Cynical Hostility, Social Relationships, and Loneliness in Older Adulthood

Cynical hostility is a social-cognitive schema, according to which people are driven by selfish motives, and cannot be trusted. Cynical hostility has been consistently linked in literature to adverse health effects, which are especially prevalent in older adulthood. In this chapter, I focus on the social aspects of cynical hostility, denoting its developmental roots in early childhood, and the ways in which cynical hostility shapes social relationships in adulthood. Specifically, cynical hostility is harmful to individuals’ quality of social relationships with friends, intimate partners, and family members, and has devastating effects to the perception of social integration and loneliness. I suggest that future research should adopt a family perspective to the study of cynical hostility, and that practitioners could integrate cognitive-behavioral therapy to address cynical hostility within the family unit, improving not only individuals’ ability to sustain good social relations, but also families functioning.