Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Surprising Science of Human Goodness | Psychologist, Dr. Jamil Zaki

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

There's an age-old question: Are humans fundamentally good or evil? Are we hardwired towards greed and cynicism... or towards compassion and goodness?Our guest today, Dr. Jamil Zaki, is a leading psychologist and empathy researcher who has dedicated his career to exploring this question. He believes that humans are fundamentally good – and he has the science to back it up.Jamil is at the forefront of research at Stanford's Social Neuroscience Lab, where he's exploring how we understand emotions, conform to social norms, and choose to do good.Cynicism is on the rise in the United States, and Jamil refers to this rising tide as a disease. But the good news? There is hope for a cure.His latest book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, lays out a practical roadmap to transform cynicism into hopeful skepticism—an approach that could make our world a better place.In this conversation, we dive deep into actionable strategies to build trust and empathy, like "social savoring" and "positive gossip." If you’re looking to create lasting positive change in your life and those around you, this episode is for you._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Is it stopping you from becoming the person you want to be? I'm not asking you to put on rose colored glasses. I just want you to realize that you're probably wearing mud-colored glasses right now. And skepticism is just an attempt to take them off. There's an age-old question. Are humans fundamentally good or evil? Are we hardwired towards greed and cynicism or towards compassion and goodness?

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. Our guest today, Dr. Jamil Zaki, is a leading psychologist and empathy researcher who has dedicated his career to exploring this question. Jamil is at the forefront of research at Stanford's Social Neuroscience Lab, where he's exploring how we understand emotions, conform to social norms, and choose to do good. In a world where cynicism seems to be on the rise, Jamil offers a different perspective, empathy as a remedy. His latest book, Hope for Cynics,

The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, lays out a practical roadmap to transform cynicism into hopeful skepticism, an approach that could make our world a bit better. If you're looking to create lasting positive change in your life and those around you, this episode is for you. So with that, let's dive right into this conversation with Dr. Jamil Zaki. Jamil, it's a real pleasure to have you on Finding Mastery. I have loved your work on

empathy and now cynicism. And like, this is awesome. Like your work at the neuroscience lab at Stanford is world-class. So it's a real treat to have you on today. And this is awesome. Your work at the Neuroscience Lab at Stanford is world-class. So it's a real treat to have you on today. And just before we dive in, just let me check in, how are you doing? Well, first, thanks, Mike. The feeling is completely mutual. I love the show, and it's just a pleasure to be here. I'm in a reflective mood, which is very common for me in early July. I started my lab at Stanford 12 years and one week ago. So every year at around this time, I take stock and think about, one, how lucky I am to do the science that I do with people in my tiny community, and two, just what I've learned. And it's just a great time for me to think about how the passage of time works and how mysterious it feels.

I mean, very cool. I'm so glad that you responded in that way rather than just saying, yeah, I'm good. How are you? So just to get a sense of where you're at right now. So in a reflective, contemplative state, it sounds like. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. So let me just say congrats on this book, okay? Because I do want to talk about it. Hope for Cynics, it's like, one, I just want to talk about the title and subtitle, because I've loved every word. There's tension in almost every word. Hope for Cynics, it's really great. The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, it's really surprising the way

that you would put that. And I know how hard titling a book is. And so I just wanted to double click. How did the title come forward for you? You're right, first of all. And I know you know this, but titles are hard work. And I think for me, I wanted to capture the exact tension that you're referring to. And part of that tension for me is very personal. So as you know, Mike, for a long time, I've studied the science of human goodness in one way or another.

My lab and I study empathy, compassion, kindness, togetherness, you name it. When you study those things, you also end up studying their opposites. So we also study callousness and cruelty and loneliness. But in general, what we find is that people are enormously compassionate, that they value connection with each other over almost anything else in life, and that when we do for others, we also do for ourselves. So the punchline of our work is in essence that there's a lot of good in us and it does good for us. And being a sort of ambassador for that science over the last two decades, I think that in whatever small corner of the world people listen to me, I've become a sort of representative of that sort of positive glow, that sunny side of human nature. And yet this whole time I've lived with a secret, which is that I myself, although I believe the science fiercely, sometimes have a hard time feeling hopeful. I turn out to be secretly

quite cynical myself. So this title, Hope for Cynics, was kind of meant as an almost manifestation. I wanted to feel that I could have hope, that I could re-inject it in my life, even though ironically, that's never been very easy for me. So this book was just like most books. I wrote my book primarily from the experiment of my life, and I needed to write the book that I wrote for myself. And is that the same for you? Or did you write this for the rest of us as well? You know, there's a saying in research psychology, research is me-search, that psychologists come to their work because of an experience that they've had, which you might not say is true of, you know, subatomic physicists, right? It's not like somebody gets into physics

because they have a particular experience with a quark, you know, that makes them want to study that. But we, because we study people, often follow our intuitions and follow the things that have meant something to us in our lives. And that's certainly true of me. So I started studying cynicism because, especially during the early pandemic, I found myself falling into its quicksand more than ever. So I guess, to answer your question, I wrote it for me, but in the process of researching, or I started writing it for me rather, almost as an exercise in self-reflection. I didn't know it was going to be a book, but the more I learned and researched what cynicism is and what it's doing to us, I realized that it wasn't just for me because so many other people were suffering in the same way that I was.

Okay, so let's operationalize and just be on the same page. And maybe start with the state of the union for cynicism. How are we doing as a Western society? How are we doing globally? And operationalize, when you say cynicism, what do you mean? Yeah, thank you for that. So let's start with the definition. Cynicism is a theory that we might have about people. It's the idea that in general, humanity is selfish, greedy, and dishonest. And that when we do positive things, that's not really who we are at our core. Instead, our core is this sort of hyper Darwinian, selfish, red in tooth and claw sort of reality. Cynics, because that's their theory, live in different ways. They're less willing to trust others and judge others more easily. They suspect other people's motives.

So that's a sort of working definition. And certainly we can double click on that if you want. There's more to say there. You asked about the state of the union, and I know that the typical response in the state of the union address is that it's strong. I'm afraid that the state of the union for cynicism is bleak. And that's especially true, as you rightfully point out, in the Western world, but it's true around the world as well. So cynicism is on the rise. In 1972, about half of Americans believed

that most people can be trusted. And by 2018, that had fallen to about a third. So that's about the same amount of loss as the stock market took in the financial collapse of 2008. So we're going through a long and deep trust deficit in the US. And that's also true in most countries that psychologists have studied. So I guess you could say the state of cynicism is strong in that it's rising, but that might not be great for us as a species. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success.

