Loneliness Is Contagious
Although it certainly sounds paradoxical, researchers claim that if one person feels alone, it's likely that others in the same social circle will soon start sharing those feelings. Even if they don't have direct contact. Analyzing participants of a long-range study who were interviewed every two years over a period of two decades, researchers found that a friend of a lonely person was 52 percent more likely to have those same feelings at the time of the next interview. A friend of the friend was 25 percent more likely to feel lonely and a friend of that person was 15 percent more likely to feel alone. Some of the researchers involved in this study have previously found that obesity, quitting smoking, and happiness can also spread like a disease. And that has added to the skepticism expressed by some scientists who say it might be possible to turn anything into socially transmitted diseases if researchers go looking for the pattern.
Read original story in The Washington Post | Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009
For more, read Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (Sep. 2009) by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler.
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