Dr. Jamil Zaki

I see cynicism as a theory about human nature.

It's the idea that in general, people are selfish, greedy, and dishonest.

And one way that that comes out, as you're rightly pointing out, is a lack of trust.

If you think that people generally are up to no good, that they're out only for themselves, then trusting somebody, putting your faith in them, taking a risk on them is a sucker's bet.

So indeed, cynics trust less than non-cynics.

But there are other ways that cynicism also comes out.

One is just a kind of negative, bleak attitude towards most people.

A general sense of, let's call it, ambient contempt.

Yeah, so there are questionnaires that capture people's cynicism.

And in general, people score a little bit away from the cynicism side of the scale.

So most people are not super cynical.

But again, the trends are what I'm most interested in.

So the proportion of people who would describe themselves as cynics has risen steadily over the last few decades.

And if that trend continues, then soon our entire culture

might flip over from generally trusting to generally cynical.

I love this question, Mike.

So there are some data on demographic correlates, is what we would call it, of cynicism.

And it turns out to be less obvious than you might think, but I think the data makes sense.

So it's not the case that rural versus urban people, for instance, are systematically more or less cynical than one another.

But it is the case that people who have gone through a lot of adversity