SOCIAL COGNITION AND LONELINESS

 

Loneliness is among the most common distresses. In one survey, a quarter of Americans interviewed said that they had suffered from loneliness within the past few weeks. Yet for a condition so pervasive, loneliness has received little professional attention.

Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation brings together papers which attempt to capture the phenomena of loneliness with case materials that illuminate the descriptive and theoretical accounts. It is organized into seven sections, covering: explanations for the neglect of loneliness, and an attempt to describe the condition; mechanisms underlying some forms of loneliness; a discussion of situations in which loneliness is commonly found; loneliness among those suffering the loss of a loved one; the loneliness of social isolation; resources available to the lonely; and, finally, a look at issues yet to be dealt with and some suggestions for the management of loneliness. This book is a useful resource for social scientists, clinicians, and individuals who now or in the future may suffer from loneliness.

If depression is the common cold of psychological disorders, then loneliness is the headache Loneliness, whether chronic or temporary, is a painful awareness that our social relationships are less numerous or meaningful than we desire- Jenny de Jong-Giervcid observed in her study or Dutch adults that unmarried and unattached people are more likely to feel lonely.  This prompted her to speculate that the modern emphasis on individual fulfillment and the depreciation of marriage and family lire may be "loneliness-provoking" (as well as depression-provoking).

 

But loneliness need not coincide with aloneness. One can feel lonely in the middle of a party. And one can be utterly alone—as I am while writing these words in the solitude of an isolated turret office at a British university 5000 miles from home—without feeling lonely. To feel lonely is to feel excluded from a group, unloved by those around you, unable to share your private concerns, or different and alienated from those in your surroundings, Adolescents experience such feelings more commonly than do adults When beeped by an electronic pager at various times during a week and asked to record what they were doing and how they felt, adolescents more often than adults reported feeling lonely when alone. Males and females feel lonely under somewhat different circumstances—males when isolated from group interaction, and females when deprived of close one-to-one relationships.

 

Like depressed people, chronically lonely people seem caught in a vicious cycle of self-defeating social cognitions and social behaviors. They have some of the negative attributional style of the depressed; they blame themselves for their poor social relationships and see most things as beyond their control. Moreover, they perceive others in negative ways. When paired with a stranger of the same sex or with a first-year college roommate, lonely students are more likely to perceive the other person negatively.