Category: Loneliness

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).

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).

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).

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.)

1. The Best Way To Overcome Loneliness Is By Changing Expectations
2. The Warm Emotion That Reduces Loneliness
3. A Strong Sense Of Purpose Protects Against Loneliness
4. How The State Of ‘Flow’ Helps Reduce Loneliness
5. The Rituals That Reduce Loneliness
6. These Online Classes Fight Loneliness
7. The Fun Ways To Reduce Loneliness

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This works better than improving social skills, being around more people or even having more social support.

The most effective way to overcome loneliness is changing how lonely people think about social situations, many studies find.

It is more effective than improving social skills, being around more people or even having more social support.

The reason is that lonely people tend to expect social situations to go badly.

Lonely people expect to feel bad when socialising and believe they depress others.

This expectation transmits itself to others, who become more wary of an embarrassing or uncomfortable encounter — and so loneliness perpetuates itself.

The results come from a review of 50 separate studies of loneliness conducted over several decades, including thousands of people around the world.

The study’s authors explain how lonely people experience social situations:

“…lonely individuals have increased sensitivity to and surveillance for social threats, preferentially attend to negative social information, remember more of the negative aspects of social events, hold more negative social expectations, and are more likely to behave in ways that confirm their negative expectations.

This loop has short-term self-protective features but over the long term heightens cognitive load, diminishes executive functioning, and adversely influences physical and mental health and well-being.”

Loneliness is contagious, the authors write, because:

“…lonely individuals not only  communicate negativity to others but also elicit it from others and transmit it through others.

This perpetuates a cycle of negative interactions and affect in the lonely individual and also transmits negativity to others to affect their interactions as well.”

While it seems obvious that bringing lonely people together will make them less lonely, this is not that effective:

“…simply bringing lonely people together may not result in new friendships because the thoughts and behaviors of lonely individuals make them less attractive to one another as relationship partners.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review (Masi et al., 2011).