanks for being here.

Jamil Zaki, Author, “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness”: Thank you for having me.

Amna Nawaz: So you have been studying human goodness and kindness for 20 years, which seems like a great job. But you wrote in this book that, even over the last 10 or 15 years, you yourself started to lose hope.

You said: “I could recite evidence about kindness from my lab and a dozen others. But as the world seemed to grow greedier and more hostile, my instincts refused to follow the science.”

This is probably something a lot of people can relate to. So describe for us, what was it you were feeling?

Jamil Zaki: Well, it is a cool job, first of all, to study human goodness. And I think because of that, I have become a little bit of an unofficial ambassador for humanity’s better angels.

People ask me to speak or write when they want to feel good about our species. But I can tell you studying something isn’t always the same as feeling it.

Amna Nawaz: Yes.

Jamil Zaki: And, for me, especially during the early pandemic in lockdown, when I was experiencing humanity mostly through screens, I started to really feel as though no matter how much I looked at the science, I felt as though people were selfish and dishonest.

I felt a split between my job and myself.

Amna Nawaz: You talk about that cynicism, right, as a lack of faith in our fellow humans. You also talk about it as a tool of the status quo. What does that mean? Who benefits from cynicism?

Jamil Zaki: Yes, so cynicism, again, is the theory that people are selfish, greedy and dishonest. It’s on the rise. And a lot of people say, well, maybe that’s good because cynics might be radicals who hold power to account.

It turns out the opposite is true. Cynics see social problems, but they don’t see any solutions. And if you think that our problems represent who we really are, why do anything about it? So cynics end up voting less often than non-cynics, protesting less often. And, in fact, the people who benefit from a population that doesn’t trust itself are often autocrats and authoritarians.

That’s why I call it a tool of the status quo.

Amna Nawaz: You also document, and there’s a lot of data to back this up in your book, real-world physical and social benefits to living in low-cynicism, high-trust societies. What are those benefits? What have you found?

Jamil Zaki: They really occur at every level.

So trust is our willingness to be vulnerable to other people. And it’s crucial to building important relationships in our lives, to having nourishing communities that help us feel happier and less stressed, but also to having communities that function, for instance, civically and economically.

So it turns out that from individuals, to families, to organizations, to culture writ large, trust helps us operate, helps us succeed. And cynicism disintegrates that.

Amna Nawaz: I think here in the U.S., especially around now, we’re talking about that cynicism and those divides we see along political lines, just how people have sorted.

You write about that in your book, and you say: “During the same era in which Americans lost trust in one another, they grew contempt for people with whom we disagree. In 1980, U.S. Republicans and Democrats felt lots of warmth towards their own party, neutral about the other. By 2020, each party disliked the other side more than they liked their own.”

So you and your colleagues at the lab in 2022 brought together 100 Americans, basically, who disagreed and had them engage in random Zoom calls with each other to talk about really difficult things. What did you find?

Jamil Zaki: Well, first of all, we are divided, and I don’t want to diminish that. There is so much disagreement and a lot of really dangerous division in our nation as well.

But the divisions in our mind are much larger than they are in reality.

Amna Nawaz: What does that mean?

Jamil Zaki: Well, it turns out, if you ask Democrats and Republicans, what does the average person you disagree with think, what do they want, what do they like, we are wrong on every — on nearly every measure.

We think that the average person we disagree with is far more extreme than they really are. We think that they are twice as antidemocratic, twice as hateful, and four times as violent as they really are. In many ways, we are fighting phantoms because we don’t interact with people we disagree with as much as we used to.

So in our lab, we tried to change that. We brought people together for these conversations, things like climate change and gun rights. And we asked them to predict, how do you think these conversations will go? And they said, somewhere between neutral to poorly.

We then had them have these conversations and asked, how did that go on a scale of zero to 100 in terms of pleasantness? And the most common response we got was 100. People loved connecting. They were shocked by how open-minded, warm, and interested in them the person the other side was.

Amna Nawaz: You advocate for this, this idea of taking leaps of faith over and over again in the book. What does that mean? How can people do that?

Jamil Zaki: The data are really clear. People are overall more trustworthy, kinder, more open-minded, and friendlier than we realize they are.

Of course, there are people who do harm out there, but the average person underestimates the average person. And what that means is that when we give people a chance to show us who they are, by putting those little leaps of faith, those small acts of trust into them, oftentimes, we’re pleasantly surprised by what they give back.

Amna Nawaz: You start the book with your own crisis of hope, as it were. Where are you now?

Jamil Zaki: I would consider myself a recovering cynic, not recovered.

This practicing hope takes time, the same way that practicing running or yoga takes time. It takes effort, but most things that are worth it do.

Amna Nawaz: The book is “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.” The author is Jamil Zaki.

Thank you so much for being here.

Jamil Zaki: Thank you.