Summary Loneliness is detrimental to well - being and is often accompanied by self-reported feelings of not being understood by other people. What contributes to such feelings in lonely people? We used functional MRI scans of 66 college freshmen to discretely measure the relative alignment of people’s mental processing of naturalistic stimuli and tested whether lonely people actually process the world idiosyncratically. We found evidence of such idiosyncrasy: the neural responses of solitary individuals were different from those of their peers, particularly in regions of the default mode network where similar responses have been associated with shared perspectives and subjective understanding. These relationships persisted when we controlled for demographic similarities, objective social isolation, and individuals’ friendships with each other. |
Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy may have been right when he wrote the first line of Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way . "
A recent study published in Psychological Science and led by a scholar now at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, suggests that when it comes to their brains processing information, people who are not lonely are all the same, but each solitary person processes the world in their own, idiosyncratic way.
A wealth of research shows that loneliness is detrimental to well-being and is often accompanied by self-reported feelings of not being understood by others. A recent report from the U.S. Surgeon General’s office called loneliness a public health crisis in reaction to the growing number of adults suffering from the condition. Even before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of American adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.
Loneliness is idiosyncratic
While a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, Elisa Baek, an assistant professor of psychology at USC Dornsife, sought to better understand what contributes to such feelings of disconnection and being misunderstood. Baek and her team used a neuroimaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brains of 66 first-year college students while they watched a series of video clips. The videos ranged in themes from sentimental music videos to party scenes and sporting events, providing a wide range of settings for analysis.
Before being scanned, participants, who ranged in age from 18 to 21, were asked to complete the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a survey that measures a person’s subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation.
Based on the survey results, the researchers separated the participants into two groups: lonely and "non-lonely" (those who do not experience loneliness). They then scanned each participant’s brain using fMRI while the participant watched the videos.
By comparing brain imaging data between the two groups, the researchers found that lonelier people exhibited more different and idiosyncratic brain processing patterns than their non-lonely counterparts.
This finding is significant because it reveals that neural similarity, which refers to how similar the brain activity patterns of different individuals are, is linked to a shared understanding of the world. This shared understanding is important for establishing social connections. Not only are people who suffer from loneliness less similar to the social norm of processing the world, but each lonely person also differs in unique ways. That uniqueness can further impact feelings of isolation and lack of social connections.
Baek said, "It was surprising to find that lonely people were even less similar to each other." The fact that they don’t find common ground with lonely or non-lonely people makes achieving social connection even more difficult for them.
The ’Anna Karenina principle’ is an apt description of lonely people, as they experience loneliness in an idiosyncratic way, not in a universally identifiable way." Elisa Baek, assistant professor of psychology at USC Dornsife
Loneliness is not about having or not having friends
So, does idiosyncratic processing in lonely individuals cause loneliness or is it a result of loneliness?
The researchers observed that individuals with high levels of loneliness, regardless of how many friends or social connections they had, were more likely to have idiosyncratic brain responses. This raised the possibility that being around people who see the world differently than yourself may be a risk factor for loneliness, even if you regularly socialize with them.
The study also suggests that because social connections or disconnections fluctuate over time, they can influence the extent to which an individual processes the world in idiosyncratic ways.
Looking ahead, Baek said she is interested in examining people who have friends and are socially active, but still feel lonely. Additionally, researchers are looking at what particular situations lonely people process differently. For example, do lonely people show idiosyncrasies in processing unexpected events or ambiguous social contexts in which things can be interpreted differently?
About the study: Funding for the study came from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health.
