SoylentNews

"exec" writes:

Original URL

Research conducted over more than a decade indicates that loneliness increases self-centeredness and, to a lesser extent, self-centeredness also increases loneliness.

[...] The researchers wrote that "targeting self-centeredness as part of an intervention to lessen loneliness may help break a positive feedback loop that maintains or worsens loneliness over time." Their study is the first to test a prediction from the Cacioppos' evolutionary theory that loneliness increases self-centeredness. Such research is important because, as many studies have shown, lonely people are more susceptible to a variety of physical and mental health problems as well as higher mortality rates than their non-lonely counterparts.

[...] Early psychological research treated loneliness as an anomalous or temporary feeling of distress that had no redeeming value or adaptive purpose. "None of that could be further from the truth," Stephanie Cacioppo said.

[...] "Physical pain is an aversive signal that alerts us of potential tissue damange [sic] and motivates us to take care of our physical body," the UChicago researchers wrote. Loneliness, meanwhile, is part of a warning system that motivates people to repair or replace their deficient social relationships.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission