The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Survival of the Fittest... or the Kindest?

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Some people think they need to be ruthless and selfish to thrive and survive in life. The theories of Charles Darwin are often wrongly interpreted to support this view that being competitive is the key to happiness and success. It isn’t.  Dr Laurie Santos and Dr Jamil Zaki find that there are plenty of examples in the animal kingdom and human world where cooperation, kindness and compassion prove to be the winning strategy. Jamil's book Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness is out now.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. In southeastern Brazil, there are two small fishing communities living just 40 miles apart. The two villages are similar in lots of ways, but they do have one important difference. One community lives on the ocean, while the other lives by a lake. About a decade ago, a young economist visited the lake settlement and found it a trash-strewn and unwelcoming place. But traveling downstream to the sea, he was astounded by the friendly greeting he received in the Oceanside community.

Intrigued, he decided to properly study how trusting both sets of fishermen were. At the start of their careers, they all shared similar outlooks. But those who spent years fishing on the lake grew less trusting and more selfish. And those who spent time working on the ocean grew more generous and trusting. What could explain these differences? The sea air? Pollution in the lake? The different nutrients in the fish they caught? I'm Jamil Zaki, and in my book, Hope for Cynics, The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, I wrote about this research. The reason that one fishing village seemed mean, and the other more kindly, was to do with the type of fishing its inhabitants undertook.

Fishing out on the high sea requires boats with heavy equipment, ones that no one can operate alone. Survival on the ocean requires working with others, but fishermen on a calm lake use smaller boats, ones that wind up competing for the best spots. Lake fishing thus becomes a lonelier, more cutthroat way of life. Which fishing village would you want to live in? Most of us would prefer the sea. We find comfort in trusting others and joy and meaning in connecting with them. But sadly, a lot of us think we have to live like the lake fishers, stepping over or on each other to get ahead. This has long been the dominant view of human nature, often drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which argued that life evolves

through survival of the fittest. His work was co-opted by so-called social Darwinists, who said that if the animal kingdom was a never-ending war of one against all, human life must be as well. In this mini-season of The Happiness Lab, Lori and I are exploring how to find hope in a cynical world. If modern cynicism was a building, social Darwinism would be a huge part of its foundation. We might want to be nicer and more cooperative, it tells us, but we can't deny our nature and shouldn't believe anyone who tells us otherwise.

But is that the only way of looking at human nature? Are we all destined to be stuck in lake towns? It turns out there's more to human nature. And by tapping into it, we can build ocean villages where cooperation rules and happiness rises. Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. And me, Dr. Jamil Zaki.

Jamil and I wanted to learn more about the origins of cooperation. So we called upon one of my favorite experts, behavioral ecologist and historian of science, Lee Dugatkin. My own dissertation work back in the late 1980s was on the evolution of cooperation. And so, you know, as a good grad student, I thought, well, I really need to understand the history of this topic. And, you know, one of the names that kept coming up in the literature was Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin's name got dropped whenever biologists made some claim contradicting the usual notions of selfishness and survival of the fittest. But none of the citations explained who Kropotkin actually was. So Lee headed to the library to research this obscure Russian scientist. He began reading about Kropotkin's life and his work, and he was blown away. actually was. So Lee headed to the library to research this obscure Russian scientist.

He began reading about Kropotkin's life and his work, and he was blown away. He seemed to be one of the most fascinating people I had ever learned about. Lee is now a huge Kropotkin stan. He even wrote a biography entitled The Prince of Evolution, Peter Kropotkin's Adventures in Science and Politics. And the word adventures is quite apt, adventures in science and politics. And the word adventures is quite apt, because Kropotkin had a very, very eventful life. Peter Kropotkin was born into Russian aristocracy back in 1842. His ancestors had been princes and generals, and Peter's father served under Tsar Nicholas. While many Russians lived in poverty, the Kropotkins were rich. Here's how Peter described their lifestyle in his memoir. Oh wait, Jamil, could you be Kropotkins were rich. Here's how Peter described their lifestyle in his memoir. Oh wait, Jamil, could you be Kropotkin? I don't know, Lori. No one wants to hear me do a Russian

