After findings about the brain areas responsible for understanding sarcasm and irony earlier in the week, we now have new research into the development of cynicism.
In this research, children of ages 6, 8 and 10 were told a story with an ambiguous ending that was open to multiple interpretations. These endings directly reflected the character's motivation. As expected, the ten-year-olds were most likely to ascribe a self-interested motivation to the central character, indicating a well-developed sense of cynicism.
What surprised researchers was that even the six-year-olds were more likely, on average, to interpret the character's behaviour as self-interested. This suggests that the seeds of a cynical outlook are sown earlier than had previously been thought. 
Mills, C.M. & Keil, F.C. (2005). The development of cynicism. Psychological Science, 16, 385-390
The science of creativity
As Pablo Picasso once pointed out, all children are creative; the challenge is to remain creative into adulthood.
Unfortunately public education systems around the world seem designed to crush creativity in favour of rote learning and test passing. As the years pass a fear of being wrong takes over from our natural creative tendencies.
Unlike mathematics, languages or the humanities, we are rarely taught about creativity, despite its importance to our lives. Yet the information is out there, waiting to be used.
If you would like to be more creative at work and at home—and that has to be most of us—the insights in this ebook will be useful.
Join PsyBlog's 52317 readers now:
Share/save this article:
Featured