Being cynical about other people’s motivations – assuming that everyone acts only out of self-interest – is all the rage these days. But, let’s be honest, people who are universally cynical are also tiresome and dull. No one wants a colleague, let alone a friend, who can’t really trust you because they think everyone’s out for themselves.
Excellent ammunition for tackling this epidemic of cynicism comes via great new research that examines the perceived and actual competence of people who are more or less cynical.
It finds there’s a reason people might be cynical – it makes other people think you’re clever (people think a cynical person will outperform a non-cynical one in a range of cognitive tasks). That broadly fits with the common story about us equating cynicism with wisdom or hard-won experience.
But the more interesting finding, including from a survey of 200,000 people across 30 countries, is that our faith in the competence of cynics is misplaced. They do worse on measures of cognitive ability or academic competence. The author calls this excessive faith “the Cynical Genius Illusion” and it’s something we need to break.
It’s also important for the cynics themselves that we do. Other studies show that being cynical is bad for your health, reduces your self-esteem and leads to lower earnings. So it’s just bad all round, really. In the end, we’re humans and being successful in any meaningful part of our lives requires cooperation with other people. It shouldn’t be rocket science that if your starting point is not to trust anyone, you’re missing a major building block required for leading a good life. So let’s cancel the cynicism.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org