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When I say the sticker, I meant the price sticker. Right. this a tarnish or there's a loss of innocence or there's a like there's a pitted stomach feeling when you finally learn that much of this has been a lie or you know at the at best you would say oh well they you know maybe I want to just keep this keep this going a little bit and like I get it but it's okay and it's really fun and this is just the parent's way to have some fun. And like, you know, and so it's not tragic in any way, but like it's on the lighter side, but it does, it's like this first moment where you say, Oh, what people say, this is at least my experience. What people say is not actually truthful. Yeah. And, um, I'm, I'm setting this up. like it scarred me. It didn't scar me.

But it was like, when I think back of why people would be a cynic, this is maybe setting up the path a little bit in a benign way. But in a more technical way, why do we become cynics? What happens? Are people let down by other folks is it a trauma response is it core to our dna that we are trying to find the land grab as opposed to um you know i'm going back to like our tribal days that um land and shelter were really important and so we need to go get it and we understood that other people were quote unquote competing at that same level. And we're not really tribal together. We're more individual competitors. So I just gave you a mouthful. But the simple question here is like, what's the glide path for somebody to be a cynic?

Yeah. I love the way that you framed this question in part because I have an eight-year-old and I'm seeing her go through these experiences of realizing that the world is different we think of it as a tree that's growing bigger in our culture, one of them is hereditary. So there is a heritable component to cynicism. If your parents are cynical, then you're likely to be cynical, even if they don't raise you, right? So it's not just about the environment that you're in. That said, the heritable component is pretty small. Well, wait, hold on. Okay, small. That's really surprising to me. I know. I would have for sure thought, because the research on pessimism, have you found... So the research I have on optimism, pessimism is that it's learned behaviors. And is cynicism and pessimism, are you finding the same thing, that there's some genetic

heredity component to it? Pessimism as well? Yeah, not as much. So let me be clear that the hereditary component for all of these constructs, optimism, pessimism, and cynicism is small relative to the environmental contribution. But that doesn't mean it's not there. So there's evidence, for instance, that identical twins versus fraternal twins, even though they're both raised by the same parents, identical twins are more likely to be a little bit closer in their levels of cynicism, which

suggests that it's not only environment. But that said, I would say the large majority of our cynicism comes from experience. And that comes from a couple of different places, both of which you really insightfully already called out. One I would say is what we could think of as trauma or betrayal of some sort. George Carlin famously said, scratch a cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist. And absolutely, that's true. their life don't feel like they can count on their caregivers are more likely to become cynical later on. A betrayal from a romantic partner, a parent or family member can raise our cynicism and lower our levels of trust for years to come. Being bullied can have a similar impact. So these personal experiences matter. But then I think that there's a bigger picture that you're also pointing to that resonates a lot with me, which is what do we learn about the rules of our social microclimates, of the cultures where we find ourselves? And it turns

out that I think that there are different rules that people learn depending on where they're being raised, the type of environment that they go to school in, the place that they work. And in some of those environments, we learn, hey, people are really selfish and competitive, and you need to look out for yourself. Think about somebody who's at a school, maybe in a lower socioeconomic setting, where they're not cared for, where people have to fend for themselves versus somebody who's going to a school where there's a low student to teacher ratio. And there's a lot of people paying attention to them and trying to help them flourish. There are different messages

that we get from our environment that can also shape our beliefs about people and our cynicism or sense of trust. So how do you separate low trust and cynicism? Yeah, I think that cynicism is a belief and trust is actually more a behavior. It's our willingness to be vulnerable to other people on the expectation that they'll do something, that they'll meet our expectations, that they'll step up and be there for us. So typically when we measure a cynicism, we ask people a bunch of questions. Do you think that in general people are trustworthy? Do you think when somebody does something kind, they do it out of the goodness of their heart? And when we measure trust, we ask them to do something. Hey, would you send some money to another participant in the study and see how much

they send you back? Would you confide a secret in somebody else? Run us through that study. It's a great study on trust. If you have $10 and you could give it away. Yeah. So we can do a round of this right here, Mike. So this is called the trust game and there's two players in it.

Typically, unlike us, they don't know each other, right? I immediately have high trust for you, but let's pretend that we're anonymous instead. So you, I'll put in the role of the investor and I'll be the trustee. So you as the investor, you have $10. You can send as much of that money as you want to me. And whatever you send to me will be tripled. I can then send as much of that money as you want to me. And whatever you send to me will be tripled. I can then send as much of what I end up with to you. So to put it in perspective, if you send all $10 to me, that will become $30 in my hand. If I then do the right thing and split that evenly, we will both end up with $15, much better than we could do without us trusting each other. If you choose to send nothing, you'll keep the $10,

but you won't get any more than that. If you choose to send me all 10, it becomes 30 in my hands. I could also send you back nothing. And then I do great and you lose out. So I guess I can ask you, given that setup, what would your intuition be playing this game, not with me, but with a stranger on the internet? How much do you think you would want to send? Okay. When I first was exposed to this, I said, oh, five. And I thought, no, I want to say eight. No, I want to say 10, but I think it's five. So that's where, and then my calculus was like, if I have five left, I could probably figure out, I'm pretty scrappy.

I could probably figure out how to do well with that five. So I'm not, so I don't feel totally vulnerable, but there's a vulnerability with that five. So I'm not, I'm not, you know, so I don't feel totally vulnerable, but there's a vulnerability in the five. And the reason I want to say eight or 10, because I want, I want to believe in other people. I really do. And, and at the same time, I'm like, there's some selfish people out here. So what percentage of the people are like, you know, really selfish. So now I'm being a cynic, right. Yeah. That are going to take this and run. I think that that number is actually pretty low. And then I would add to it. One more level is that if I made eye contact with

the person, I think I would probably give more. Yeah. So if it was a digital transaction, then it's probably less, but if it's eye contact and I had the moment to shake somebody's hand, I feel like there's hundreds of thousands of years of that kind of below the surface registry of safety. And I feel like I could have $8 in my pocket and hand it over to a person and check them. And I feel like I could pull it back and be like, I changed my mind, which I love that about me, right? Because the younger version of me would have eight in the pocket, see or feel something in the other person and be like, this doesn't feel right. This doesn't feel right, but I don't want to make it weird. Here's the $8. Oh, son, what did I just do? So I've had some,

my wife has been a great teacher of that to me. no no like feel your intuition and then act on it which sometimes that's socially awkward but you know awkwardness awkwardness is maybe underrated sometimes you know it's okay oh yeah i think so it's yeah i do think it's hard it was hard for me at least i don't know if it's hard for everybody because i grew up in a family that was very much like hey look everything's good so it good. So it was a little tricky for me to do as an adult, I should say. So all that being said, that's a long narrative. And then when you hear what I shared with you, where do you take the results? So many places. There's a lot in what you said that actually matches the science really well. First of all, the most common thing that people do is exactly what you described your first intuition, which is they send $5. Because I think

that's the way of saying, I'm going to split the difference here. I want to be safe. And I want to try to trust a little bit. And generally, the trustee, the person who receives that money, sends about 40% of it back in that circumstance. So the person who trusts ends up with somewhere around $11, and the person who receives their money ends up with around $9. So it's a kind of win-win. And I think that the reason that most people send five is because of their expectations. So if you ask people what percentage of folks will run away with the money, they say 50%. So they're basically making a calculation. There's a 50% chance that I'm going to lose all this money.

