Cynicism Linked to Dementia
A decades-long study called Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Aging and Dementia (CAIDE) observed older participants for signs of dementia, and collected data on participants’ levels of cynical distrust, for example, the belief that others will lie or cheat for personal gain and that it’s safer not to trust anyone.
A 2014 study by Elisa Neuvonen et al. in the journal Neurology reported that after adjusting for demographic and other factors, those participants with the highest levels of cynical distrust of others were at higher risk for dementia as they aged. This relationship was not explained by depressive symptoms. The authors suggest that a positive attitude may protect the brain.
The researchers acknowledge that it is possible the distrust may be a result of brain changes leading to dementia, rather than the cause of it.
Those with the highest levels of cynical distrust were also at higher risk for death, but this association disappeared when the researchers controlled for socioeconomic factors and health behaviors such as smoking.
The researchers hope to investigate whether having a cynical attitude early in life is more robustly linked to mortality. It would be exciting to determine whether a shift to a more positive attitude earlier in life could prevent dementia.
Editor’s Note: A high level of chronic anger is associated with shorter telomeres. Telomeres sit at the end of DNA strands and shorten with each cell replication. Shorter telomeres are linked to multiple medical and psychiatric disorders. It may be that cynical distrust shortens telomeres, and is thus associated with dementia.