accent, and any accent I try, I swear, ends up sounding just like Count Dracula. That's fine, just like read it in an aristocrat-y sounding way. We had four coachmen to attend a dozen horses, three cooks for the masters, and two more for the servants, a dozen men to wait upon us at dinnertime, and girls innumerable in the maidservant's room. Peter's father hoped his son would follow in his footsteps at the royal court, and Kropotkin got his wish on the eve of the Tsar's 25th anniversary celebration. There was a grand ball, and little Peter, aged just eight, attended the ceremony in an eye-catching military uniform. And Tsar Nicholas, for some reason or another,

took a real liking to young Peter Kropotkin. And he told his father that this is the sort of boy that we need. And what that meant was that when Kropotkin got old enough, he would go to this thing called the Corps of Pages. And these were basically young men who were the cream of the crop, who were being trained to be the leaders of the next generation. But the boy's training in the Corps wouldn't lead him to become a loyal czarist. You see, Kropotkin's academic tutor was a covert revolutionary. That tutor snuck his curious student underground books on topics like socialism and anarchy. That tutor snuck his curious student underground books on topics like socialism and anarchy. Kropotkin was fascinated by these radical ideas,

but he couldn't really share his budding interest in anarchy with those around him. So he took on a different topic of study, something hot and fashionable. Biology. Um, Jamil, can you do Kropotkin again? It was a time of scientific revival, and the current which carried minds towards natural science was irresistible. He reads The Origin of Species and starts discussing it with his brother Sasha, and he becomes enamored with Darwin's ideas. Kropotkin was especially enamored with the idea of natural selection. The brutal realities of the natural world meant that organisms faced a struggle for existence. The only way to survive was to fight your way to the top. It was a harsh mantra that scholars assumed held not just for

animals, but for humans too. The kind of intense competition that was part of Victorian England was just a human manifestation of natural selection in the wild. If you want to do well, you have to out-compete everybody else. Kropotkin wanted to witness this Darwinian struggle firsthand. So when he graduated from the Corps, he set his sights on becoming a field biologist. He's the top student, which means that he gets to pick any assignment that he wants. And to the chagrin of his father and the czar and everybody, he asked for a position in Siberia, which no sane person in his position would have done because this was taking you as far away from possible of the seat of power. Siberia was pretty much the opposite of the cushy court experience Peter was used to, but the young scholar had his

reasons for the odd choice. He wanted to be as far away from the Tsar as he could. And there were also a lot of other anarchists that either were in Siberia or who had been sent to Siberia. And he got a chance to interact with him. So Kropotkin headed east, crisscrossing the desolate wilderness on a trek that lasted over five years and covered an incredible 50,000 miles. I actually have been lucky enough to spend time in Siberia in the winter, and it's an extraordinarily difficult environment to survive in if you're not staying like I was in an embassy suite's hotel. Siberian winters met enduring blizzards with temperatures of minus 60 degrees.

But Peter forged on, traveling by dog sled. There he was being driven around under this layer of blankets, just moving from city to city. And it was a very, very difficult time, but he seemed to savor it. In this unforgiving place, the budding scientist finally had a chance to watch animal behavior in the wild. And he expected to see just what Darwin had. Whatever has to be done to get more resources and produce more babies, that's what's going to be done. And it was thought that that was mostly intense competition, what Tennyson would later call nature red in tooth and claw, that it was just a bloodbath out there. But a bloodbath is not what Kropotkin saw.

Instead, what he saw is what he began to call mutual aid. Everywhere he looked, Kropotkin saw animals cooperating with one another in the face of tough conditions. Termites collaborated to build hives. Wolves hunted in packs while horses and deer gathered together as protection from predators. Kropotkin was particularly impressed by a species of solitary beetle which buried food underground to feed their larvae. But if they found a big dead mouse or bird, four, six, or even ten beetles would arrive to lend a hand. There was competition, but the competition was against a harsh natural world.

And that if you could help each other overcome the difficulties of living in that harsh world, then everybody would do better than if nobody did that. And what Kropotkin saw in Siberia's animals seemed to hold true for its people, too. Kropotkin observed example after example of Russian peasants helping one another to thrive in harsh conditions, just like those Brazilian ocean fishermen sailing as one into dangerous seas. And what he hypothesized was that the further away from the seat of government the village was, the more mutual aid you saw in the people. When they were freed of the shackles of government, that's when they cooperated with each other. Kropotkin returned from his five-year Siberian trek, convinced about mutual aid and much

more radical in his political views, which he soon began promoting all over the country. But Tsar Nicholas wasn't such a big fan of anarchists, and so he sent his former protege to prison. But Kropotkin wasn't ready to give up. He began conspiring with fellow revolutionaries on a jailbreak. The first plan was that a woman in a beautiful Russian dress would be standing outside the prison, and she would have a red balloon, and when she let it go up into the air, this is when it was safe for him to try to escape.

