Transcript, E199: Choosing optimism with Jamil Zaki

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LinkedIn News.

Jessi Hempel:

From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel, and this is Hello Monday. It's our show about the changing nature of work and how that work is changing us.

This year, we set out to infuse optimism into our show. I'm talking to you now as I scroll through the New York Times app on my phone and see news of yet another mass shooting. It's followed here by a story about a corruption scandal in Ukraine. Now I look up and out the window and I'm wondering, "Why hasn't it snowed yet in New York City? It's the end of January. Is this global warming?" The evidence to support pessimism all around me can be overwhelming. Even to our guest this week.

Jamil Zaki:

I have moments, just like anybody, where I feel hopeless. I mean, there is so much bad news. There's so much suffering in the world, and so much of that is caused by us. A- and it feels unforgivable. It feels like we can never emerge from, from the pain that we're causing one another. And yet, again, I look when I can at what we can count, um, at what the data show.

Jessi Hempel:

That's Jamil Zaki. Jamil is a psychology professor and researcher at Stanford. He runs the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Jamil's research focuses on how people respond to each other, how we influence each other, and when and why we choose to help each other. His most recent book is called The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World. The research Jamil's conducted for more than 15 years reveals surprises. It suggests we have reason to be much more optimistic about our future than the headlines might demand.

Today, we'll talk about trust and how it's changing. We'll explore the nature of the stories we tell ourselves. And Jamil will push us to embrace curiosity as we consider adjusting those stories. Here's Jamil.

Jamil Zaki:

I do not consider myself a natural optimist. I've, you know, had a, uh, somewhat, uh, difficult early part of my life, and I think that left me with a sense that things generally don't turn out very well. And, and kind of I suppose a cynical view of the world too. That, not just things don't turn out well, but people aren't really there for you. Or, they're only there for you so long as you can provide something for them. It's interesting because, as a scientist, I've discovered that the more research I do, the more that turns out to be wrong, the more that it turns out that people are generally inclined to help each other out. And, that we vastly underestimate how kind people are. That has changed or rotated my own thinking a little bit. And I suppose, if you believe in other people, then it's easier to believe in the future as well because, after all, we are creating it together.

Jessi Hempel:

So, explain a little bit about your field and your work and, and how you spend your days.

Jamil Zaki:

Sure. Uh, I'm a behavioral scientist, so I use tools from psychology, neuroscience, economics, a little sprinkle of sociology, a bunch of different perspectives to try to understand human connection. Uh, I'm a professor at Stanford in the Department of Psychology, and I run a lab there called the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. So, we're very interested in a few different things. One is, how people connect with each other. Two, is what those connections do for us. And three, is, and this gets right, I think, to some of the themes of your show, how any of us can learn to connect better. The ways that human connection is a skill, not a trait.

And so, for instance, we study empathy, and kindness, and togetherness, uh, and all of the health, and social, and professional benefits those experiences bring. We also study the opposite because when you study one thing, you tend to study its opposite, so we study callousness, and cruelty, and isolation (laughs), and all the ways that those experiences hurt us personally and professionally as well.

Jessi Hempel:

Um, you know, you said a minute ago, um, th- th- this idea that people believe in each other. Another way of putting that perhaps is that people inherently trust each other. Do people inherently trust each other?

Jamil Zaki:

We start out life with a lot of trust because we have to. I mean, babies must trust that their caregivers will provide them with food because otherwise they simply won't be on this planet very long. But, I think that for many people, uh, trust is something that we lose over time. And interestingly, we've lost trust as a culture together over time.

So, my parents immigrated to the US in 1972, about 50 years ago, and coincidentally, that same year, this group at the University of Chicago started this massive project to take the pulse of the nation, to ask what Americans' attitudes were about politics, religion, gender, and each other. And one of the questions that that survey has been asking people ever since my parents arrived here was, "Do you think that most people can be trusted?" About half of Americans at that time believed that most people can be trusted. But since then, and I don't think it's because of my parents (laughs)-

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Jamil Zaki:

... but since they got here, in those five decades, trust has eroded systematically. At this point, barely 30% of Americans believe that most people can be trusted. To put it into perspective, we've lost as much of our share of trust as the stock market lost in the great recession of 2008. But, this is a 50-year bear market for our belief in each other that at this point shows no signs of recovery.

