Word: cacioppo
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...article was a collaborative effort with Fowler as well as University of Chicago professor John T. Cacioppo that was published Monday in the December issue of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Christakis, Fowler, and Cacioppo used a decade’s worth of data collected by the Framingham Heart Study, which began in 1971 and asked its subjects about their emotional state at regular intervals...
...other words, loneliness is not so much a symptom of being companionless as it is a driving force behind social isolation. Rather than simply reflecting the emotional state of one person, Cacioppo says, loneliness is more like an indicator of the social health of our species on the whole - a temperature reading, if you will, of how well- or not so well-integrated we are as a population...
...does a person "catch" loneliness? Based on the new data, Cacioppo theorizes that it is passed on through feelings of mistrust and negativity. "People who feel lonely view the social world as more threatening," he says. "They may not be aware they are doing it, but lonely individuals think negatively about other people. So if you are my friend, and I started to treat you negatively, then over time, we would stop being friends. But in the meantime, our interactions caused you to treat other people less positively, so you're likely to lose friends, and they in turn...
...connected to the community. Viewed that way, say experts, the loneliness factor in a neighborhood or an apartment complex or a workplace may be an indication of how cohesive, and therefore mentally healthy, that population is. "Loneliness can be a signal for when that social connection is fraying," says Cacioppo...
...require everyone's input, for example, are more likely to foster stronger, more meaningful connections than those that don't encourage social investment. "Ultimately, what we hope to do is not only intervene at the individual level, but also at the city planner and development level as well," says Cacioppo...