So I'm going to put up 50% as a gamble. Cynics send a lot less because they think that almost everybody will run away with the money in an anonymous. And so are you on that? Is anonymous eye contact or not? Is that piece? There's no eye contact. It's two strangers who are only communicating. Actually, they're not communicating at all. The transfer is their only point of contact with one another yeah i mean with that yeah i'm going a little lower so i know it's just i know it's i don't i don't want to say that you know i don't i like i don't and i you know here sorry to cut you off but here's what's weird is that i think there's probably about 10% of people that are bad actors. And it's probably actually less than that.

I'm sure you have your finger on the pulse there. But there's not that many bad actors. But then why am I in this dilemma that I don't really want to trust? It's an interesting conundrum. I experienced it as well. And I think part of it is what we could call betrayal aversion, that being a chump hurts more than missing out on an opportunity. Because being a chump, you know that it happened. You feel the heat in your face. You feel that sort of that sense of anger and even embarrassment that you made yourself

vulnerable and got taken advantage of. And I think that people really hate that feeling. And for good reason. It's a terrible feeling for somebody else to take advantage of you. But I think that because it feels so bad, we over-rotate on it. We make our decisions based on fear of this terrible feeling and not on hope that things could turn out well. And that turns out to not just be a choice that hurts others, but it also hurts us ourselves. So just to go back briefly to the trust game,

most people give about $5 because they think that about half of people will run away with the money. Cynics give much less and think that almost everybody will run away with the money. The true value, which is not far off from what you guessed, is that about 80% of people, even in a totally anonymous setting, give back at least some of the money. And it's not just that, it's that they give back more, the more that you trust them, right? We act as though we're trying to figure people out. But in fact, we change people through our actions. When you trust somebody, when you send $8 or $10 instead, it's like honoring this stranger on the internet in this small way. And people notice that. If you ask trustees, how do you feel? They say, wow, I much more than the average person does, and even more than cynics do, right? So even relatively trusting people could do better

if they trusted more because their trust influences other people and brings out the best in them. It's a really wonderful thought, and I totally relate. If I knew that somebody had $10 and they gave me 10 of it, hoping, hoping that we're going to do that, I'm going to do the right thing. I would feel like, oh, they saw the good in me. Look at the vulnerability there. I got you. I got you. Right?

Like, okay, cool. So let's go 15, 15. You made some on my head. And then, and then I would want to say, can I do the same for you? Can I give you. Right. Like, okay, cool. So let's go 15, 15. You made some, I'm ahead. And then, and then I would want to say, can I do the same for you? Can I give you 15? And it triples like you get, you know, like it feels like that. I would want to be on that path. And, and it also is, um, there's probably one variable here that we're leaving out,

which is like, if $10 was all I had, as opposed to $10, I had a hundred in the bank and this is, or a thousand in the bank, and this is just $10, then it would be like, oh, well, let's play the game. Go for it. You know, push in. It's kind of like a Vegas, you know, like you've got a big stack and the, I don't know, what's the good eights come up, you know, do you split them? Well, if you've got a big stack or whatever, I don't know, maybe that influences it a little bit, but I'm not a poker, I'm not a blackjack player, but, okay. So, all right, this is cool because you say that you're a cynic or there's hope for, you have a tendency to be a cynic. Where did that come from for you? And what percentage of people report to be a cynic?

The two-part question. Yeah. Well, for me, it started pretty early. So I told you earlier that attachment style, your relationship with family members matters a lot. And I've made no secret in my writing of the fact that I come from a, from a relatively difficult family background. My parents are both immigrants from very different countries and they sort of never got along when I was a kid and, you know, they had a long and tumultuous divorce. I'm their only child. So I was sort of in this position of being on my back foot a lot of the time and trying to make sure that people cared about me.

And I didn't feel that that was a reliable experience. And that, I think, planted a seed in me early on that, hey, you really can't count on people all the time. You know, I've worked a lot on myself over the past many years and I am in a much better place with that. But I still think that there are remnants of those experiences in my own cynicism. And to your second question, I think that really we are not, we as a culture are growing more cynical, right? So I think it's more common than it was before. Cynicism, it's hard to say like, oh, 40% of people are cynics or 50% are because it's a continuous measure, right? So you can be super cynical, you can be relatively cynical, you can be not cynical at all. And

we can also vary within our lives. And even across a day, you know, you might feel really trusting when you're at home. And then, you know, you might feel really trusting when you're at home. And then, you know, to continue the casino analogy, right, you go to a high stakes poker game, and it's reasonable to not trust the people around you, because they're probably bluffing, right? So, but overall, we've seen this, this steady creep up of the number of people who are cynical. And unfortunately, this is especially true of younger generations. So among Gen Z, for instance, less than 20% of people believe that most others can be trusted. So we're sort of raising less and less trusting, more and more

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which are, and this is a philosophical position for you to opine on, like is our core to be trusted or not trusted? So leave you with those three to see where you take it. Wow, I love this. This is a huge question. And to me, I would say that there's a seed in all of us to be mistrustful because we tend to focus more on negative

information than positive information. That's an ancient survival bias. Yes, exactly. Which we can also sometimes call negativity bias, right? That it's perfectly affordable from a survival perspective to ignore a sunset, but you need to pay attention to a tsunami, right? I mean, any risk, any danger, we need to hyper-focus on. And of course, the most dangerous thing on earth to people is other people, right? I mean, we can, if we choose to, harm one another at vast and deep levels. And so there's this ancient and, I would say, quite useful focus that we have on risks. I think that what young people are experiencing is a vast machinery that taps into that bias, into that fear, and accelerates it through media and social media in particular that

focus people really not just on bad news. I mean, that's sort of the old saw that if it bleeds, it leads. But now I think if you're a member of Generation Z, almost your whole conscious life, you've been micro-targeted with information that specifically is tailored to stoke your fears about the world. Whatever you think of as most frightening, whatever decreases your trust the most is what you're going to see over and over again in your bed, at school, on every screen in your life. And so I think the combination of that ancient instinct with a hyper-modern machinery to feed it is a recipe for a psychological disaster in my opinion.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, it's more of the micro marketing and the personalization of that figure out somebody's fear to get them to take action. That's kind of what's bleeding into this sense of trust of others? I think so. And to your even deeper question, what is the core of who we are? I think that as a psychologist, I'm always resistant to black and white thinking. I think that because of survival bias, maybe we tend to default towards not trusting, especially with new experiences, strangers, new environments that we're in. We're sort of on the defensive naturally.