But even though the coast was clear, there was a hitch in the escape plan. This was the one day that outside the prison there weren't a bunch of people selling these little red balloons that they had for kids. Not a single balloon was to be found. One was discovered at last in the possession of a child, but it was too old and would not fly.

So Kropotkin bided his time until a brief illness landed him in the prison hospital, where the security wasn't as tight. It was time for jailbreak plan B. My comrade was to walk up and down with a handkerchief in his hand, which at the approach of the carts he was to put in his pocket. A violinist stood with his violin, ready to play when the signal street clear reached him. Jamil, you're getting really good at this whole aristocratic voiceover thing. Anyways, this time the escape plan worked. He escapes and it's big news. Kropotkin had to flee Russia, but he didn't exactly keep a low profile. He actually starts working for Nature

Magazine, the magazine today that's still considered one of the best science magazines in the world. And this is where he begins to promulgate his ideas on mutual aid. Kropotkin presented a new theory of human nature, one based on cooperation and kindness, not Darwinian competition and strife. And people flocked to these new ideas. Kropotkin was soon booked on a sold-out, round-the-world speaking tour. And this time he traveled without the dog sled. These are tours that are being followed by the New York Times. They love every move he makes.

He has a kind of Santa Claus look by this time that makes him kind of very lovable. He's talking at everywhere from the National Geographic Society to Harvard to everywhere you can imagine. National Geographic Society, to Harvard, to everywhere you can imagine. Kropotkin became a scientific and political rock star, an OG influencer. Oscar Wilde even christened him the White Christ. Okay, that's an all right name for him, but I've got an alternative. You ready for this? Please.

So the Buddha was a prince, just like Kropotkin, and just like Kropotkin gave it all up and found his tradition. So what do you think? Kropotkin, the Russian up and found his tradition. So what do you think? Kropotkin, the Russian Buddha. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but I get it. I get it. That's fair. Okay.

I'm no Oscar Wilde. Kropotkin and his ideas remained a hot commodity for decades. That is, until the whole anarchy thing fell out of favor. There was an anarchist who killed William McKinley, president of the United States. There was even a rumor that Kropotkin was involved, which was completely false. But there was a very strong negative response to this notion of anarchism. And Kropotkin was so tightly tied to that, that his ideas not only about anarchy, but his ideas in general became much less popular. Mutual aid soon took a backseat, and social Darwinism became the dominant economic theory of the day, in part because the rich and powerful of the early

20th century kind of liked the idea that wealth and privilege naturally went to the fittest of the species. I mean, what a great justification for the imperialists, racists, and robber parents of the early 1900s. So we're obviously not fans of how some people have framed Darwinism over the years. But do Kropotkin's ideas about mutual aid stand the test of time? Are humans and other animals like Darwin's competitive strivers? Or are we more cooperative than most people assume? Find out when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. It's September 19th, 2017,

and Hurricane Maria is barreling across the Caribbean Sea. The Category 5 storm was the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded, and its 175 mile an hour winds would soon hit mainland Puerto Rico, causing a terrible humanitarian crisis that would kill thousands. I remember watching the radar that day in horror, terrified not just for Puerto Rico, but also for a much tinier island

that I happen to know very, very well. Cayo Santiago, which sits about a mile off the coast of Puerto Rico, is known as La Isla de los Monos, the Island of the Monkeys. Cayo is home not to humans, but to a population of more than a thousand rhesus macaques. The monkeys were brought to the island for scientific observation back in 1938. Since then, hundreds of researchers have traveled there to study the monkeys' natural behavior. Hundreds of researchers, including me.