Jessi Hempel:

That is not a very optimistic way of thinking about the moment that we're in or the future-

Jamil Zaki:

(laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

... Jamil. Um, but it is something that I think about all the time because I think about the way that whether you and I trust each other ladders up to whether the democracy that we live in can continue to work, whether the institutions that we rely on to do everything from vote and get a license, to, um, send our children to school can continue to function. Uh, whether business can continue to work. Um, trust is necessary in, in... certainly in a democratic world, right?

Jamil Zaki:

100%. I mean, trust you can think of as the kind of oil that keeps our social engine running. And that is true whether you mean a tiny social engine, like the engine of a relationship between two people who love each other. But it's also true for the social engine of our, uh, families, and schools, and businesses. And certainly, as you're pointing out, the ability of a government and society to function. When people lose faith in one another, they lose faith in institutions as well and they stop contributing to those institutions. People who don't have faith in their society stop voting. They stop engaging civically. They tune out. And that's really dangerous because it's almost as though a lack of trust leads to a lack of participation, which erodes the social fabric even further and leads to, you guessed it, even less trust down the road. There's a kind of snowball effect that happens here.

But there's one thing I wanted to add, Jessi. I think the fact that we've changed so much, that we've lost so much trust, shows that trust is something that can change, right?

Jessi Hempel:

Yes.

Jamil Zaki:

I always say that what goes down, can come up. That, something that changes so drastically over time is malleable, which means that we, both individual and as a culture, have some control over it.

Jessi Hempel:

Right. Which is, um, an empowering thought. And it speaks to, um, our mindset in some ways, right? Do we believe that things are static as they are? Or do we believe that we are capable of change? And that brings us back to your work because, Jamil, you investigate how that change occurs, right?

Jamil Zaki:

I do, yeah. I'm very interested in the ways that people change. So the way that one situation might bring out a totally different version of you than another situation. And, how people change over time, both a- accidentally because of their circumstances, and on purpose because of their choices.

Jessi Hempel:

The, the thing that I'm looking to explore here is the idea that story matters a lot, right? The stories we tell each other have a huge impact on whether we're... whether we even believe that we're capable of change or we believe that people are capable of empathy.

Jamil Zaki:

Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, empathy, in a way, is our ability to tune in to other people's stories the way that we tune in to our own. All of us, or at least most of us, are the protagonist in our own life story. We understand the motivation behind the choices that we make. We know how our past has brought us to this current moment, and how that in turn unfolds in our choices for the future.

But we don't always tune in to other people's stories as much. Instead of seeing the way that they're acting now as part of the story of their life, we kinda slice [inaudible 00:09:16] a- and just think about what they do now as the entirety of who they are. So for instance, somebody who cuts you off in traffic, you might just decide, "Well, that person has always been a jerk and always will be. And cutting me off in traffic is the defining moment of their life because it's the only time that it intersected with my story."

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Jamil Zaki:

But we might instead-

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Jamil Zaki:

... become more curious about other people and say, "Well, I wonder what happened before this person cut me off in traffic. I wonder whether maybe they had a really rough morning. I wonder whether maybe they just learned that their child is in the hospital and are really needing to get there to be with them." You know, when we open ourselves up to considering that other people have a story, and even better, ask them about their story, that's a natural conduit for us to connect, to build empathy, and, I think, to understand that the person who does something that we don't like doesn't have to be a person who we don't like. That, there might-

Jessi Hempel:

[inaudible 00:10:13]

Jamil Zaki:

... be a lot underneath them that is just like us.

We tell ourselves stories about us as people. We also have stories about our own psychology. Beliefs about how our minds work. And those beliefs turn out to affect what we're willing to do and when. So, one of the things that I've been really interested in ever since I started studying empathy is whether people think empathy is a strength or a weakness. Empathy is a conduit for success in basically every way that we can measure. But one thing that interested my graduate students in my lab and, and I are, well, when people believe that empathy is a weakness, maybe they will avoid using it. Whereas, when they believe it's a strength, maybe they'll lean into it.

And so, in one set of studies, my graduate student, Luiza Santos, created prompts that basically looked like Psychology Today articles. And one of those articles said, "Hey, uh, bad news, it turns out that empathy is a real weakness. When you take the perspective of somebody you disagree with, you lose every argument before it even begins." Some people read that kind of, "Well, I guess pessimistic essay about empathy." Other people read an essay that sort of started, "Hey, great news, it turns out that empathy is this real strength and that even when you disagree with somebody, empathizing with them can help you make your points more effectively and help you find common ground."