But I think that so much of who we are is neither trusting nor untrusting, but rather adaptive. We are learning machines and we try to pick up cues from our environment to ask, am I safe here? And if the answer is yes, then I think there's a world of trust and compassion and connection that opens up really quite naturally. If the answer is no, then there's an equally powerful world of cynicism that is at the ready as well. I love that response because I haven't had someone to bounce this off of, you know, so I'm going to share something with you that I don't share, which is, I think the world is hostile. I think the world is dangerous. And I'll put a period next to that and then however i feel pretty safe

in it so that what does that mean that points to kind of that um a scrappy nature that i have uh the willingness to fight for what's right the the experience of knowing what it's like to fight for something, and a whole set of internal resources to navigate high heat, high stress moments. All of the psychology that I've studied and used me as an experiment of one that I'm like, okay, I feel relatively safe in a hostile world. And so I don't want to be callous when I say that because there's real dangers and many people live in a far more dangerous world than I do. So when you hear that juxtaposition, the world is dangerous, but I feel safe, relatively safe in it, with your research, do you say that feels healthy, that feels naive, that feels like the majority of people, that feels actually a small population?

How do you respond to that? My first response is thank you for trusting me with that. You're exemplifying a sense of safety in this conversation and you obviously trust your listeners as well, right? So that actually you saying this and opening up about how you view the world in this way is an act of trust that shows your belief in your community, the community that you've built here. So I think it's beautiful. In terms of the research, what you're describing is extremely, I think, natural and very common. So what you're talking about is primal beliefs. There's this great psychologist, Jer Clifton, at the University of Pennsylvania that studies, what do people believe at the deepest level about the world?

Is it, for instance, safe or dangerous? Is it competitive or cooperative? Is it boring or alive? And these different beliefs shape the way that we live. It turns out that on the belief of dangerous versus safe, a lot of people think that believing the world is dangerous will get you ahead. In fact, parents, when asked, what would you want your kids to believe in order for them to succeed in life? Most of them say, my kids should think the world is dangerous. That will help them thrive. It turns out that in many cases, the opposite is true. Now, of course, Mike, I'm not talking about you, but statistically speaking, people who believe the world is dangerous tend to suffer from more depression. They tend to have more broken relationships and they tend to

have trouble flourishing professionally as well. Again, not you, Mike. No, but I totally see that. Yeah, I don't. Thank you. I do not fit in that. I totally see that though, because if every time I look around and I'm thinking danger, danger, danger, that would be an overwhelming experience. But when I look around and I see, and I can back, I can spot danger, but I'm actually not even looking for it because what's a good example, the panda bear. This is the year of play for me. And so I want to be more like a panda bear. So when a panda bear, yeah, like they don't have any predators. And when they look around, they're like, oh, I could fall off that. That could be fun to roll around on. Like they're just, they're badasses with all of that

muscle and fat and kind of the curvature of like how their body works and the mobility and suppleness of it. They're super inspiring to me. No predators. And they're free and they go for it and they're just fun. And I go, that's to me a mark of the good life. Yeah, there's snakes out there. There's, I don't know, whatever mystical dragons that we can conjure up. But you know, I'm going to roll around a little bit because they don't, I don't think they can really get at me. I love that. Yeah.

So anyways. I want to be more like a panda as well. Suddenly, this is aspirational to me, but I think that there's a lot to, if I can just zoom in on one more piece of what you said that I think is so rich, this feeling that the world is dangerous, but I'm safe. That too is pretty common. I think the people who really suffer are the ones who say the world is dangerous. And that includes all the people in my life. My friends are dangerous. They could post something unflattering about me on social media. My spouse is dangerous.

They could cheat on me. My colleagues are dangerous. They could try to undermine me or sabotage me. If you think in that way about your local environment, that's where I think the real trouble begins. But if you ask people, they don't think that way about their local environment. Even the same surveys that find that people don't believe that most human beings can be trusted, if you ask them, what about the people in your neighborhood,

your community, your workplace, they are much more likely to trust the people in their lives. And that again gets to me to this deep truth, which is that cynicism really lives more in our abstractions, right? It's very easy to think the world is dangerous. People are bad because those are untestable assumptions and they feed our biases. But when we actually get close to people, when we actually see them, we believe much more in them. There's so much more good in the people we encounter than in the people we imagine. And I think that's really important evidence that we should take to heart. I love that. Yeah. And then what do you do? What is your findings to help people that have, let's not, let's not first go to the global,

let's go to local first when they have a local mistrust, which would create the artifact of that would be a chronic state of anxiousness. What, what is your research pointing to to help people through that mechanism? Well, first i want to validate people who are feeling mistrustful or cynical you know i i think people have earned it yeah yeah i do too i i'm like i see you you there's something going on where this is a good strategy for you and i it's not up to you and i at some point to say you you should change that. Unless they say, oh my God, my anxiety's

through the roof. I can't do this anymore. Then it's like, all right, well, let's go to work. So I'm wondering what the work is for you. Yeah, that's exactly right. So I think that people who feel cynical often have very good reason to, but I think it's worth interrogating for people who are having this experience the way that I did when I was deepest in my own cynicism. What is this doing to me? And it turns out that a lot of the time it's not doing things that we want, right? I mean, cynics tend to suffer a lot more psychologically. They tend to have trouble flourishing professionally and in their relationships as well. So I might start with an audit to ask people, if you're feeling cynical, ask yourself if you are getting where you want to with the connections in your life. Is there any way that you can see that cynicism is standing