Fun fact. Before I became a happiness scientist, I studied monkeys. And Cayo was my main field site. I started working on Cayo when I was only a college sophomore. I won't do the math for you, but that means I've known this group of monkeys for a long time. They're kind of like an extended family. this group of monkeys for a long time. They're kind of like an extended family. So when the deadliest hurricane in history was poised for a direct hit on Cayo at the most powerful point in its trajectory, I was terrified. There are no structures to shelter in on Cayo, no place for the monkeys to hide. A storm that powerful meant the entire colony might perish. For days, we

couldn't find out what happened, either to the people living close to Kayo or to the monkeys themselves. Eventually, one of my colleagues sent a helicopter to fly over the island and view the damage. Oh my gosh, this sounds terrifying, Lori. I'm kind of scared to ask, but what happened? Well, there was good news and bad news. The good news is, amazingly, most of the monkeys had survived. All right, well, that part's a relief, but what's the bad news? Well, most of the island itself was demolished. All but a few of the island's palm trees were knocked down or snapped fully in half, and nearly two-thirds of the island's other vegetation was gone.

Less vegetation meant less tree cover, and less tree cover meant less shade for the monkeys. Without shade, parts of Cayo can heat up to over 104 degrees. With so many cooler spots completely gone, how far would the monkeys go to compete for the little shade that was left? Yikes. What ended up happening? Well, rhesus monkeys aren't the nicest of primates. Scientists place monkeys on a continuum from egalitarian, nice, to despotic, nasty.

And rhesus macaques are the most despotic of all monkey species. They're pretty much jerks to one another on a regular basis. In the face of scarce shade, I assumed that the whole island would turn into a bloodbath. So I guess you had kind of a cynical prediction. Was it right? Well, primatologist Lauren Brent and her colleagues returned to the island to collect data on the monkeys' aggression,

expecting the worst. But what they saw was shocking. The monkeys were being nicer to one another. The team compared the monkeys' behavior post-Maria to what they'd observed in the five years before the hurricane. The changes were striking. After the storm, the overall number of fights decreased. Rather than a bloodbath, the monkeys seemed to be working together to coexist peacefully in the small number of shady spots left. The researchers also examined the monkeys' survival rates.

They found that the monkeys who fought less before the hurricane, those kinder, more cooperative monkey souls, they lived longer after the storm than the more despotic, competitive monkeys. When the going got tough, it was the nice guys that survived. And flourished. In a changing world in which monkeys had to sit in close proximity to stay cool, there was a cost to being a jerk. In this environment, cooperation was more successful than competition. And modern scientists have observed the same pattern all over the animal kingdom. Evolution has equipped animals to adapt beautifully to

their situations. But oftentimes, survival of the fittest actually means survival of the kindest. Individuals and groups who work together tend to win out. A lot of great research suggests the same might be true of people. There's a stereotype that disasters reveal our true colors. For cynics, this is a bleak story. Sure, we can be polite and kind when everything's going well, but when things fall apart, so do we. News coverage during Hurricane Katrina was a great example of this. Journalists focused on looting and even reported that a lot of murders occurred in New Orleans during the flooding. The truth is far different. Research reveals that the hardest times often bring out

our best. Like the friendly macaques on Cayo Santiago, people come together to help strangers and support one another. People in war-torn towns cooperate more with each other than during peacetime. After earthquakes, tsunamis, and terrorist attacks, donations within a community increase. A lot of the salacious reporting after Hurricane Katrina turned out to be wrong. And although it didn't make as much news, hundreds of private New Orleanians formed the Cajun Navy, a boat brigade to help people stranded by the floodwaters. Of course, we all lived through a generational disaster not that long ago, giving us another natural experiment.

What do you think the COVID pandemic did to human kindness? I recently asked a thousand Americans this question. Most of them thought the pandemic had decreased kind behavior, a standard Darwinian assumption. But it turns out the opposite is true. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, donations to charity, volunteering, and helping strangers all increased. Again, tough times brought out human goodness, whether the world noticed or not. But Jamil, there seems to be at least one thing that's different about humans. Unlike animals, we have theories about how people behave during a crisis. How does that affect us? Here's where things get more complicated and more interesting. Unlike other animals, we have complex predictions about the future and even about our own nature. These are the stories we tell about ourselves, but they don't stay just stories. They change how we act and

become self-fulfilling prophecies. So it turns out that if you believe in social Darwinism, it might become true for you. One example of this is so-called homo economicus. This is a name created by economists to describe a hypothetical person focused only on maximizing his own gain. Very social Darwinist. As we've seen, people are nothing like Homo economicus. They are way more helpful and cooperative, even when it means giving up their own resources. But it turns out that just learning about this idea can change people.