After they read one of these two essays, we asked both democrats and republicans to write a note to someone they disagreed with about gun control. And the notes varied drastically depending on what people believed. People who just learned that empathy was a weakness sniped at each other. They wrote... They evoked tribal identities, they insulted each other, they... There's a bunch of name calling, lots of notes that we couldn't publish later (laughs)-

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Jamil Zaki:

... because of obscenities. But people who learned that empathy was a strength instead, you know... They, they still expressed their position just as strongly on this issue of gun control, but they tried to appeal to the other person. The person. The human being who they disagreed with, as opposed to a caricature. They talked about their common American values. They talked about what we all care about and what we all want. And those notes weren't just nicer. They were more effective. We had a thousand people write these notes, 500 republicans, 500 democrats. We then sent all of the notes to readers who really disagreed with the writer about gun control. And we found that readers said that notes written by folks who had just learned that empathy was a strength were more convincing to them.

Now, mind you, the readers had no idea that these writers had learned anything about empathy at all. They just found the notes convincing if they appealed to common values. And the astonishing thing to us is that these writers didn't start out any differently. 10 minutes before our study, they were similar. But just tweaking their belief, just giving them a little bit more optimism about empathy changed how they behaved. When we told them that empathy was useful, they used it and it became useful. A kind of positive self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jessi Hempel:

It strikes me here, um, you're talking about a change that has happened, as you framed it, in the last 50 years. How much of your work has focused on what caused the change? Are you more interested in exploring how to address the change?

Jamil Zaki:

I think that one has to at least wonder about the causes of something before we can figure out how to change it. More than looking back though, I'm very interested in looking forward. And thinking about, well, if we are trusting each other less, what is something that we can do to reverse that trend? And if there's a cycle, a vicious cycle, where not trusting people leads us to tune out of social life and maybe even act more cruelly, which in turn decreases other people's trust in us, is there a way to flip that into a virtuous cycle where we take chances on each other, act kindly towards each other, and maybe try to rebuild what social scientists would call social capital, the bonds between us that allow us to be there for each other and count on one another?

Jessi Hempel:

I love this question. I think it's one of the most important questions we should be asking right now. What work can we do in our personal lives, in our closest communities, to begin to build that trust? We're gonna take a quick break here. When we come back, we'll talk about it.

And we're back. Trust starts in our minds. To trust others, we need to believe they are trustworthy. And this is where Jamil's research comes into play. Here are some of the things he'd like us to keep in mind.

Jamil Zaki:

I'd s-... I'd say that the first piece here is to be aware of our biases. Now, it turns out that people pay a lot of attention to bad, and frightening, and dangerous things. Which, honestly, is probably pretty smart. You can imagine us a hundred, 200, 500,000 years ago, uh, somebody, an ancient human who thought everything was copacetic might not survive this long (laughs) as somebody who was a little bit nervous about the risks and dangers around them. And even now, if we are in danger, it's really good to pay lots of attention to that. So, it's good that we focus on bad things.

But, that same bias can also lead us to have a pretty inaccurate picture of who's out there. I'll give you an example. Uh, so in studies of trust, people are asked to imagine investing money in somebody else who could then keep it or send some of it back to us. Uh, and people are asked, "What percentage of folks do you think will send money back?" And they say, "I don't know. 40, 50%." They then actually send money to people and ask, "Do you wanna pay back your investor?" And about 80% of people do. There are all sorts of examples of this underestimate of how kind people are. People hugely underestimate how willing others will be to do us favors. How much we will enjoy talking with other people. We just have this perception that the world is less friendly than it is. People are much, much more trustworthy than we think they are. They're also a lot kinder than we think they are. Uh, people vastly underestimate how willing others are to do favors for people. We underestimate how much, uh, people want to engage in random acts of kindness. We even underestimate how fun it will be to talk with somebody else.

I think it was the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who once said, "Hell is other people." I think we can amend his phrase and say, "Hell is who we think other people are." (laughs) We have an imaginary view of people that's much worse than it needs to be. And the problem is that we often interact not with the people who are really there, but with the people in our minds. So we end up treating people as though they're unfriendly, as though they're untrustworthy, and as though they're unkind. And guess what? When we do that, we actually alienate people and make it more likely that they do act in untrustworthy or unkind way. So that's a self-fulfilling prophecy that creates a negative cycle.