in your way? Is it stopping you from becoming the person you want to be? If so, then there are a number of steps you can take to cultivate what I call hopeful skepticism, right? And the first is to understand the difference between cynicism and skepticism. These are two terms that we often use interchangeably, and I think we should stop. Cynicism, as I've laid out, is this theory that people are really terrible. And if you believe that, you start to think a little bit like a lawyer in the prosecution against humanity. You pinpoint, really focus on all the harms that people do, and you ignore or explain away all the good that they do. Skepticism is more like a scientific mindset where you look for evidence and you don't rest on your assumptions. And in fact, skepticism, I would say, is quite different from cynicism and is really more an

openness to new information. So one of the things that I do, and again, I'm a recovering cynic, I think this way all the time. If I find myself in that state of mistrust in my local environment, I say, okay, I'm feeling something. I'm feeling that spider sense, right? That's from the Spider Man movies, right? Like I'm feeling this sense that I can't trust this person. Where is that coming from? Do I have evidence to support that? Have they betrayed me in the past? Or am I just anxious right now? Have I not had breakfast? Am I stressed about something else? And I'm projecting that onto this person. And so I think an audit and sort of thinking like a scientist about our own experiences is a good place to start. And you might conclude, actually, I've got great evidence in support of my cynicism here,

and then go on. But if you realize, well, actually, I'm feeling cynical about this person for no good reason, then maybe you can take a different starting point to the interaction. So that's where I get a little fuzzy is cynicism feels like a general belief system. Yeah. And then if there's a person that I'm in front of, am I being cynical about that person or am I having intuition that is of low trust or intuition that something's not safe? So then I respond with low trust. Can you help me understand, and maybe I just got it right there,

that cynicism is a larger belief system about humans, but when it comes down to an individual, the behavior of trust can be influenced by intuition and can be influenced by anxiety. And I think what you're saying is it can also be influenced by a larger global or local sense of cynicism. But I do want to drill down into the intuition piece that you're talking about. Because I think as a recovering classically trained scientist in psychology, intuition was the lowest form of knowledge. And I just, I don't know if I agree with that anymore. Like there's so much rich data, but it's not clean. Intuition isn't always clean

because my state clouds intuition. And then my ability to trust my own intuition as opposed to kind of fall prey or victim to the social mores is complicated for me too. So what am I asking you? I just went on a little bit of an excited narrative. I love talking to another psychologist. This is so deep and rich. I get to nerd out a little bit. So thank you for that.

Thank you. particular situation. So for instance, the theory of gravity is the idea that objects with mass attract one another. The theory of gravity then gives me a hypothesis that if I throw an apple up in the air, it will fall down and I should probably get out of its way on its return trip to earth, right? So again, our theories lead to predictions and the theory of cynicism, right, then can lead to specific predictions. If I think people are pretty bad and then I meet a stranger, you know, I'm going to have a prediction that whatever they, if they're talking to me, it's probably to try to get something out of me. Now, you raised the really important point of beliefs versus intuitions and feelings, I suppose, which weigh into intuitions quite deeply. One thing about cynicism is that it's a theory that is bound up with a lot of emotion. In fact, the original scale or survey to measure cynicism was called the cynical hostility scale. Because if you think

that people are generally bad, well, that's not really just a thought that's going to come with a lot of contempt and suspicion and anxiety. And that's exactly what we find, right? So if you're generally cynical, then you're going to probably have predictions about people and particular interactions that, hey, I can't trust this person. But you might also feel tense around others. And that will give you a second intuitive, I guess, register or signal that you can't. So you've got your beliefs and your intuitions conspiring to pull you out of trusting situations together. So it's a, it's a, I mean, when I hear I go, yep, yep, yep. Okay. That totally makes sense. And then I think, where's the action that we can take? I understand, like, I just can't go

anywhere other than mindfulness or the theory of trust. Let me go to mindfulness will help silence, stillness, a little bit of space to be able to be more in touch, to be more aware, to stay in the present moment long enough to be able to get down into the truth of something. I can't imagine right now that you're going to point to many other places than that. But that being said is that I'd like to just chin check or see your support or the way that you pull apart Francis Fry and Anne Morris's trust triangle, that trust is built on its logic, benevolence, and authenticity. And I think that ladders back to Aristotle's work on logos, pathos, and ethos. But when you hear about the trust triangle, let's just go there for a minute. That might be a way to be able to drill down into like, okay, well, if I'm feeling a certain way, my intuition is saying something.

I don't think this cynic view of humanity is getting in the way, but I'm actually sensing something that is not trustworthy. Is it their logic? Is it their ability, if you will? Same thing in some circles. Their benevolence, meaning the sense of empathy. Do they understand what's good for me too, is what that means. And then the third is like, do they keep showing up similar even when the conditions are radically different? What do you think of that model? And do you operationalize that in any way to help people? I think it's a really powerful model. And I think that there are sort of these cognitive, emotional and social

ingredients that we're all computing online all the time, when we interact with other people, right? What do I think they're coming from? What do I think their beliefs are? Do I think that they connect with me emotionally? And do I know them? Do I feel like they're consistent and authentic? I think that's really a beautiful model for it. I think that you're right that one of the ways to be more open to what people are actually bringing us, as opposed to caught up in our assumptions about them, comes down to mindfulness. I also have found, and one of the things that I try to teach people in the book, is to also draw from cognitive behavioral therapy, right? Tools from that world that help us

be more accurate about ourselves and each other. And so what I've offered so far is this idea of auditing and fact checking. Where is my mistrust coming from? That's, you could think of as thinking differently about other people, thinking in a more open way about them. A second step is to test our assumptions, right? So what I call calculated leaps of faith, right? Where you say, okay, I've got this person in front of me. I'm having these mixed reactions. I don't really know, right? I'm in a place of ambivalence. Well, is there a small risk that I could take, you know, sending a couple of dollars in the trust game, but, you know, outside of the trust game, doing something that's a token to show that I trust this person, sending a flare into the space between us to see what bounces back to me,

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I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash findingmastery and use the code findingmastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's Caldera Lab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash Finding Mastery. You know, it's an interesting flair for me is asking the question, like say there's some sort of internal tension or there's tension between the two of us. And let's just say that it's not an issue of authenticity.

I know this person and they're consistently showing up in this kind of way. And I don't like how it feels. But I've double-clicked, triple-clicked on their logic. And it's like, yeah, that's pretty sound. Then this flare that I'll throw up, which is like, hey, hold on a minute. What tripwire did I just hit? Or what tripwire are we on right now? And people like,

I know it's a little bit of a loaded word because of what it actually means, but it helps, I think, for both of us to not play this secondary game. And then a follow-on question is like, okay, hold on. Let's try this out. Will you help me try to understand how you're seeing my position? And then I'll do the same for you.

