Cynics not only lose out on friendships, love and opportunity — they're also wrong about human nature

Cynicism can drag down civic engagement such as volunteerism, while hope can drive people to take action. (South_agency/E+/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Cynicism is on the rise. Should that come as any surprise given today’s divisive global conflicts and our fraught political landscape? Even the weather seems like it’s out to get us.

Americans are experiencing a “trust recession,” social scientist Jamil Zaki said in his new book, “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.” Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab.

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Americans’ belief that most people can be trusted dropped from nearly half in 1973 to about one-third in 2018, according to the General Social Survey. But research reveals this mistrust as off base. In fact, people are often better than we expect.

As it turns out, cynics are often all wrong.

Based on a growing science, Zaki calls on people to replace cynicism with “hopeful skepticism” that helps to see the world more clearly and activates them to create a better future by leveraging “the surprising wisdom of hope.”

Cynicism leads to apathy and inaction. But people can counteract it by questioning their assumptions, maintaining faith in others, gossiping about goodness and embracing the hope that drives civic engagement and social progress.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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CNN: We live in trying times full of violence, strife and cruelty. How could we be anything but cynical?

Jamil Zaki: That’s a fair question. I, myself, struggle with cynicism. It’s an understandable response to injustice. As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “There are some things … in our world, to which we should never be adjusted.”

Although it’s understandable, cynicism is not helpful. Research shows it’s harmful on both personal and social levels. Cynics suffer worse physical and mental health, and communities suffer, too. Elites who want to ensure the status quo are well served by a population that believes things can’t get any better. It’s truly dangerous when we stop seeing any way out.

CNN: Can you say more about the personal and societal costs?

Zaki: Cynicism is harmful for individuals’ overall health. Cynics suffer more depression, isolation and heart disease. They lose out on friendship, love and opportunity. They drink more alcohol, earn less money and even die younger than non-cynics.

Cynicism is also harmful to communities of all sizes, whether it’s a family, a town, a company, a nation. People’s willingness to trust is the engine grease of society that allows people to work together, so social mistrust creates instability, leading to increased crime, polarization and disease. Because autocrats and propagandists sow distrust to better control us, cynicism also contributes to the erosion of democracy itself.

Today we’re seeing the decline of shared truth and the rise of conspiracy theories so rampant it seems like no piece of information, not even a hurricane, can be seen in objective terms.

Cynicism leads to shocking levels of misinformation and susceptibility to misinformation. Worse still, when people feel like they can’t trust institutions, they often end up bonding with individuals who share their distrust — even when those individuals promote remarkably destructive and unrealistic ideas.

"To fight cynicism, we need to get closer to one another — to stop rejecting social contact," "Hope for Cynics" author and social scientist Jamil Zaki says. (Vern Evans via CNN Newsource)

CNN: What are the biggest myths about cynicism?

Zaki: Cynicism gets treated as smart and socially savvy when it’s actually quite naive. People think, “Yeah, cynicism feels bad, but it’s the price of being right.” In fact, cynics often get things wrong. If you present people with a story about a cynic and a non-cynic, 70 per cent will believe that the cynical person is smarter, and 85 per cent will believe that person is better able to spot lying.

Neither belief is correct; cynics score less well than non-cynics on tasks that measure cognitive ability, problem-solving and mathematical skill — and even being able to sniff out liars.

Another misconception is that cynicism is safe. Some people respond to past hurts with what I call “pre-disappointment cynicism,” seeking to avoid feelings of betrayal or neglect by never counting on anyone. This isolates us from connection, collaboration, friendship and love. The things that make life beautiful require us to embrace vulnerability and openness. Shrinking our lives to avoid trusting others is incredibly detrimental to our long-term mental, physical and social health.

Cynicism isn’t moral either. People are quick to charge that if you are hopeful, privilege must be shielding you from all the harms in our world. But when we lose sight of hope, cynicism drags down civic engagement. Cynics are less likely to vote or take part in protests or social movements. Meanwhile, righteous fury about injustice is completely compatible with hope, which allows us to recognize possibilities and can drive us to act.