But I think we can act on any one [inaudible 00:17:36] part of that cycle. So one, we can try to revise our assessments. When we think that people are really untrustworthy, or evil, or harmful, we can ask ourselves, "What evidence do I really have for that claim? And do I have any counter evidence? Any times that I've seen people act in trustworthy ways or kind ways." Second, instead of treating people like they're the individuals we fear, we can treat them like they're the people we hope they are. And third, we can understand that when we do that, we actually are not just being nice, we might be changing other people for the better. When we act positively and kindly towards other people, when we trust them, we might actually bring out the best in them the same way that our cynical actions might bring out their worst.

Jessi Hempel:

As I listen to you, I have to say, I, I start to think about the office and work as it exists in 2023. And at the heart of our show, that's what we're talking about. And so many of us are working more than ever in a hybrid fashion. And part of that means that the access that we have to people is no longer accidental and is no longer out of our control. You don't have to show up some place every day. You don't have to see the colleague even if you're in a bad mood. Um, and I wonder if that is something that we need to forgo if we want to double down on the world as we want it to be? Or, if we simply haven't found our path to hybrid work that supports growing empathy and growing optimism?

Jamil Zaki:

It's, it's such an important question. I talk with leaders and organizations about this all the time. I think that there actually is a great opportunity in our hybrid work world because incidental social contact, incidental comradery, and solidarity, and mutual support are great, but they're not perfect. I mean, if I'm at the water cooler, for instance, or the office coffee machine, I wanna talk about, uh, I suppose, my San Francisco 49ers, and even better, my Boston Celtics from my hometown. So, I might gravitate towards people in my office who are also sports fans. That type of incidental comradery can sometimes not be very inclusive for anybody. It can cause us to form cliques that are based on who we already know, who is just like us, who thinks, or looks, or has the same experiences as we do. But what the hybrid environment offers us is a chance to replace accidental connection with intentional connection. To actually say, "Well, what do we want our social connections at work to be like? What purpose do they serve? And how can we maximize them?"

This takes some time. It takes time and space to foster human connections between people. But I think that doing so in a virtual environment can actually be, in some ways, more egalitarian than it is if you just let people self-organize into whatever work friend groups they want, uh, anyways. And of course, they're not mutually exclusive either.

Jessi Hempel:

Sure. Sure. Jamil, we use the 50 years as a framing device for thinking about the rise and fall of trust and belief in each other. But history is a lot longer than that. Have we seen other cycles before where trust has risen and fallen?

Jamil Zaki:

That, Jessi, is the right question. And it's one that h- has been occupying me a lot. You know, we live in a period, at least from a social perspective, of some pretty clear declines. Declines in empathy, declines in trust, um, declines in optimism, right? People, uh, feel much worse about the future than they did in the past. So it's easy for a social scientist like me now to focus on a narrative, a story, as we're talking about, a story of perpetual decline.

But, of course, things have not always been this way. And there's a terrific book by Robert Putnum called The Upswing, which basically says, "Well, wait a minute, let's wind the clock back another 50 years to the first Gilded Age." Well, that was a time of enormously low social capital, low trust, lots of sectarianism, and hatred, and division. And we went from 1890 to 1950 or 1960 through a huge increase in egalitarianism, a huge increase in trust, and solidarity, and social capital. Now, this is not at all the same as saying that 1950 was a perfect time that we should go back to. Of course, from racial and gender perspectives, we are in much better times now than we were then. But, it's worth looking to the past and saying, "Well, if there are these cycles that happen, what triggers those cycles? And is there anything that we can do to tip ourselves into a more positive cycle now?"

Jessi Hempel:

You've been in this field a while, what would surprise your younger you version of yourself as you got started?

Jamil Zaki:

Hmm, that's a really big question. It gets back to the first question you asked me, actually. Which is, whether I consider myself an optimist or a pessimist. I think that at this point I've had 20 years of collecting data and analyzing data about people, and those data have consistently pointed out that we are, in the main, a compassionate and connected species. And that, we thrive professionally, personally, and socially when we can tap into that communal side of ourselves, the side of ourselves that is, uh, hyper-social. And that, we languish when we lose our connections to one another.

