(HealthNewsDigest.com) - When describing the things that make them happy, most people rate romantic love, intimacy, and friends and family above even their physical health. Now, pioneering research conducted by University of Chicago psychology professor John T. Cacioppo shows that when we are deprived of a satisfying sense of social connection far more than our happiness is at stake.
In LONELINESS: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection [W. W. Norton & Company; Publication date: August 10, 2009; $17.95 paper], Cacioppo and science writer William Patrick present alarming evidence that a sense of rejection or isolation disrupts not only our thinking abilities, will power, and perseverance but also key cellular processes deep within the human body. Over time, this feeling of isolation—also known as loneliness—can lead to high blood pressure, a decline in the immune response, and a dramatic increase in the corrosive effects of stress.
Cacioppo’s findings suggest that chronic loneliness may well belong on the list of risk factors for health alongside smoking, obesity, or lack of exercise. It is all the more disturbing, then, that studies tell us roughly twenty percent of people—60 million in the United States alone—are feeling lonely at any given moment.
Loneliness is not the same thing as physical isolation. Many people relish their moments of solitude and enjoy the chance to be alone. By the same token, an individual can feel desperately lonely in a busy office, at a crowded party, at the breakfast table surrounded by spouse and children, or while busily text- messaging a schoolmate. What matters is the subjective sense of a meaningful and satisfying bond.
And yet our culture seems to be racing away from such bonds. The average household size is decreasing, and, by 2010, 31 million Americans, roughly ten percent of the population, will live alone. Studies have also shown that Americans today report having significantly fewer close friends than did those a generation ago.
Cacioppo, one of the founders of the new, interdisciplinary field of social neuroscience, has used the most sophisticated scientific tools, including fMRI brain scans, to document all the ways in which feelings of social contentment or, conversely, social isolation affect our bodies and our behavior. He and Patrick examine these effects in the context of human evolution, showing the key role of bonding and social cooperation in our success as a species. We all know that human infants need the protection of parents, and that childrearing is enhanced when parents are strongly bonded together. During the infancy of our species in the grasslands of Africa, survival for even hearty adults required the protection of families and tribes. Isolation in such a harsh environment usually meant death. Not surprisingly, the painful feeling we know as loneliness induced extreme discomfort, a physiological jolt to prompt us to renew frayed connections with the other people on whom we depended.
Millions of years later that same terror shows up, not only in the form of disrupted physiology but also in the form of disrupted behavior, behavior meant to be self-protective but which becomes, in fact, self-defeating. Loneliness, when it persists, makes it hard for the individual to properly regulate his or her emotions. Sadly, it often leads to the kind of aloof, demanding, or critical behavior most likely to drive others away. Because it also diminishes our ability to size up other people and accurately read their intentions, feeling lonely makes it more likely that we will be victimized.
Divided into three parts, Cacioppo and Patrick’s book clearly defines the syndrome of chronic loneliness, distinguishing it from other emotional states such as anxiety and depression that often travel in the same company. It concludes by presenting positive, non-pharmacological corrective strategies for getting beyond the problem.
Part One, “The Lonely Heart,†outlines the genetic component, defines loneliness as a distinct dimension of experience from depression, and introduces the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a detailed questionnaire that assesses individuals’ basic level of social contentment. The first chapter locates the roots of loneliness in three complex factors: 1) an individual, genetically biased level of vulnerability to social disconnection; 2) the ability to regulate the emotions associated with feeling isolated; and 3) one’s mental representations and expectations of, as well as reasoning about, others.
Cacioppo and Patrick then show how these three factors interact to cause great distress under the pain of loneliness, but also how they can be brought to bear on solving the problem. Understanding the nature of our fear can help us reframe how we think about social situations, which then helps to dampen the fear, which then helps to break the negative cycle of self-defeating behaviors.
Another powerful element in this corrective regime is gaining experience with the positive, physiological adjustments caused by moments of connection—a sample of which—“the helper’s highâ€â€” is available to us any time we engage in acts of altruism.
Part Two, “From Selfish Genes to Social Beings,†gives the lie to the image of the human brain as an intricate, solitary computer, and to humans as being driven primarily by ruthless competition and narrow self-interest. Reminding us that humans are, first and foremost, social animals, Cacioppo and Patrick explore all the ways, including mimicry and hormonal influences, in which we co-regulate each other’s physiology and behavior. They examine how both our brain and our body have evolved to work in concert with a social network, examining social signals and the importance of connection in the context of infant and child development.
Part Three, “Finding Meaning in Connection,†focuses on solutions, first for the individual and then for society. Having demonstrated the compelling degree to which social cooperation, even altruism, has driven human evolution, as well as the degree to which isolation impairs—and connection enhances—our creative abilities as well as our health, they widen their focus on the role of social trust in creating a prosperous society. Of course humans can be violent, competitive, and self-serving—one more reason why accurate social perceptions, and the exercise of sanctions, are so necessary. But the distinctive driver of our evolutionary advance has been our ability to focus on common interests beyond self and the clan. The hominid apes less skilled at social cooperation—chimps and bonobos— are the ones still back in the forest, fighting over scraps of food.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
John T. Cacioppo is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and president of the Association for Psychological Science. He Lives in Chicago, Illinois. William Patrick, former editor for science and medicine at Harvard University press, is editor in chief of the Journal of Life Sciences. He lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
Online Resources for LONELINESS:
∙ Web site: scienceofloneliness.com
TITLE: LONELINESS: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection
AUTHOR: John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick
PUBLICATION DATE: August 10, 2009
PRICE: $17.95 paper
ISBN: 978-0-393-33528-6
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