CNN: How has research helped in your personal struggles with cynicism?

Zaki: It’s been inspiring to hear from people involved in social movements who just don’t have time for cynicism, which they see as deeply destructive and counterproductive. Young climate activists, for example, call cynicism a luxury we don’t have time for — that the problem is too urgent to give up on hope. Also helpful are studies revealing that most of us want a world that is more peaceful, egalitarian and sustainable.

CNN: If cynics are wrong, what does real wisdom look like?

Zaki: It’s a mix I call hopeful skepticism. The first part of wisdom is asking questions like a scientist, being brave enough to acknowledge what you don’t know. While cynicism is a lack of faith in people, skepticism is a lack of faith in our assumptions. A cynic thinks like a lawyer in the prosecution against humanity. They say, “People are terrible, and I am going to find the evidence to prove it.” This leads cynics to hyperfocus on evidence of harm and corruption while dismissing evidence of goodness.

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A skeptic doesn’t start out with an answer but with questions. Skepticism requires us to be humble, courageous enough to face uncertainty and open to revising some of our most deeply and preciously held beliefs about people and the world.

CNN: What practices can nurture the skeptic in us while cutting off fuel to the cynic?

Zaki: The first step is to unlearn cynicism. We are all predominantly biased toward seeing the worst in people in the world and the future. That default setting probably helped us survive evolutionarily, but that doesn’t mean it’s helping us any longer. We’re programmed for racial bias and even to dislike people more when we’re hungry than when we’re full.

These are natural instincts, but we don’t settle for them. We try to grow beyond them. Simply learning the science of cynicism and dethroning it in my own mind has helped me to catch and question my own impulses, diagnosing cynicism when it arises as not wisdom but a set of biases.

If I find myself suspecting someone I’ve just met, I remind myself that we are programmed to pay more attention to threats than to positive information. Then I look for evidence. When I find none to support my suspicions, I replace cynicism with skepticism. “Can I collect better data? What evidence would I need to learn more about this person?” I call this fact-checking cynicism.

Spreading positive gossip is another practice I recommend. In my lab, we found that people gossip three times more often about individuals who are selfish than about those who are generous. Evidence suggests that spreading the positive instead would benefit ourselves and those around us.

A dinner table assignment that can help us remove our negativity blinders is to share a story of one good thing we saw someone do. We all witness so many acts of human beauty every day. Calling attention to them helps us open our minds and learn to notice the world in a more balanced way.

CNN: What is the antidote to cynicism?

Zaki: Trying to withhold blanket judgments and focus on the data instead helps us act more like a scientist than a prosecutor. Hope is the second essential piece of the mindset I promote. People often confuse hope with optimism, which is the belief that the future will turn out well. More practical and active than optimism, hope assumes that we don’t know the future. In that profound uncertainty, there’s room for our actions to matter. So, hopeful people envision a better future, chart a path to it and then walk that path through their actions.

One way to counter negative assumptions is to take chances on other people. This can be as simple as sharing some vulnerability with a new friend or delegating an important task to someone at work and saying, “I believe in you.” When we have faith in others, they often step up. Hopeful skeptics acknowledge this and remind themselves that if we pay closer attention and let people show us who they are, we’ll likely find pleasant surprises everywhere.

CNN: What does the data tell us about human goodness?

Zaki: The data tell us that it’s everywhere. As a scientist, I am not here to say there’s more good than bad in humanity; those are theological and philosophical questions. But I can say that people are more trustworthy, friendlier, more open-minded and more generous than we predict — that we underestimate one another systematically in dozens of different ways.

Cynicism often comes down to not knowing each other well enough to witness the reality that people routinely outpace our expectations. To fight cynicism, we need to get closer to one another — to stop rejecting social contact. The closer we get, the more we see the beauty that is fundamental to who we are.

Jessica DuLong is a Brooklyn, New York-based journalist, book collaborator, writing coach and the author of “Saved at the Seawall: Stories From the September 11 Boat Lift” and “My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work That Built America.”