A year ago, nearly exactly to the date, researcher Nicholas Christakis and colleagues released a study demonstrating how our moods might be contagious within our social network (sorry, this research pertains primarily to traditional social networks; it’s not known whether it’s generalizable to online social networks).
Specifically, Christakis found that happiness is a little contagious within our small group of friends and family. That old study found that “when a person becomes happy, a friend living close by has a 25 percent higher chance of becoming happy themselves. A spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance and for next-door neighbors, it’s 34 percent.” In other words, happiness can be a little contagious.
Today, we discover the logical extension of this earlier research — if happiness can be contagious, it stands to reason that other moods may also be, like loneliness. As the UK’s NHS reports on the new study, loneliness appears to spread throughout our social networks a little like a contagion:
The researchers say that their results indicate that loneliness occurs in clusters within social networks. They say it extends up to three degrees of separation from the FP, meaning that it can be seen in friends of friends of friends.
The idea that loneliness spreads like a contagion was based on the observation that, over time, scores of loneliness seemed to spread to the edge of a network. The spread of loneliness was found to be stronger than the spread of perceived social connections. It was stronger for friends than family members, and stronger for women than for men.
When the researchers drew the connections between people in their ‘cluster map’ those who reported feeling lonely appeared towards the edge of the network.
We tend to think of our emotions as these very personal, private, and individual feelings. That what I’m feeling right now is internal, and shared by no one close to me. What these studies suggest, as a whole, is that emotions are indeed influenced by outside factors, and are more likely to be shared by others within your social network — your friends, family and coworkers.
The researchers found that “people who are lonely tend to be linked to others who are lonely, an effect that is stronger for geographically proximal than distant friends yet extends up to three degrees of separation (friends’ friends’ friend) within the social network. The nature of the friendship matters, as well, in that nearby mutual friends show stronger effects than nearby ordinary friends.”
As the researchers note in the study, lonely people tend to get more lonely over time not because of social isolation, but because they spread the feelings of loneliness across their social network:
[N]on-lonely individuals who are around lonely individuals tend to grow lonelier over time. The[se...] results suggest that loneliness appears in social networks through the operation of induction (e.g., contagion) rather than simply arising from lonely individuals finding themselves isolated from others and choosing to become connected to other lonely individuals.
The researchers also found that loneliness, unlike happiness, spreads far more quickly amongst women than men. And that being lonely spreads more quickly amongst friends, rather than family.
The idea that loneliness, like happiness, has an important social component is valuable to forwarding our understanding of emotion. The feeling that for many feels the most individualistic and the most personal — of being alone in the world — seems to be ironically tied to our social networks and larger social forces. This also, however, suggests new interventions that may be more effective — targeting the loneliest people on the edge of their social networks and helping them repair their relationships with others.
Read the NHS article on the study: Is loneliness contagious?
Reference:
Cacioppo JT, Fowler JH, Christakis NA. (In press). Alone in the Crowd: The Structure and Spread of Loneliness in a Large Social Network. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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6 Comments to
“Loneliness May Be Contagious”
Two things -
1. I think it is very interesting that a spouse would only experience an 8% chance of increased happiness, a friend 25% and a neighbor over 30%. It seems happiness is only more contagious when there is less of a relationship between the two individuals. Of course, this supports the “smile and it will make others around you smile too” theory; however, it is interesting in the perception the closer you are to a person, the less influence your mood has on them.
2. It appears a negative feeling like loneliness is more contagious than a more positive emotion like happiness. I would be very interesting in seeing the percentage results based on the different relationships. Is this a negative of the response happiness got (ie, your spouse is more likely to feel lonely while a neighbor has less impact because the relationship status)? Of course, it also suggests the truth behind humans tend to focus on the negative – perhaps we are inately more susceptible? Dunno…
but interesting nonetheless.
How can I fix my loneliness when I cannot afford what my insurance company does not cover for the cochlear implants. There is no guarantee that it will help me. I’m stuck between 2 worlds with my deafness. I can speak really well, and I am too entrenched in the hearing culture that sign language is not sufficient. The deaf culture is basically sign language only. I’ve been socially isolated my whole life. Chat rooms have been my link to the world.
The reason I’m lonely is that I don’t have any friends, so I guess I’m not contagious, right?
This research, as well as the earlier study, seems a little sketchy to me. With the right statistical package, you can find correlations in almost anything.
Seems to fit well. A spouse is more insecure when the other is happy (at least for my spouse that is the case), and my neighbors are happy to see me grow as an individual and break free from the oppresive relationship with my spouse, and friends are glad but have the supconsciencous nagging – oh, boy, what retribution is there going to be from the spouse???? 8% 34% 25% sounds about right, Now….don’t ya know the loneliest time is when you are surrounded most by those who are “suppose” to care the most?! – or a big crowd too…..one can get lost very easily
Oh, goody, now I can feel guilty about my loneliness! I agree that this is an important bit of research, but no one has addressed what to do about it. Why isn’t everyone lonely by now? How do we stop the cycle? It looks like loneliness is more contagious than happiness.
So, what, do we kill all the introverts? Or protect them as a class under the Americans with Disabilities Act?
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