Editorâs note: Shift Your Mindset is an occasional series from CNNâs Mindfulness, But Better team. We talk to experts about how to do things differently to live a better life.
CNN
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Cynicism is on the rise. Should that come as any surprise given todayâs divisive global conflicts and our fraught political landscape? Even the weather seems like itâs out to get us.
Americans are experiencing a âtrust recession,â social scientist said in his new book, â The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.â Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab.
Americansâ belief that most people can be dropped from nearly half in 1973 to about one-third in 2018, according to the . 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 âhopeful skepticismâ that helps to see the world more clearly and activates them to create a better future by leveraging âthe surprising wisdom of hope.â
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.
CNN: We live in trying times full of violence, strife and cruelty. How could we be anything but cynical?
Jamil Zaki: Thatâs a fair question. I, myself, struggle with cynicism. Itâs an understandable response to injustice. As the . said: âThere are some things ⦠in our world, to which we should never be adjusted.â
Although itâs understandable, cynicism is not helpful. Research shows itâs harmful on both and 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 canât get any better. Itâs 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 individualsâ overall health. Cynics suffer more , and They lose out on and . They drink more , and even than non-cynics.
Cynicism is also to communities of all sizes, whether itâs a family, a town, a company, a nation. Peopleâs willingness to trust is the engine grease of society that allows people to work together, so social mistrust instability, leading to increased crime, polarization and disease. Because autocrats and propagandists sow distrust to better control us, cynicism also contributes to the itself.
Today weâre seeing the decline of shared truth and the rise of conspiracy theories so rampant it seems like no piece of information, not even a , can be seen in objective terms.
Cynicism leads to shocking levels of and to misinformation. Worse still, when people feel like they canât trust institutions, they often end up bonding with individuals who share their distrust â even when those individuals promote remarkably destructive and unrealistic ideas.
CNN: What are the biggest myths about cynicism?
Zaki: Cynicism gets treated as smart and socially savvy when itâs actually quite naive. People think, âYeah, cynicism feels bad, but itâs the price of being right.â In fact, . If you people with a story about a cynic and a non-cynic, 70% will believe that the cynical person is smarter, and 85% will believe that person is better able to spot lying.
Neither belief is correct; than non-cynics on tasks that measure cognitive ability, problem-solving and mathematical skill â and even being able to .
Another misconception is that cynicism is safe. Some people respond to past hurts with what I call âpre-disappointment cynicism,â seeking to avoid feelings of or neglect by never counting on anyone. This 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 isnât 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 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: Itâs been inspiring to hear from people involved in social movements who just donât have time for cynicism, which they see as deeply destructive and counterproductive. Young climate activists, for example, call cynicism a luxury we donât have time for â 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 , egalitarian and .
CNN: If cynics are wrong, what does real wisdom look like?
Zaki: Itâs a mix I call hopeful skepticism. The first part of wisdom is asking questions like a scientist, being brave enough to acknowledge what you donât 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, âPeople are terrible, and I am going to find the evidence to prove it.â This leads cynics to hyperfocus on evidence of harm and corruption while dismissing evidence of goodness.
A skeptic doesnât 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 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 toward seeing the worst in people in the world and the future. That default setting probably helped us survive evolutionarily, but that doesnât mean itâs helping us any longer. Weâre programmed for racial bias and even to dislike people more when weâre than when weâre full.
These are natural instincts, but we donât 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 Iâve just met, I remind myself that we are 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. âCan I collect better data? What evidence would I need to learn more about this person?â I call this fact-checking cynicism.
Spreading positive gossip is another practice I recommend. In my lab, we 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 and 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 donât know the future. In that profound uncertainty, thereâs 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, âI believe in you.â 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, weâll likely find pleasant surprises everywhere.
CNN: What does the data tell us about human goodness?
Zaki: The tell us that itâs everywhere. As a scientist, I am not here to say thereâs more good than bad in humanity; those are theological and philosophical questions. But I can say that people are more , , more and more than we predict â 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 â to stop rejecting social contact. The closer we get, the more we see the beauty that is fundamental to who we are.
is a Brooklyn, New York-based journalist, book collaborator, writing coach and the author of âSaved at the Seawall: Stories From the September 11 Boat Liftâ and âMy River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work That Built America.â