So, I suppose if, if there was a one-sentence summary of, of all the work that my lab has collected, it would be there is good in us and it does good for us. Now, younger me would not have had that as a punchline (laughs). And I have to admit, even though I collect these data and I know about the science and I speak about the science, I don't always feel it in my heart, know in my mind that, that, that this is what the data tell us. But I have moments, just like anybody, where I feel hopeless. I mean, there's so much bad news. There's so much suffering in the world, and so much of that is caused by us. A- and it feels unforgivable. It feels like we can never emerge from the pain that we're causing one another. And yet, again, I look when I can at what we can count, um, at what the data show. And if I could send a time capsule back to younger me, it would basically (laughs) ask him to look at the data, to not give in to my own biases, my own pessimism, my own cynicism, which still lives inside me and burns inside me. But rather, to try to pay closer attention to what the world is really giving me.

Jessi Hempel:

I love that. Thank you. And I'll use that as invitation to all of ours listeners to also reflect on your own bias. What are you bringing to the table [inaudible 00:24:44] this question? All right-

Jamil Zaki:

Hey. Before we go, um-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Jamil Zaki:

... can I offer one other thought? I know that one of the things that you all are really interested in, and I am too, is optimism and pessimism. And I think that something important for folks to know about both of those, which is the way that they become self-fulling just like hope and cynicism can. So, when we think that things are bad, for instance let's say we look at injustice in our society and we know that it's really harmful and really painful, if we take a pessimistic stance, we say, "Well, nothing is ever gonna change." Well, guess what that does? It makes us feel like we shouldn't try to change it because that's a useless endeavor. And so, when people are pessimistic and hopeless, they're less likely to engage in activism, for instance.

Instead, though, we can be optimistic. And optimism here doesn't have to mean things are gonna turn out great no matter what. That also makes it feel like we don't have to do anything because, uh, we don't have a hand in it. But instead, we can reframe optimism as saying that things could turn out better. That, we don't know what the future is, but that our actions can help turn it into one that we believe in.

About, I guess, gosh, uh, 60 years ago, Martin Luther King spoke to my professional association, the American Psychological Association, and he dinged us for what in the 1960s was one of the most popular ideas in psychology was adjustment. You were supposed to be well-adjusted to your circumstances. And King said, "Why should we be adjusted to racism? Why should we be well-adjusted to inequality? We should be maladjusted to a world full of harm and injustice. But we should be creatively maladjusted." Now, what did he mean by that? He meant not accepting things as they are, understanding all the negatives about the world that we live in, but having the creative spirit to know that we can put our thumb on the scale for positive change, for trying to address some of those injustices. And of course, you know, King lived his life to the T through creative maladjustment. And it's a... it's a term that I wish more people knew now. But maybe we can revive it here.

Jessi Hempel:

I love that term, creative maladjustment. That is the heart of what we're trying to talk about-

Jamil Zaki:

Great. Great.

Jessi Hempel:

... and explore here. So-

Jamil Zaki:

Good.

Jessi Hempel:

... nailed it.

That was professor and researcher Jamil Zaki. One of Jamil's beliefs, based on research, is that empathy is a muscle you can train, pretty much like your biceps. So, let's brainstorm some ways to increase our empathy. Join us for Office Hours this Wednesday on the LinkedIn news page at 3:00 PM Eastern. Or, drop an email to [email protected] and we'll send you the link. And thanks to everyone who's taken an extra moment to leave a review for us. Those reviews help us so much. So this year, I'm gonna share one with you every few episodes. If it's yours, send me an email at [email protected] and I'll send you a six-month gift of LinkedIn Premium.

Hey, Sarah.

Sarah Storm:

Hey, Jessi.

Jessi Hempel:

Okay, Sarah, so who do we have today?

Sarah Storm:

Today's listener is Linda. She writes, "A new favorite podcast. Just listened to the episode with Amy Gallo. Wisdom I wish I had years ago. I love the fast-paced keyed in conversation. Off to listen to more."

Jessi Hempel:

I loved the Amy Gallo episode and I took so much about how to get along with people that I don't actually like spending time with. It was a good one. Thanks, Linda. If you're listening, send me an email at [email protected]. And listeners, I hope that you can take a moment to rate the show if you haven't. And who knows? Maybe I'll read your review on a future episode.

Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn News. Sarah Storm produces our show. Rafa Farihah, Wallace Truesdale, Kaniya Rogers, Michaela Greer, and Victoria Taylor help us to see the bright side every week. Joe DiGiorgi mixes our show. Courtney Coupe is head of original programming. Dave Pond is head of news production. Our theme music was composed just for us by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Dan Roth is the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn. I'm Jessi Hempel, we'll be back next Monday. Thanks for listening.