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| The Loneliness Contagion |
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| Living - Relationships | |||
| TS-Si News Service | |||
| Friday, 04 December 2009 10:00 | |||
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Chicago, IL, USA. Loneliness, like a bad cold, can spread among groups of people, research shows. Using longitudinal data from a large-scale study that has been following health conditions for more than 60 years, a team of scholars found that lonely people tend to share their loneliness with others. Gradually over time, a group of lonely, disconnected people moves to the fringes of social networks. "We detected an extraordinary pattern of contagion that leads people to be moved to the edge of the social network when they become lonely," said University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo. Cacioppo is one member of the study team and one of the nation's leading scholars of loneliness. "On the periphery people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left."
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Before relationships are severed, people on the periphery transmit feelings of loneliness to their remaining friends, who also become lonely. "These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater," said Cacioppo, the Tiffany & Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology. Loneliness is associated with a variety of mental and physical diseases that can shorten life, so Cacioppo says it is important for people to recognize loneliness and help those people connect with their social group before the lonely individuals move to the edges. For the study, the team examined records of the Framingham Heart Study, which has studied people in Framingham, Mass. since 1948. The original group, including more than 5,209 people, was originally studied for the risks of cardiovascular disease. The study has since been expanded to include about 12,000 people, as the children and the grandchildren of the original group and others have been included to diversify the population sample. The Framingham study now includes more tests, including measures of loneliness and depression. The second generation in the study, which includes 5,124 people, was the focus of the loneliness research. Because the study is longitudinal, researchers kept in touch with the subjects every two to four years and accordingly collected names of friends who knew the subjects. Those records became an excellent source of information about the people's social networks. By constructing graphs that charted the subjects' friendship histories and information about their reports of loneliness, researchers were able to establish a pattern of loneliness that spread as people reported fewer close friends. The data showed that lonely people "infected" the people around them with loneliness, and those people moved to the edges of social circles. The team found that the next-door neighbors in the survey who experienced an increase of one day of loneliness a week prompted an increase in loneliness among their neighbors who were their close friends. The loneliness spread as the neighbors spent less time together. Previous work suggested that women rely on emotional support more than men do, and in this study women were more likely than men to report "catching" loneliness from others. People's chances of becoming lonely were more likely to be caused by changes in friendship networks than changes in family networks. Research also shows that as people become lonely, they become less trustful of others, and a cycle develops that makes it harder for them to form friendships. Societies seem to develop a natural tendency to shed these lonely people, something that is mirrored in tests of monkeys, who tend to drive off members of their groups who have been removed from a colony and then reintroduced, Cacioppo said. That pattern makes it all the more important to recognize loneliness and deal with it before it spreads, he said. "Society may benefit by aggressively targeting the people in the periphery to help repair their social networks and to create a protective barrier against loneliness that can keep the whole network from unraveling," he said. "Previous research has shown that loneliness and lack of social connection can have a significant negative effect on the overall health and well-being of older people," said Richard Suzman, Ph.D., director of the NIA's Division of Behavioral and Social Research, which funded the research. "This pioneering research into the connections of individuals within their social networks has important implications for the larger issue of social interactions and health." FundingThe research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging.
CitationAlone in the Crowd: The Structure and Spread of Loneliness in a Large Social Network. John T. Cacioppo, James H. Fowler, and Nicholas A. Christakis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2009; 97(6).
Download PDF Abstract The discrepancy between an individual’s perceived social isolation (ie., loneliness) and the number of connections in their social network is well documented. Yet, few details are known about the placement of loneliness within, or the spread of loneliness through, social networks. Here, we use network linkage data from the population-based Framingham Heart Study to trace the topography of loneliness in people’s social networks, and the path through which loneliness spreads through these networks. The source of participants (N = 5,124) is the Offspring Cohort of the Framingham Heart Study, and individuals to whom these participants are linked are drawn from the entire set of cohorts in the Framingham Heart Study (N = 12,067 individuals in the social network). Results indicated that loneliness occurs in clusters within social networks, extends up to three degrees of separation, and is disproportionately represented at the periphery of social networks. In addition, loneliness appears to spread through a contagious process even though lonely individuals are moved closer to the edge of social networks over time. The spread of loneliness was found to be stronger than the spread of perceived social connections, stronger for friends than family members, and stronger for women than for men. The results advance our understanding of the broad social forces that drive loneliness and suggest that efforts to reduce loneliness in our society may benefit by aggressively targeting the people in the periphery to help repair their social networks and to create a protective barrier against loneliness that can keep the whole network from unraveling.
 The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.
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