Optimists Are Smarter
I intentionally post on Mondays because ‘feeling better together’ is valuable and at times, essential, for being a fully functioning human these days. Taking a short minute to focus on what matters and how to be more of our true selves (vs our performative selves) can make a difference all week long.This week’s topic is one I’m familiar with: the contrasts between optimism and pessimism. Each camp has generated some clever and succinct memes to support their points of view. What if there were data to help move the needle, though?
Built in to this discussion is the concept of change. Not everyone likes it; not everyone wants it. My personal belief is that it is one of the most necessary habits to acquire in life. Everything around us is moving and morphing (m-words for change) and to shelter in place without a willingness to look out the window, can be a recipe not just for depression but also a type of ‘failure to thrive’ imposed on oneself.[Failure to thrive syndrome was identified several decades ago when orphaned babies were fed and bathed but not touched. They literally began to lose weight and die from the absence of human contact and attention.]
Pessimism and resistance to change go hand in hand, patting each other on the back while smoking cigars of superiority.
Optimism and willingness to change, meanwhile, are out there opening doors and growing brain cells along with smiles.
If those metaphors aren’t enough to move you towards optimism, perhaps the following study will. It busts a few myths about pessimists being more realistic and/or more intelligent— a belief many embrace worldwide. You do not have to sacrifice your intellect to be an optimist! Optimism does not require wearing blinders! Let’s look at the study, which specifically addresses cynicism and competence, close relative to pessimism and optimism.1
From the study, “The Cynical Genius Illusion: Exploring and Debunking Lay Beliefs About Cynicism and Competence”
Cynicism refers to a negative appraisal of human nature—a belief that self-interest is the ultimate motive guiding human behavior. We explored laypersons’ beliefs about cynicism and competence and to what extent these beliefs correspond to reality. Four studies showed that laypeople tend to believe in cynical individuals’ cognitive superiority. A further three studies based on the data of about 200,000 individuals from 30 countries debunked these lay beliefs as illusionary by revealing that cynical (vs. less cynical) individuals generally do worse on cognitive ability and academic competency tasks. Cross-cultural analyses showed that competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment. Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that—at low levels of competence—holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others’ cunning.
As I try to keep these posts short and digestible, I’m going to provide some of the numerous takeaways from the study. I could have quoted the entire piece! I think it’s that good. But I’ll serve as your editor today and encourage you to read the entire piece (not pay-walled!) for your own actionable insights. This was a vast study, addressing a full range of ages and conducted across several countries:
Indeed, studies using the trust game showed that people typically earned more if they were willing to trust strangers rather than not (e.g., Fetchenhauer & Dunning, 2010)Further studies demonstrated that cynicism is more likely to be a worldview endorsed by individuals with lower rather than higher levels of education (Haukkala, 2002; Stavrova & Ehlebracht, 2018)On average across countries, cynical individuals had lower levels of education than their less cynical counterparts.To conclude, the idea of cynical individuals being more competent, intelligent, and experienced than less cynical ones appears to be quite common and widespread, yet, as demonstrated by our estimates of the true empirical associations between cynicism and competence, largely illusory. As Stephan Colbert, an American comedian, writer, and television host, phrased it, “Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it.”
To bring us back around to optimism v pessimism, another commenter on this Twitter thread shared this:“Cognitive ability is negatively associated with pessimism and tenuously or slightly positively associated with optimism.”2 Crémieux was citing an article in Science Direct on optimism and pessimism as related to cognitive abilities.3I am more optimist than pessimist, hence my psychological antennae were tuned to find and support these studios. What if you are in the pessimism-cynicism camp? What to do now? I would say, if this data feels compelling to you and you want to improve your cognitive abilities and dare I say, feel a little happier now and then, I would start with 5 minutes a day of journaling. Blank page, two columns. Column 1: Cynical POV and Column 2: Optimist POV. Train (LOL, force) your brain to reconfigure an observation. This is literally going to move brain cells around, and done repeatedly over time, that makes a new habit.Plus, the private practice of journaling will plant the seeds to make it easier to hear yourself thinking and talking, and hence, catch yourself when the spin goes negative. I’d really love to hear from some of you who might be willing to try on this experiment!The Gist: I can write nicey-nice things that feel good every Monday, but if we do not back up this sweetness with earth-moving actions, then results will stay the same. “Doing the same thing over and over again [thinking and feeling cynically] and expecting a different result, is, as you’ve heard, the definition of insanity.
So! Let’s not just feel better together, let’s be more optimistic and less cynical, and more sane! Oh, and smarter, too! Thank you for sharing your time, your mind, and your heart with me today.