14 DAY TRIAL // A new study, made possible by means of a grant from the National Institute on Aging, comes to show that loneliness, just like a common cold or other infection, can be contagious. This means that people who suffer from it tend to spread it to others who, in turn, are pushed to the periphery of the social network where they too start infecting other people. The implications of such a thing include marginalization, in the context of society naturally turning its back on these people, Eureka Alert informs, based on the findings of the study.
Although loneliness is a very complex state that is as difficult to define as it is to “treat,” people who tend to be lonely only become more so with the passing of the years. They start losing friends and move to the margins of their social network, but in doing so, they also spread their loneliness to other people who have the same tendency. Not surprisingly, women are easier influenced this way than men, the study has also learned.
“We detected an extraordinary pattern of contagion that leads people to be moved to the edge of the social network when they become lonely,” University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo, member of the study team, says of the findings, as cited by the aforementioned publication. “On the periphery people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left,” Cacioppo adds.
The fact that lonely people can infect others has led researchers to compare society’s fabric to a regular fabric, which will inevitably fray at the edges. Still, solutions for this are to be found in campaigns that target these people with the aim of drawing them out. Otherwise, they will be left on their own; add to that the societies develop a “natural tendency” to rid themselves of such people, and one can easily understand why researchers see reason to worry in this tendency.
“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,” Eureka Alert says of the study.