Loneliness Can Be Contagious Says Study Funded by
National Institute on Aging
As people become lonely, they become less trustful,
and a cycle develops that makes it harder for them to form friendships;
important to recognize loneliness and help those people connect
Dec. 2, 2009 - Loneliness, like a bad cold, can
spread among groups of people, according to a study by researchers at
the University of Chicago, the University of California-San Diego and
Harvard. The research was supported by a grant from the National
Institute on Aging.
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, leader of the study 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.”
Before those relationships are severed, they
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.
Because loneliness is associated with a variety of
mental and physical diseases that can shorten life, Cacioppo said 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.
James Fowler, Associate Professor of Political
Science at the University of California-San Diego, and Nicholas
Christakis, Professor of Medical Sociology in the Harvard Medical
School, joined Cacioppo in the study. Their findings were published in
the article,
“Alone in the Crowd: The Structure and Spread of Loneliness in a Large
Social Network,” published in the December issue of the Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology.
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 are reintroduced, Cacioppo said.
That pattern makes it all the more important to
recognize loneliness and offset 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.
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Dec. 2, 2009 - Loneliness, like a bad cold, can
spread among groups of people, according to a study by researchers at
the University of Chicago, the University of California-San Diego and
Harvard. The research was supported by a grant from the National
Institute on Aging. 
