Could overthinking loneliness damage mental health?
This surprising finding will change the way you think about ‘me time’.
How to break out of the vicious circle of loneliness.
How to break out of the vicious circle of loneliness.
Being self-centred is a key trait in causing loneliness.
Loneliness makes people more self-centred, which then makes them more lonely.
This vicious circle is hard to break out of, although part of the key is to target self-centredness.
Too much focus on the self can help protect people in the short-term, but in the long-term it perpetuates loneliness.
Loneliness is an emotion designed to tell us that we do not have enough pleasurable and rewarding social relationships in our lives.
Between 30-40 percent of people around the world report being constantly lonely.
Professor John Cacioppo, the study’s first author, said:
“If you get more self-centered, you run the risk of staying locked in to feeling socially isolated.
[…] targeting self-centeredness as part of an intervention to lessen loneliness may help break a positive feedback loop that maintains or worsens loneliness over time.”
The conclusions come from 229 people followed over 11 years as part of the Chicago Health, Aging and Social Relations Study.
Becoming too self-centred emerged as a critical component of loneliness.
Professor Cacioppo explained that humans evolved in groups, so other people are crucial to our happiness:
“Humans evolved to become such a powerful species in large part due to mutual aid and protection and the changes in the brain that proved adaptive in social interactions.
When we don’t have mutual aid and protection, we are more likely to become focused on our own interests and welfare.
That is, we become more self-centered.
This evolutionarily adaptive response may have helped people survive in ancient times, but in contemporary society may well make it harder for people to get out of feelings of loneliness.”
The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Cacioppo et al., 2017).
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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).
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