And now that squares up on empathy. Can I get a sense that they really understand my position? And if they can't see it or they're wildly off, then I go, oh, that's what's happening. This is a benevolence empathy thing. Like they can't see my experience in it. And so what do you think of that as a? I think that's a great exercise in relationship building, right? In the face of conflict and in the face of misunderstanding, I would just add one piece to what you're saying. So you, you sort of take this, I think really powerful approach where you say, okay, I'm going to try to understand you.

Then you try to understand me and then I'm going to learn whether you get me or not. And that's true. You will learn a lot from a conversation like that, but let's not underestimate also the influence that even embarking on that conversation will have. Because if you try to understand this other person, the likelihood that they will try to and eventually successfully understand you rises enormously, right? This is the $5 versus the $10. Exactly.

There's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we act on our fears and say, I don't think this person gets me, so I'm going to shut down the conversation or I'm going to go to a judgmental place, that makes it much more likely that you'll be right. You'll be right to mistrust that person. But if you say, I don't know what's happening here. Let me engage in an open dialogue and see if maybe this person does get me. You'll also probably be right because you'll be turning a vicious, self-fulfilling prophecy into a virtuous one. And that, I think, is something that I wish people understood more. The power that we have, not just to respond to the social world, but to shape it, to shape who

people become. People aren't stable or steady. They change and we change them in every conversation we have. And that I think is a real beautiful opportunity if we can recognize and take advantage of it. So, okay, it's awesome. What is the research in general when we're trying to ascertain if people do the right thing or not? I would say that in general, the research suggests that we underestimate how often people do the right thing. In fact, that's a very steady and reliable finding over decades. If you ask people how many folks will honor somebody else's trust, we underestimate it. If we ask how open-minded do you think the average person who disagrees with you is, we underestimate that. If we ask,

there's a great experiment that the Toronto Star ran where they dropped a bunch of wallets around the city and asked people, and each wallet had some money in it and an ID card. So if the person who found it felt like it, they could return the wallet. And the Toronto Star asked, what percentage of these wallets will be returned? And Torontians, they guessed that about 20% would be returned. And in fact, 80% were. There are all sorts of cases where I would say the average person underestimates the average person. That is in no way to imply that there are not bad and even horrendous actors all over the world. But again, I think we focus on those extreme antisocial examples and end up pretty reliably wrong about what most people are like, which is sad, but also incredible because it

means that if we pay more attention, pleasant surprises are everywhere. And there's a clear confound in that study that the sample size was a group of Canadians. They're just really nice. You know, we do that in downtown LA or somewhere in my neck of the woods. But people have done it. So that was a famous social experiment run by a newspaper, but then researchers got really interested and ran this with tens of thousands of wallets in dozens of different countries and cities. And reliably, the actual return rate is lower in most places than in Toronto. You're right about that.

But the underestimation, the idea that we feel that more people will run away with the money than actually do is steady across lots of different contexts. I've had three experiences in my life where I lost my wallet and two of them, all the cash has come back and I'm one of them, the wallet came back without the cash. And so two of them were mailed to me and one of them went the extra mile to figure out how to contact me. Wow. And this was on the third one. It was a cool moment because the woman was at a gas station.

And she's like, I was trying to find you. I'm sorry. And I was like, oh, this is so great. I ended up giving her all the cash, which felt like a win-win for all of us. So I would say that three out of three, an N of one, where there's one person in this experiment, people have done the right thing by me three times in a row. I think a lot of us have had, I mean, I've had experiences like that as well. I lost my phone and somebody called my wife and sort of tried to track me down. And I think a lot of us have had experiences like that. But again, the positive

experiences we have with individual people don't always work their way into our general beliefs about people. And I think that this is one idea that I'm really trying to emphasize. I think that we would be a much healthier society if we allowed our positive experiences with others to influence us and teach us as much as we learn from betrayals and disappointments and traumas, which are also very real. I used to ask this question all the time when I would do like a keynote or something. How many of you, if, how would I do this question? Raise your hand if people, if everybody lived by your code of ethics that you could leave your house unlocked, your car unlocked, and you could leave your backpack open. How many many people if they lived

by your code of ethics would feel safe to do that what do you think the number was this was my this was my very informal approach you know to uh you know what do you think the numbers would be if there's 100 people in the room yeah uh i would say maybe wait so this is what people would want to be true if if everybody lived by their code if to be true if everybody lived by their code of ethics? So if everybody lived by your code of ethics, could everybody leave their car unlocked, their house unlocked, and leave their wallet on the street? Yeah, I would say that the vast majority, 80-90% would say, yeah, if everybody was like me, then yes, everybody could leave their doors open. Yeah, I stopped asking this question because it was like 90 to a hundred. And I thought, oh, there's maybe a social bias that's happening here. Like a confirmation,

some sort of social bias where I don't want to be the one that's, you know, but there was enough people there and the ones that wouldn't raise their hand, they'd be like, y'all are crazy. Like, are you kidding me? You know, like, and they were very clear that people, you know, like, I'm not saying I would steal somebody's wallet, but like, you know, so it would get tricky. The cynicism would just leap right out. Even though they wouldn't be, this is the code of ethics piece was it's hard to displace how other people act versus if everyone lived by my code. Yeah.

Like, you know, and so that might be a fun thing to do on social. Or maybe you've got a better question that we could ask people. No, I think that's a great question. And it reveals something, right? It reveals that most people would not steal or, you know, or break into people's houses, even if they could. I completely believe that the vast majority of people wouldn't. And yet we structure our beliefs and our society based on the 10%, the 5% who would. And that makes sense. I mean, because again, we're focused on risk,

we're focused on survival. But to then decide that most people would is a bridge too far, right? It's fine to protect ourselves from the rare people who would harm us. The problem is when we confuse those people with the majority, which I think a lot of us do. Well, so there's a discernment required here because there are wolves amongst us. And so the discernment to know a wolf is actually quite tricky because the best wolves look like sheep. And, you know, so it is really tricky, you know, unless you've had time with wolves, you know, they look like dogs, right? To not mix metaphors too much here. So it is actually really tricky. And to our earlier point about the survival bias

a la negativity bias, it is better if there's a rustling in the bush when we're not sure exactly what's happening in the bush to have an alarm system go off that says, I don't know if that's a bunny or that's a wildebeest in there. I don't know. So better to err on the side of activation a la mistrust.