When college students become economics majors, they learn this selfish view of human nature in many of their classes. Over the years, they become more selfish, like fishermen working on the lake. When leaders adopt a selfish view of people, they don't just change themselves, but the people around them too. Lots of companies use stack ranking, where managers have to rank their teams from best to worst performers, and people towards the bottom would be warned or laid off. The logic here is that workplaces are Darwinian contests for survival, and the best way to motivate people is to tap into that selfishness and competition. In reality, stack ranking is a disaster for workplaces. It makes people less happy and more stressed, no surprise there, but it also makes them less

creative and productive. Why take a risk on a new idea if the person next to you would love for you to fail? Why share your knowledge or skills with a colleague if they're really your enemy? People in stack-ranked environments are treated like they're selfish, and they become more selfish, but that doesn't help any of them succeed. Nonetheless, lots of bosses seem firmly wedded to these old ways, thinking that a company only profits when its workers are pitted against the opposition and against each other. Not all bosses, though. Some flourish by using the philosophy of mutual aid instead. All of a sudden, I didn't see people as receptionists and hourly workers and machinists

and accountants. I saw people as somebody's precious child that was placed in my care. We'll hear more when the Happiness Lab returns after this short break. One of the best examples of the power of mutual aid in our own species comes from a rather unlikely place, the cutthroat world of manufacturing. My name is Bob Chapman. I run a global organization called Barry Waymiller, and my goal is to use business as a source for good in the world. Bob became a senior executive at Barry Waymiller back in the 1970s. The company was founded in 1885, making equipment for brewing, but it wasn't in great financial shape when Bob arrived. But under his leadership, Barry Waymiller has completely turned around. It's now a thriving

company with sales of over $3 billion and renowned clients like Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. But if you ask Bob why the company is so successful, you won't hear any mention of earnings or stock prices or fancy manufacturing techniques. It's about people, purpose, and performance. And the first word is people. Our mission is we measure success by the way we touch the lives of people. We touch our customers, we touch our team members, we touch our suppliers, and thinking about the impact we make on people's lives. As he explains in his book, Everybody Matters, The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, Bob is evangelical about a practice he calls truly human leadership. To be good stewards of people, we've got to have a good business model. And then the

fuel that activates that business model is the culture of caring. If Ferrari builds the ultimate high-performance engine and you put 85 octane in that engine, it'll start, it'll run, but it probably won't run to its potential. But if you put premium 91 octane in it, it'll run to its potential. So the premium fuel is our culture of caring. But Bob wasn't always such a fan of this people-centered approach to leadership. Like many CEOs, he was trained in the usual profit-focused management practices. It's all numbers, okay? It is all organic growth, you know, share price appreciation, financial stability. That's what we're taught. I was never taught, never heard, never told

that the way I would run Barry Weimler would affect people's health and people's personal lives. I thought it was about paying people fairly and giving them benefits, okay? I was a nice guy. We had a nice company, but I saw people as functions for my success. And that's what I thought business was about. But all that changed when Bob had a set of leadership revelations, as he puts it, insights that helped him realize just how impactful mutual aid could be in his business. One of these revelations happened, fittingly enough, while at church with his wife. And I said, our rector has only got us for one hour a week. We have people in our company for 40 hours a week. We are 40 times more powerful to impact people's lives than our church.

As I walked out of the church that day, I said to myself, business could be the most powerful force for good in the world if we had leaders who had the skills and courage to care for the people they had the privilege of leading. So it's a completely different view of

what is the responsibility of leadership. Bob was excited to put this new vision of leadership into practice at Barry Waymiller, but many at the company were skeptical, at least at first. One of our team members said to me, you know, Bob, a lot of great companies have great statements on their walls. They just don't live them. And I took that as a challenge. That challenge came to a head during the economic downturn of 2008. The likes of which I had never seen before. I mean, the world seemed like it was falling apart. Like other manufacturing companies, Barry Way Miller found itself receiving fewer and fewer new orders. Ever the optimist, Bob believed the company would find a way to navigate the storm.

