Category: Personality

People like this enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints and others look to them for advice.

Wisdom protects people against loneliness.

People high in two particular components of wisdom — empathy and compassion — are especially unlikely to become lonely.

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).

Feeling lonely is a part of some people’s genetic makeup.

People who are neurotic have a genetic tendency towards loneliness.

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.”

Related

• Banish Loneliness: 10 Simple Techniques To Feel More Connected (P)
• 8 Shocking Ways Loneliness Rewires Your Brain (P)

The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Schermer & Martin, 2019).