Dr. Jamil Zaki

Well, I think the data are pretty clear that humanity has lost faith in itself.

In 1972, about half of Americans believed that most people can be trusted.

By 2018, that had fallen to a third of Americans, a drop as big as the stock market took during the financial collapse of 2008.

We don't have to feel this way.

There is a lot of good under the surface if you look more carefully.

You know, it's hard to know because history is not an experiment, right?

You can't run it back a thousand times and tinker with different factors to see what caused the drop in trust.

That said, there are some factors that seem to correlate that are really interesting.

One is inequality.

Generally, when a place like a town or country is really economically unequal, people trust each other less.

And also over time in the US, when we've had times of greater equality, people have generally felt more connected.

A second factor is the media.

Not you, of course, Mike.

You are an exception.

But in much of the media, we are bombarded with really negative, toxic, and extreme representations of who's out there.

And it's really easy to decide if you're tuned in, if you're watching a lot of news on cable, or doom scrolling on your phone for hours, that actually people are pretty rotten.

Those data, though, are biased.

And so it turns out that watching a bunch of news or staying online a lot doesn't actually make you more accurate about what people are really like.

It might lead to not just cynicism, but unnecessary cynicism.

I think it's close.