Cynicism Can Be Toxic and Sometimes Fatal

Did you ever notice how emotions flow through society from person to person, from group to group, because of the effects of emotional contagion? Emotions have run high in the past few years. They provide the fuel for most controversies that hit the news. Emotions are also contagious. Many topics like abortion, stolen elections, vaccinations, pandemics, shootings, and others often involve contagious toxic emotions in discussions about them. Discussion of these topics involves contagious emotions which can produce fear, suspicion, conflict, anger, pessimism, cynicism, fatalism, and depression.

Cynicism grows. It seems contagious. It is often a reaction that involves feeling hurt or betrayed, which grows into distrust, pessimism, and then cynicism. Cynicism is often associated with fatalism and depression. Cynicism, although technically not an emotion, is defined as the belief that people are only interested in themselves and are not sincere; or the fact of using someone’s feelings or emotions to your own advantage: ^[1]

Cynicism and our health

Cynicism is a serious problem because it is often toxic and bad for our physical and mental health. It is associated with poor health, poor habits, chronic depression, and heart attacks. The BBC reported in 2007^[2] that a study of 6,814 people published in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggested that cynical people may be more likely to lead unhealthy lifestyles, like smoking or suffering from obesity, which creates more risk factors for heart disease. Other studies have found that cynicism was associated with an increased risk of total mortality and cancer-related mortality and may be more likely to develop dementia. Cynical people have also been found to make smaller incomes than more optimistic people. Many depressed people are chronically cynical, and this prolongs the depression.

The Pew Research Center reports in 2022 that 60 percent of the American public say they have "not too much" or "no" confidence at all in many things, or only a "fair amount of confidence" in journalists and business leaders to act in the public’s best interests. Ratings for elected officials are especially negative, with 76 percent who say they have "not too much" or "no" confidence in them.

Cynicism is invisible and implicit, and yet lethal and dangerous. Yet society and the media usually minimize the danger of emotions as such, although they do say how an event was devastating, like the various tragic events over the last few years. The implicit and sometimes explicit emotion, such as cynicism, that produced them or results from them is often ignored and yet it is one of the most powerful forces at play in life and in the world. This is probably because emotion is invisible, and the media only reports the visible. Negative emotions that are contagious are in fact dangerous as we see from the lethality of cynicism.

The effect of unregulated emotions

One of the things that we have to do as a society is to learn how to regulate and manage our emotions because emotional dysregulation affects society in a strong way. Emotions that are too strong, experienced implicitly inside us as people and expressed outwardly as actions, cause too many problems when they produce unregulated behavior, like destruction, violence, riots, vandalism, homicides, police brutality, suicides, and even wars.

All these actions and others are produced not just by behavior, but by the strong emotion that preceded it, and the thoughts that are associated with the emotion. These events all contribute to and strengthen cynicism and depression, the sense of distrust and even futility that we have in government, politicians, the media, many businesses and organizations, and even in each other.

The danger of cynicism becoming permanent

Cynicism seems to continue, unabated. It has gotten to the point where, as actor Tom Hanks recently said when being interviewed for his role in the movie about Fred Rogers, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, “Cynicism has become the default position for so much of daily structure and daily intercourse.”^[3] He says that “we have become so inured to that, that when we are met with as simple a message as 'Hey you know what, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!' we get slapped a little bit. We are allowed, I think, to feel good. There's a place for cynicism, but why begin with it right off the bat?”

No one has actually stated publicly that maybe this contagious attitude of cynicism is killing us. If we put together the results from the research named above predisposing some people to an early death, as well as Tom Hanks’ comment, this conclusion could be viable. Did Fred Rogers have the recipe for life and good health? Probably. Is the opposite of cynicism—concepts like trust, innocence, naïveté, cheerfulness, cooperation, romance, positivity, and sentimentality —the recipe for life and good health? Probably. Do we think of them as too childish to accept? Let’s hope not. Cynicism may seem more mature or wise but, in fact, it isn’t. Still, it is contagious.

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We shouldn’t let cynicism rule us. Being affected by too many occasions of mistrust and hurt feelings can stay with a person. Without psychological intervention, it develops the rigid, all-or-nothing thinking that is typical of embedded cynicism and suspicion. When this occurs, people take cynicism to a strong degree, having thoughts such as, "All businesses are corrupt" or "No one should be trusted."

When it is strong like this, cynicism tends to be permanent and may define an important part of the personality of the individual. The individual may always look for the negative side of any topic and exaggerate it without realizing they are doing so.

There is always something negative, and you can find it if you look. It's like finding dust particles on a clean floor. That is tunnel vision, ignoring all the beauty around; and in life, and just seeing the dirt or corruption. It may be there, and that is not good, but it is not everywhere. We need to guard against cynicism becoming permanent or ingrained into our personalities.

Taking a positive perspective

Cynicism and pessimism often occur when people have been hurt or betrayed, and they often may absorb this through emotional contagion and infection into their minds. This is natural, but it can cause one to be overly wary and suspicious. The person will tend to protect themselves by being cynical to avoid being hurt or feeling betrayed.

A feeling of cynicism often follows after many occasions of mistrust, betrayal and hurt feelings, to the point that distrust and disbelief quickly and firmly enter the person's mind that a promise, agreement or commitment that was made will not be kept. The question is, do they need to be cynical on this separate occasion? Will they actually be hurt in this other instance? They may not be. The next instance may bring beauty and wonder. Can people prevent themselves from being hurt by taking a wider view of things and appreciating other aspects of life and living, like the positive things all around us? Positive self-talk and feeling gratitude for the good things can balance this out, as well as self-compassion for the hurt and betrayal that may have occurred in previous instances.

Some people are cynical about governments and people in authority. They may feel those in charge do not show empathy or compassion towards those who are not as well off, and so they may believe that they cannot trust any positive statements from the government about helping them. They think if they do, they will only end up let down.

Think of a government’s positive statements only as possibilities. Hope for it; don’t expect it. But don’t expect it not to happen, either. Just anticipate possibilities. That is not cynicism. Perhaps the government would be more open about an upcoming decision than a cynic would allow them to be. It is better to recognize that governments may vary in their degree of yielding positive or negative attitudes towards people, as opposed to perceiving that governments are always untrustworthy in every situation. Anticipate, rather than expect, that a government will take a negative position because that will allow you to have some flexibility in your appraisal of the government's potential actions. That perspective allows for a slight possibility that the government could take a positive approach. This is a movement forward for the hardened cynic. Good things are possible.