To a point, to a point to a point but you know to to a point for survival yes but to a point well let me let me hear where you're going to go because not for an not for the good life not for flourishing exactly it would make sense to know the difference like listen there's no wildebeest in this region of the world these are all bunny rabbits in these bushes yeah calm down. So this will be maybe a silly example, but because you're bringing, I think the very precise analogy. I'm bringing silly examples up. You're using a really great analogy of an alarm system. And yes, alarm systems are really important and useful. It just so happens that in my family's home, we've got an alarm that started

to go on the fritz and it started to ring in the middle of the night and wake my children and my wife and I up at one or two in the morning. And so I had the question of, do I shut off this alarm until I can figure out what the problem is or not? And it was a real world example. Are the wolves coming? Or are we safe in our neighborhood? Yes. Yes. And it was like, okay, well, if I really think that people are out to get us, I should turn the alarm on. Now, it will also cause our sleep to be disrupted intermittently and unpredictably, and it will make all of us miserable, but at least we'll know that nobody will get in. Or I can shut off the alarm,

place us at risk, but what percent risk? Probably extremely tiny and have a restful night as a family. And I chose the restful night, right? Because I am aware that my cynicism is probably getting the better of me. But I think that's actually an apt analogy, right? A lot of us have alarm systems that are on the fritz that are sounding all the time and are disrupting our ability to flourish, to connect and to succeed. And yet we think that we need to keep those rusty blinking alarms on

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when you use the code findingmastery at checkout. That's lisa, L-E-E-S-A.com plus an extra $50 off when you use the code finding mastery at checkout. That's Lisa L E E S a.com. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. All right. So in, in a very serious way, you've called cynicism a disease. And so bring us home, Doc. You know, what's the cure? What are the things that we can do to work with this thing? Yeah, I think that, I think cynicism, again, is something that I completely understand. And if you feel cynicism, there's nothing wrong with you, right?

It's, you're not stupid. You're not silly. It's a completely natural human experience. But I do think it hurts us. And I think it often hurts us in ways that we don't see. So I think that to get past it and to replace it with hopeful skepticism, three steps again. You know, the first is to be more mindful and aware. When you find yourself judging other people, fearing other people, ask yourself, is this grounded in real evidence or not? If it is, please continue to be safe. If it's not, think about ways that you can open up a little bit more. It's hard to do so. It feels risky, but taking risks is what we need to gain anything in life. So I would suggest first think differently, then act differently

by taking leaps of faith on people. When you trust people, I would also suggest trusting them loudly, telling them that you're acting the way that you're acting because you have faith in them. That can be a gift to them. It can bring out their best. It can create these positive, self-fulfilling prophecies that we've discussed. And then the third thing that we haven't talked about yet is to share differently. It's true that our minds are biased towards the negative, but so is our talk. So is our gossip. We tend to discuss the worst things that people do a lot more than the best things that they do. And in that way, we become a vehicle for other people's cynicism. So to the extent that you are able to tap into a more trusting,

connected version of yourself, and especially if you're a leader who influences others, don't forget to engage in what I would call positive gossip, sharing and discussing human virtue and goodness when you see it. And in that way, you can not only cure your own cynicism, but you can help out the people around you. I love those three. I really love those three. The last one was something we operationalized at a professional team that I worked at where, you know, we were a championship caliber team for about, about seven of the nine years I was with them. And we, we were very clear to be incredibly disciplined about how we spoke about other people. Because we believe that culture happens in the hallways. It doesn't, you know, like when you're kind of walking casually

and you're choosing where you're going to put your attention in your conversation. And to be incredibly disciplined about taking care of other people when they're not in your presence. Yeah. And if there's, if it comes up in some way that, you know, like, uh, Denzel, like did something, you know, and then I'm looking at my producer Denzel and he's looking right at me, you know, like that, that we say to another person, like say Denzel's not in the conversation. And two of us were talking about, and Denzel comes up, that it would both be on us as a standard to say, hey, that's not for you to go talk to Denzel now. No, no, I want to talk to you about it. No, no, no, no. This is about you and Denzel. Go get with him. And so that

type of discipline and integrity was, I think, something that went a long way in our culture. And it was a culture of trust, which was pretty cool. One tangential thought here, is trust given or earned? I think that trust is earned and it takes a long time to earn and a very short time to lose, as many of us know. That said, the opportunity to earn it is given, right? So people can't earn your trust if your walls are up. So although I think each person needs to earn another person's trust, the person who's considering trusting needs to understand their role in that process, right? Do I give this person permission to earn my trust? Do I give them opportunities to earn my trust? And frankly, the best way to do that

is to trust somebody. Actually, that's what Ernest Hemingway said. He said, the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. And I think that's true. But again, I think that as the truster or the potential truster, we need to remember our power, right? We're not just figuring out, is this person trustworthy or not? When we treat somebody as though they are trustworthy, we make it more likely that they will become that for us. That's what it is to build a relationship is to put faith in somebody else and let them earn it. Let them earn even more faith from you moving forward. Yeah. You mentioned this earlier, but like part of the definition of trust is to make yourself vulnerable to someone or to, you know, making something or some, something about yourself vulnerable. And it's really tough to do sometimes.

And so the courage that sits underneath what you're suggesting is noted. And I would say that if you're really clear, trust can go two ways, trust of others and trust of self, that if you know how to build your trust of self, that no matter what happens, I'll keep figuring things out. And if you can earn the right to know that you, you know, just all you got, I think all of us have been through some stuff and to go back into your

history and just be really clear about the tough times and that you figure that stuff out too. Yeah. To your best abilities. Yeah. And if it goes sideways with the trust or the vulnerability that I'm giving to another person right now, I figured that out too. To me, that, that has helped me so much. I'll figure it out too if it goes sideways. I'll figure that out too. are connected to their own values, who feel internally sturdy, are often the most humble,

the most open, and even the most vulnerable in their interactions with others. And we often confuse vulnerability with a sign of weakness or neediness. In fact, I think much more often, it's the opposite. It's a sign of security in oneself. And from that place of safety and security, by tapping into vulnerability, guess what you get more of? Strength, connection, community, and more courage. For sure. Yeah, that's great. So you've got two kids?

Two kids. That's right. Yeah. How are you helping them build trust? Like, what are you doing at the dinner table, the breakfast table? You know, how can we reverse the trend that is happening with our children? I use a lot of positive gossip with my kids. In fact, we call it something else.

