Being Alone Has An Astonishing Effect On Energy Levels (M)
When cut off from other people we develop a craving for them that is similar to hunger.
Category: Loneliness
The Strangest Symptom Of Loneliness
One reason loneliness is so hard to overcome.
One reason loneliness is so hard to overcome.
Sitting or standing further away from friends and family is a symptom of loneliness, research finds.
Lonely people people prefer a larger interpersonal distance between themselves and those with whom they have the closest relationships.
The reason lonely people keep their distance is that they are more wary of social threats.
Although they want to reconnect with others, lonely people are anxious about being rejected or facing hostility.
Naturally, this makes loneliness harder to overcome.
Mr Elliot Layden, the study’s first author, said:
“To our knowledge, this is the first direct evidence for a link between interpersonal distance preferences and loneliness.
This finding may be important to consider in the context of loneliness interventions—such as client-therapist interactions and community programs seeking to combat loneliness.”
The study included 580 people who were surveyed about their loneliness and their preference for interpersonal space.
The results showed that being lonely doubled the chance that someone would prefer to stand or sit further away from their friends and family.
However, lonely people do not stand or sit any further away from strangers, the research also showed.
Some people felt lonely despite having a high degree of social interaction, for example at work.
Dr Stephanie Cacioppo, study co-author, said:
“You can feel alone even in a crowd or in a marriage—loneliness is really a discrepancy between what you want and what you have.”
Lonely people go into a kind of ‘survival mode’ that helps protect them from social threats.
Dr Cacioppo said:
“This ‘survival mode’ means that even though a lonely person wants more social interaction, they may still unconsciously keep their distance.
The hope is that by bringing this to conscious attention, we can reduce the incidence of divorce as a byproduct of loneliness and increase meaningful connections among people.”
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Layden et al., 2018).
This Personality Trait Protects Against Loneliness
People like this enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints and others look to them for advice.
People like this enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints and others look to them for advice.
Wisdom protects people against loneliness, a study suggests.
People high in two particular components of wisdom — empathy and compassion — were especially unlikely to become lonely, the researchers found.
Wisdom is a personality trait: typically, wise people enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints and other people look to them for advice.
Wise people are also skilled at filtering negative emotions and do not postpone major decisions.
Professor Dilip Jeste, the study’s first author, said:
“An important finding from our study was a significant inverse correlation between loneliness and wisdom.
People with higher scores on a measure of wisdom were less lonely and vice versa.
Loneliness was consistently associated with poor general health, worse quality of sleep and less happiness, whereas the reverse was generally true for wisdom.”
The study included older adults in a relatively isolated, rural area of Italy.
The researchers also surveyed people living in San Diego, an urban/suburban area in the US.
All were asked about various components of wisdom, including compassion, empathy, emotional regulation and self-reflection.
The results showed that people who were high in empathy and compassion were particularly unlikely to feel lonely.
Professor Jeste said:
“Both loneliness and wisdom are personality traits.
Most personality traits are partially inherited and partially determined by environment.”
Like many other personality traits, wisdom can be difficult to change, but not impossible.
Dr David Brenner, study co-author, said:
“If we can increase someone’s compassion, wisdom is likely to go up and loneliness is likely to go down.
At UC San Diego, we have considerable interest in enhancing empathy and compassion to reduce levels of stress and improve happiness and well-being.”
Professor Jeste said:
“So how do you increase compassion? Utilizing approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy or writing in a gratitude diary can help someone become more compassionate.”
The study was published in the journal Aging and Mental Health (Jeste et al., 2020).
The Personality Trait Linked To Loneliness
Feeling lonely is a part of some people’s genetic makeup.
Feeling lonely is a part of some people’s genetic makeup.
People who are neurotic have a genetic tendency towards loneliness, research finds.
Neuroticism is a personality trait that indicates a tendency to experience stress and insecurity.
However, loneliness is not just genetic, it is also a result of life circumstances.