But while traveling internationally, he got an email announcing that the company's biggest purchaser had pulled out. And I sat in my hotel room and I said, oh my God, it's hit us. Bob's mind immediately went to the standard advice he'd heard in business school. You got to let people go. It's not fun. It's not easy, but you got to do that. The organization will get through this if we don't. But extensive layoffs didn't really jive with the new philosophy he'd been espousing. Oh, my God. If we measure success by the way we touch the lives of people and we lay people off in an environment where there's no jobs, we are going to hurt people. Bob had heard over and over that during tough times, businesses needed to be Darwinian, that only

the fittest would survive. But Bob wanted a different approach. He hadn't read Peter Kropotkin, but the solution he came up with looked a lot like mutual aid. And I said, what would a caring family do if a member of the family had a crisis? We'd all pitch in and take a little pain so that that family member would not take a great deal of pain. He called his board with what at first glance seemed like a ridiculous plan. And I said, what if we ask everybody to take a month off without pay so we don't have to let anybody go? The board reluctantly agreed, and Barry Waymiller rolled out its radical no-layoffs approach.

We had validated that we actually care about our people. And I have never seen anything like this. The relief, this comfort and the feedback we got, they felt safe. All of a sudden in this world where everybody was falling apart, they felt safe. And what was astounding to me is people didn't really feel like they were giving up a month's pay. They really felt like they were helping their fellow team members keep their job. And we even had some of the older team members say, look, I'm 55. I can afford to take two months off. And maybe young Bill or young Mary, who's got a young family who can't afford the month. And so we

actually had people volunteer to take other people's time off. When faced with a sharp downturn, companies assume that aggressive staffing and pay cuts are the only way to survive. But Bob forged a more cooperative, more Kropotkin-esque path, and the people in his care responded with generosity and compassion. In the end, Barry Waymiller didn't just survive the economic downturn. They soared. Bob's culture of mutual aid wound up improving the company's employee retention and its bottom line. The company has become a symbol in the world for what business could be. Some people say it's about getting the right people on the bus. I say, no, no, no.

It's about building a safe bus, which is your business model. And then having leaders who know how to drive that bus. And then anybody you invite to get on it will be safe. But Bob worries that many business leaders today have no idea how to drive that bus safely. He says that the CEOs making massive layoffs today are treating their company's workers not like people, but poker chips. Nobody talks about the impact on these lives of people who simply wanted to know that they had a future with your company when they joined it. And you walked up and said, sorry, we need to give the investors what they want.

Bob has now devoted his life to fighting this competitive culture in business. He and his team travel around the country, preaching the message of people-centric Bob has now devoted his life to fighting this competitive culture in business. He and his team travel around the country, preaching the message of people-centric leadership to other CEOs. And we have helped major organizations move from using people to caring for people. I had a senior executive of a major corporation who heard me speak at a Dallas event. And he came up to me afterwards, he said, I thought my job was to build the world's biggest organization in our field. And I did that. But until I heard you talk, it never occurred to me to care for the 130,000 people in our organization. But I hear that all the time. But Bob has seen time and again, the developing cultures of mutual aid

can lead to more rewards than leaders realize. People say, how can you afford to do all these things to care for your people? You know, I get that question all the time. And I say, let me flip that. How do you justify not caring for people? Let's return to those fishing villages from the top of this episode. Most of us would prefer a collaborative ocean community, but feel like we're stuck in a lake town. We assume that the laws of nature

dictate that we are naturally competitive and need to fight each other to survive. But the real story is more complicated and more beautiful. Human nature isn't built for survival of the meanest and most competitive. In sometimes, especially tough times, the kind survive and thrive. Whether you're a monkey sharing shade with a stranger or a human sharing your furlough with a team member. More than that, we humans are different. We're not at the mercy of whichever environment we're dropped into. We can build our own social worlds that emphasize

cooperation over competition. Kropotkinism over social Darwinism. If, like Bob Chapman, we create the conditions for a better, kinder world, people will adapt. Self-fulfilling prophecies can work against us, but they can also work for us, bringing the best out of people and cultures. All we need to do is drop the cynicism and believe in each other. Thankfully, the evidence is on our side. To see the best in people, we don't need to put on rose-colored glasses. We just need to take off the mud-colored glasses we usually walk around in.

In the next episode in this series on Finding Hope, Jamil and I will explore another topic that many of us feel cynical about, polarization. These days, it often feels like we're agreeing less and fighting more. Where has all this anger come from? And are our cynical minds actually right about how bad things are? We'll learn more next time on The Happiness Lab

with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. And me, Dr. Jamil Zaki. You got to work on your Russian accent. I will never work on my Russian accent. Go ahead, give me some more krapatkins. Go ahead.