Research on loneliness
Pandemic restrictions could increase the feeling of loneliness, which may weaken healthy physiological responses, found the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Research on loneliness was carried out by Prof. Łukasz Okruszek with a team from the Social Neuroscience Lab. The results have been published in International Journal of Psychophysiology and Journal of Research in Personality.
In recent experiments carried out by a team from the PAS Institute of Psychology and Prof. Julian F. Thayer from the University of California, researchers investigated the negative impact of loneliness on health and the relationship between social cognition, loneliness and objective social isolation. They also took into account the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions.
How loneliness affects health
The impact of loneliness on our health is still not fully understood. We know, however, that single people have a reduced heart rate variability. HRV is one of the main indicators of the ability to regulate the body in response to unknown and potentially negative social threats. It also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
In the first part of the experiment, participants aged 18-35 filled in personality questionnaires to determine their personality traits. Then, they were given a task to recognize specific emotions (neutral and angry expressions) while undergoing an ECG. At the end, participants were given feedback – a true assessment of whether they were extroverts or introverts, and random information predicting the future of their current relationships. The group of people who were told they would be lonely had a stable level of heart rate variability. In the other group, researchers found different pattern of physiological response to threatening information – heart rate variability decreased during the task and returned to the baseline level remaining unchanged till the end of procedure.
The obtained results are one of the first that brought evidence of the direct influence of the feeling of loneliness on the body's ability to regulate in response to social information. The results showed that even short-term, experimentally-induced loneliness can lead to a weakening of the adaptive physiological response that characterizes healthy individuals.
Loneliness and social cognition
In another study, PAS researchers together with Prof. Amy Pinkham from the University of Texas in Dallas examined whether loneliness and social isolation are related to the ability to understand the behavior, emotions and intentions of others. They also wondered if people who were more likely to attribute hostile intents to others in ambiguous situations were more lonely.
Objective social isolation is not the same as feeling lonely. The first phenomenon is associated with the lack of social ties and activity, and the second is the lack of satisfaction with the quantity or quality of one's own relationships. However, both phenomena have a negative effect on cognitive functioning, especially on the abilities related to the social cognition, i.e. understanding actions and emotions of other people. These abilities translate very strongly into the quality of life and everyday functioning.
The study focused on the sample of young adults – the age group that has been recognized as being particularly prone to loneliness and its consequences. Researchers assessed social cognitive skills (the ability to recognize and interpret various types of social signals, tendency to attribute hostile intents to others in ambiguous situations) of participants and measured the size of their social networks.
After analyzing the results, the researchers noticed that people who find it difficult to recognize and understand social cues, including reading basic and complex emotional expressions, were more severely affected by objective social isolation. Moreover, in the second group, an elevated level of loneliness was also observed.
The results have been featured in two articles “Brief induction of loneliness decreases vagal regulation during social information processing” in International Journal of Psychophysiology and “Owner of a lonely mind? Social cognitive capacity is associated with objective, but not perceived social isolation in healthy individuals” in Journal of Research in Personality respectively.
Learn more about the abovementioned research at the Loneliness Project website.
Source: PAS Institute of Psychology
