Quit Being a Cynic at Work. It’s Holding You Back.

We don’t want to be friends with our co-workers . We don’t want to help out with that project. We don’t trust the CEO…or our boss…or that guy in accounting.

Have we taken our cynicism at work too far?

In some ways, our bad attitude makes sense. Many of us made work our church, only to end up laid off , burned out or underpaid. Now we check out, do less, gossip and snark.

It isn’t getting us anywhere good, according to Jamil Zaki , a Stanford University psychology professor who runs the school’s social neuroscience lab.

“Cynicism, if it were a pill, would really be a poison,” he says.

Zaki has spent years researching sunny concepts such as empathy and compassion. One of his studies, for example, found that giving away money activates a similar part of the brain as eating chocolate. His forthcoming book, “Hope for Cynics,” explores the rise of our darker sides, our belief that other people are selfish, greedy and dishonest.

Betrayed once, we practice what Zaki calls “pre-disappointment,” always assuming others will let us down. The mindset feels productive and cunning, like we’ll be able to protect ourselves. But Zaki says it can actually stunt our careers in the long run, and hurt our mental and physical health.

“By never trusting, cynics never lose,” he writes. “They also never win.”

He assures that you don’t have to become the company cheerleader, or even an optimist, to grow your faith in other people. You do have to take a chance on them, examining your own assumptions and suspending your conviction that you already know how this is going to turn out (not well).

While the approach might initially seem blasphemous to the more negative, sarcastic and skeptical among us—like, say, me—anyone can become less cynical , he says.

You might even find you like it.

How we got here

Once upon a time, Americans were less cynical, Zaki says. A longstanding survey from research organisation NORC at the University of Chicago, which has examined American attitudes since 1972, shows we used to trust each other more. Around the middle of the last century, many hummed along on the rosy glow of plum benefits, robust job security and the knowledge that the chief executive was making, say, 20 times a worker’s pay, instead of 200.

It isn’t that we never complained about work, but Zaki says we repaid our companies’ loyalty with commitment, as part of an unspoken covenant.

Today, that employee-employer pact can feel like a relic of a bygone era. Workers have swapped pensions and equity in their companies for more meagre benefits that put the risk and onus on individuals. Instead of reporting to paternalistic employers, many people now operate under tenuous contracts and gig work.

Some of us work from home in isolation or spend lonely days in the office trapped on back-to-back video calls. There’s less chitchat, less interaction.

“We don’t like people when they’re abstracted,” Zaki says, “but we love people who we actually know.”

Zaki understands why, given all this, we might scoff at the notion that our company is a family, or roll our eyes at the prospect of joining in forced fun at the office happy hour.

Sometimes, I suspect, we also adopt a toughness because we don’t want to look like we’re trying too hard, only to fail or be rejected. Maybe it stems from perfectionism, or anxiety, or insecurity after being exposed to everyone else’s highlight reel on social media for the past 15 years.

Fighting our own worst tendencies

It might seem like all the office snakes are scaling the ladder, but Zaki says studies show cynics’ earnings and leadership potential level off with time. To do good work and attain success, you have to build alliances and share information. Translation: You have to trust someone.

Cynics are prone to poor health, from depression to heart disease, he says, adding that at an organisational level, cynicism can lead to pervasive backstabbing, higher turnover and even corporate corruption.

Cynicism is also a self-fulfilling prophecy, he says. People often mirror how we treat them. Micromanage your team—surveilling them and wresting away their ability to make decisions—and they’ll become the slackers you think they are, doing the bare minimum and buying mouse jigglers to mask time away from their home computers.

“Cynics tell a story full of villains and end up living in it,” he writes.

Resisting cynicism’s pull starts with being open-minded. Examine the data of your life like a scientist would, he says, instead of jumping to conclusions, positive or negative. Think everyone at your job is out for themselves? Ask 10 colleagues for a favour, and see if anyone agrees to help. Convinced every conversation with a co-worker will be painful? Spend a day rating your interactions with them on a scale from 1 to 10.

Challenging your assumptions will leave you pleasantly surprised, Zaki promises, because people often rise to the occasion when we let them. You can start by doling out what you hope to receive. Try engaging in “positive gossip,” speaking highly of others. Take a leap of faith in someone, and do it obviously.

“I trust you,” a manager might say to her direct report. “I really think you can do this.”

Calibrating our hope

Could all this make us too soft? Rejecting cynicism doesn’t mean you can’t hold workers to high standards, Zaki says. Just don’t pit them against each other, with practices like stack rankings, where collaboration is discouraged as workers try to claw above each other on a scoreboard.

Your humour can still be irreverent, even biting, he adds, but jokes should ultimately bring people together or improve something.

“Snark, in the absence of any hope, kind of curdles,” he says.

And don’t be blindly optimistic, he adds. If leadership isn’t giving you any reason to have faith in them, don’t. Find another group to trust—maybe your small team or a union. Band together to provide a buffer to the daily stress of working in your organisation, or enact change by fighting for something better.

“We often underestimate how much influence we have,” he says. “Own that power.”

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

Quit Being a Cynic at Work. It’s Holding You Back.

There are ways to fight the tendency to see the worst in everyone

How we got here

Fighting our own worst tendencies

Calibrating our hope

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.