Abstract
Loneliness is a prevalent condition with adverse effects on physical and mental health. Evolutionary theories suggest it evolved to drive people to reconnect. However, chronic loneliness may result in a negative social bias and self-preservation behaviors, paradoxically driving individuals away from social interactions. Lonely people often feel they are not close to anyone; however, little is known about their interpersonal distance preferences. During COVID-19, many experienced situational loneliness related to actual social isolation. Therefore, there was a unique opportunity to examine both chronic and situational (COVID-19-related) loneliness. In the present study, 479 participants completed an online task that experimentally assessed interpersonal distance preferences in four conditions—passively being approached by a friend or a stranger, and actively approaching a friend or a stranger. Results show that high chronic loneliness was related to a greater preferred distance across conditions. Intriguingly, by contrast, high COVID-19-related loneliness was related to a smaller preferred distance across conditions. These findings provide further support for the evolutionary theory of loneliness: situational loneliness indeed seems to drive people towards reconnection, while chronic loneliness seems to drive people away from it. Implications for the amelioration of chronic loneliness are discussed based on these findings.
Highlights
Loneliness is a painful experience, representing a subjective evaluation of one’s social relations as either quantitatively or qualitatively lacking [1], or a chronic perception of social isolation [2]
In our first LME analysis, we examined the effects of approach type, protagonist, chronic loneliness, and COVID-19 loneliness on the response time
COVID-related, loneliness was correlated with chronic loneliness, it had the opposite association with interpersonal distance preferences
Summary
Loneliness is a painful experience, representing a subjective evaluation of one’s social relations as either quantitatively or qualitatively lacking [1], or a chronic perception of social isolation [2]. The prevalence of loneliness is considerable (e.g., [5,6,7,8]) and it has been shown to have harmful effects on physical and mental health [9], including an increase in morbidity and mortality [10], increased risk for coronary heart disease and stroke [11], depression [12], and dementia [13]. Evolutionary theory contends that chronic loneliness may result in a perception of the social environment as one that will not provide protection and help, which activates neural, neuroendocrine, and behavioral responses geared towards self-preservation and survival [16]. Loneliness may trap individuals in an impossible situation, in which they crave connectedness but at the same time turn away from it
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