In fact, the environment plays a bigger part than genetics — which is good news, because that means it can change.
Lonely people do not have to stay that way, whatever their genetic makeup.
Professor Julie Aitken Schermer, the study’s first author, said:
“If you have rich interactions with people, that’s an environmental component that would combat the genetic impact of loneliness.”
The conclusions come from research on 764 pairs of twins in Australia.
Twins enable researchers to separate out the influence of genetics and the environment on a person.
All were asked about their personality and any loneliness they experienced.
The results showed that people who were neurotic reported feeling more lonely.
In contrast, those who were high in extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness were less likely to experience loneliness.
The authors write:
“The results suggest common genetic and unique environmental factors play a role in personality and loneliness.”
Professor Schermer is worried about the spread of loneliness across society:
“It does concern be me because we’re getting lonelier as a society.
We’re not having the same richness of interaction.”
Professor Schermer sees it in her students:
“They’re all looking at their devices and not interacting with each other.
I always tell my students, ‘Put your stuff down and talk to each other.’
This is the key time to make friends – they already have things in common.”
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Schermer & Martin, 2019).
Breaking The Cycle of Loneliness: Grandparenting and Volunteering Help Older Adults Thrive (M)
When people reach later life they are more motivated to ‘give back’ — they want to engage meaningfully in what remains of their lives.
The Startling Truth About Loneliness: How Wisdom Can Protect You
The shocking loneliness statistics show that 75% of people suffer.
The shocking loneliness statistics show that 75% of people suffer.
Being wise protects against loneliness, research finds.
Wise people enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints and other people look to them for advice.
Wise people are also skilled at filtering negative emotions and do not postpone major decisions.
The conclusions come from a study of 340 people in the US.
They were asked about any loneliness they experienced and their wisdom was assessed.
The results showed that loneliness tended to peak at particular times in life.
People experienced most loneliness in their late-20s, mid-50s and late-80s.
Three-quarters of study participants experienced moderate to severe loneliness.
Professor Dilip Jeste, study author, said this was surprisingly high:
“They didn’t have major physical disorders.
Nor did they suffer from significant mental illnesses such as depression or schizophrenia, in which you might expect loneliness to be problematic.”
Unfortunately, loneliness is very damaging, explained Dr Ellen Lee, the study’s first author:
“…loneliness seems to be associated with everything bad.
It’s linked to poor mental health, substance abuse, cognitive impairment, and worse physical health, including malnutrition, hypertension and disrupted sleep.
High levels of wisdom, though, seemed to have a protective effect against loneliness:
“That may be due to the fact that behaviors which define wisdom, such as empathy, compassion, emotional regulation, self-reflection, effectively counter or prevent serious loneliness.”
Professor Jeste said:
“…these findings suggest we need to think about loneliness differently.
It’s not about social isolation.
A person can be alone and not feel lonely, while a person can be in a crowd and feel alone.
We need to find solutions and interventions that help connect people that help them to become wiser.
A wiser society would be a happier, more connected, and less lonely society.”
The study was published in the journal International Psychogeriatrics (Lee et al., 2019).
The Personality Trait That Protects Against Loneliness
The personality trait that cuts the risk of feeling lonely in half.
The personality trait that cuts the risk of feeling lonely in half.
People who are emotionally stable are 60 percent less likely to feel lonely, research finds.
Whether middle-aged or older, people who are able to adapt to stressful situations tend to feel less lonely.
In middle-aged people, being extraverted also helps to protect against loneliness.
This link between extraversion and reduced loneliness was not seen in the old, though.
This could be because people in middle age are more likely to be mixing with others for work or childcare.
However, no amount of extraversion will help a person who is socially isolated.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who lived alone in old age had the highest risk of loneliness.
People living alone in their 70s were at four times the risk of feeling lonely.
The study included over 4,000 people, some of whom were aged 45-69, others who in their 70s.
Researchers measured their personality and asked how lonely they felt.
The results showed that people with stable personalities — those who are low in neuroticism — felt less loneliness.
