A Specialist In Loneliness Talks About Its Meaning, And How To Be Less Lonely

John Cacioppo, the psychologist who wrote a book on loneliness, compares it to hunger: when you're hungry, you go looking for food before your resources are so low that you can't do it anymore. When you feel lonely, you look for social connections before you die in isolation. And just as a hungry person would be more sensitive to bitter tastes (an evolutionary adaptation to save us from poisons), a lonely person would be more likely to negatively perceive other people's intentions. While this defensive mechanism might be useful in some situations, it also prevents people from creating new social connections. Loneliness can be as deadly as smoking (and deadlier than obesity) — we are social creatures, after all, and are not adapted to live in isolation. But the feeling of loneliness does not correlate with the size of one's social network, or the amount of time spent in the company of others. What matters, is how the situation is seen from within.To overcome this, according to Cacioppo, one must start with admitting one's need to connect with others, realize that forging new connections is hard and that most people won't like you, spend time with the like-minded people, and expect the best from them, instead of the worst.