We call it social savoring. So in general, with my kids, we try to focus on savoring, which is appreciating good things as they happen. It's a little bit different than gratitude, which is appreciating good things that have happened. So we'll do savoring classes, right? So I'll say, okay, I'm going to, we're going to do an ice cream eating class today. And they're always very game for that one. Or we're going to do a sunset watching class, which is we do something pleasant, but instead of just doing it, we really talk about what or other things that they really, my kids are eight and seven. So these are the things that they like. And I realized some months into doing this that all of our savoring was about personal experiences.

I mean, things we were doing together, but it was sort of these positive sensory experiences. And I thought, wow, we should do this more with social experiences. So now, you know, right after picking them up from a play date, for instance, I'll say, well, tell me a really kind thing that your friend did. What's something that you did that was fun together? What's a moment where you felt really like you were together with them? And and really helping them try to turn their attention, pop up an antenna in their mind for positive moments between people. And then likewise, when we're driving through San Francisco, we're walking through the city,

I look for examples of people doing positive things, like cleaning up litter or helping each other, helping somebody cross the street if they're carrying a lot of groceries, for instance. doing positive things like cleaning up litter or helping each other, you know, helping somebody cross the street if they're carrying a lot of groceries, for instance. And I try to engage in that positive social savoring with them. And one thing that I noticed immediately is that trying to find good things that I could share with my kids made me pay lots more attention to the good

things that were already happening all around us the positive actions that's really cool so a habit of speech became a habit of mind yeah that's really cool that that really is like what we call becoming a researcher of amazing and when you go out into your day and you find the things that are amazing and you bring them back um it's a really it's not only as a thought starter but it's like a it's a for me it's our modern day uh fireside chat which is like what are the amazing things and they can they don't have to be grand it can be really small like someone held the door open for me and it's just kind of a cool moment

where it was eye contact it was like i see you yep so, you know, and then I'll turn to my son and say, did you have anything like that? No, dad. He's 15 or just turned 16. Yeah, dad, my day was good. So I'm in that phase right now. All right. Last question. Last question.

How do you work with a teammate or friend who is a cynic? The first place that I go when I'm talking to a cynic is curiosity, right? The last thing that we want to do is be cynical of cynics. Instead, we might want to ask, well, what happened? You know, I'm sure that this maybe is not the way that you want to be. So tell me about the experiences that you've had and then to validate and empathize with those experiences. And then, you know, I think that something that I might try to do is help that person interrogate where their cynicism is coming from, if that's what they want to do. You know, I mean, you can't bring somebody to a place psychologically, they're not ready to go.

But a lot of people talk to me, you know, ever since I've been working on this topic and say, I really don't want to feel this way anymore. I want to believe in people, but it's hard for me. And so, you know, one thing that you can do is look to the data, right? I say, well, try to collect your own data. One version of this is talking to strangers. People will tell me, I just, I want to know more people. I want to make more friends, but I feel like people are judgmental and they're selfish and they won't want to listen to me. They won't want to hear who I am. Say, well, have you tried this lately? And invariably, no, of course not. I don't want to be in these awkward

encounters with other people. It turns out that we vastly underestimate how well those conversations will go. So in my lab, we've been telling people and challenging them to say, okay, well, go and have an interaction that you wouldn't have otherwise, and then come and report back. And in the vast majority of cases, those interactions are way more positive than people thought they would be. And so I try to encourage people, if you want to get yourself out of cynicism, to collect some new data from the world and open yourself up to learning from those data. You know, I think the place that I would go is like, your empathy is probably exponentially higher than mine as studying it in your lab and living it in that way. But I wouldn't say I'm

unapathetic, but I'm marking yours as being really high. I think I would naturally go to challenge people. So I live in a performance-based, many performance-based arenas. And I would probably go to like, okay, okay. Is this like, are you a cynic? You know, do you kind of, what do you mean? Or they say, yup, there's like a badge, you know? And then, but people don't have that badge with pessimism, but they have the badge with cynicism. I'd probably challenge them to understand the definition of it and then challenge them to maybe be more of a hopeful skeptic.

Is that the phrase that you used? It is, yeah. Right? Is like to have a discerning eye and like, it's cool. Like find the things that don't seem to make sense or don't work out, but maybe not apply that same lens to the general belief of all humans. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Make it more about the mission as opposed to the people on the mission.

This is such a great point. And again, I often tell people, I'm not asking you to trust everybody without interrogating what they're about. I'm not asking you to put on rose-colored glasses. I just want you to realize that you're probably wearing mud-colored glasses right now. And skepticism is just an attempt to take them off. Mud-colored glasses. That's perfect. Okay. I said last question, just one more. Okay. Sure. This is awesome. AI. Maybe this is too big and we need to do a part two on this, but

are you cynical about what people are going to do with this tool? Are you optimistic? Are you cynical about what people are going to do with this tool? Are you optimistic? Are you trusting? Where are you with AI and the way it's literally going to change the way we work, the way we relate, maybe even the expression of our potential? And it can go dystopian sideways quickly. So where are you on the platform when you think about this? One of the most powerful tools that we're going to interface with here. This is definitely could take a whole other

conversation. So I want to bracket that and I'd love to talk more about it. It's a topic I think about a ton. I would like to do that with you. I'll give you the punchline, though, for where my thinking is now. And I think that the technology itself could be so powerful in a positive way. People have a real resonance with AI. AI tools have learned to interact in extremely empathic ways that help people who are suffering and give them a sense of connection. I think that especially for people who struggle a lot with social life, it could be an incredible stepping stone towards a more fulfilling type of community and connection.

That said, I'm very skeptical of whether that will happen because of the motives of the organizations that are creating these tools, right? I think that you always, with something like AI, need to ask yourself not just what can it do, but what are the goals under which it's created? And I suppose, given the history of how technology companies have affected social life,

I don't, based on that track record, feel very trusting of the intentions that they have in designing and deploying these really powerful technologies. Cool. Feels grounded. Feels grounded. Yeah. Dr. Zaki, I just thank you so much. Like you provided so much hope for not only the cynics, but for a lot of us here, you know, so I just want to say thank you for your wisdom, your insight, your ability to communicate clearly. Our community, our community here at Finding Master is better for this conversation. So I want to say thank you again. And I just want

to speak directly to the listener. Please go check out the book, Hope for Cynics, The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. And Jamil, thank you. Mike, this has been delightful. Thank you so much for having me on. I love how deep you go on this show and it's just been a delight to talk with you. Awesome. More to come. Let's go part two on maybe empathy and AI. Yes. Let's find some time to do that. Yes, I would love that. Yes.

Okay. I would love that. Okay. All the best. Okay. Take care. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.

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