People who are stable tend to have low levels of anxiety, sadness and irritability.
Stable people were, on average, 60 percent less likely to feel lonely, the study found.
For the study, the researchers used machine-learning to examine the relationships between loneliness, personality and other factors.
Dr Drew Altschul, the study’s first author, said:
“The use of machine learning in this study allows us to identify and replicate differences in what risk factors are linked to loneliness in middle and older age people.
Loneliness is a growing public health issue, identifying the things that precede loneliness is difficult, however, contemporary machine learning algorithms are positioned to help identify these predictors.”
Another factor shown to protect against loneliness is wisdom.
Wise people enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints and other people look to them for advice.
Wise people are also skilled at filtering negative emotions and do not postpone major decisions.
The study was published in the journal Psychological Medicine (Altschul et al., 2020).
The Modern Sign of Loneliness And Depression
This modern trend could be causing mental health problems.
This modern trend could be causing mental health problems.
Being hooked on smartphone use can be a sign of depression and loneliness, research suggests.
While smartphones are useful modern devices, dependency can lead to poor mental health.
People who are dependent on their smartphones tend to strongly agree with statements like “I panic when I cannot use my smartphone.”
Dr Matthew Lapierre, the study’s first author, said:
“The main takeaway is that smartphone dependency directly predicts later depressive symptoms.
There’s an issue where people are entirely too reliant on the device, in terms of feeling anxious if they don’t have it accessible, and they’re using it to the detriment of their day-to-day life.”
The study included 346 young adults who were surveyed about their smartphone use and followed up three to four months later.
The results showed that smartphone dependency, not just use, predicted higher levels of depression and loneliness.
The reverse, though, was not true: depression and loneliness did not lead to smartphone dependency.
It is critical to know if smartphone use is causing psychological problems or not, said Ms Pengfei Zhao, study co-author:
“If depression and loneliness lead to smartphone dependency, we could reduce dependency by adjusting people’s mental health.
But if smartphone dependency (precedes depression and loneliness), which is what we found, we can reduce smartphone dependency to maintain or improve wellbeing.”
Young adults are at a higher risk of mental health problems because they are at a transitional stage in life, said Ms Zhao:
“It might be easier for late adolescents to become dependent on smartphones, and smartphones may have a bigger negative influence on them because they are already very vulnerable to depression or loneliness.”
The study was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health (Lapierre et al., 2019).
7 Ways To Reduce Loneliness, From Psychological Research
Loneliness makes people more abrasive and defensive as a form of self-preservation — it may be why lonely people can get marginalised.
Loneliness makes people more abrasive and defensive as a form of self-preservation — it may be why lonely people can get marginalised.
Loneliness has reached epidemic proportions, according to some reports (although, not everyone agrees).
Over one-third of US adults over 45 report feeling lonely and among those over 65, one-quarter feel socially isolated.
Social isolation is a risk factor for all sorts of serious health issues and with the pandemic and its aftermath, loneliness is more of a problem than ever.
Feeling isolated and lonely has the same detrimental effect on health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, it has been estimated.
Loneliness and social isolation are just as threatening to health, if not more so, than obesity.
Loneliness also makes people more abrasive and defensive as a form of self-preservation — it may be why lonely people can get marginalised.
Fighting loneliness
So, below are 7 psychology studies mostly from the members-only section of PsyBlog that explain how research has found loneliness can be reversed.
(If you are not already, find out how to become a PsyBlog member here.)
- The Best Way To Overcome Loneliness Is By Changing Expectations
- The Warm Emotion That Reduces Loneliness
- A Strong Sense Of Purpose Protects Against Loneliness
- How The State Of ‘Flow’ Helps Reduce Loneliness
- The Rituals That Reduce Loneliness
- These Online Classes Fight Loneliness
- The Fun Ways To Reduce Loneliness
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Lack of Sleep Impairs An Essential Social Ability (M)
Why the sleep-deprived can be more lonely and less social.
