[HN Gopher] Lonely individuals tend to think and talk in an unus...
___________________________________________________________________
Lonely individuals tend to think and talk in an unusual way, study
finds
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 94 points
Date : 2024-11-25 09:40 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.psypost.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.psypost.org)
| isaacfrond wrote:
| Read the whole article wondering _how_ lonely people think
| differently.
|
| But I now understand that it is just that: different. They do not
| conform to what the norm thinks.
|
| Seen in that light: lonely people are lonely because they are
| weird. Right. Good to know.
| 127 wrote:
| Lonely people are also weird because they are lonely (and don't
| get the calibration from human interaction).
| kaffekaka wrote:
| The article does not claim this nor support the claim. It
| merely says that loneliness is associated with being "weird".
| No causality.
| Oarch wrote:
| It's possible to reverse this and infer the more mainstream
| your thoughts of these celebrities, the more popular you
| are / will be.
| darkerside wrote:
| Well, exactly. Parents poster is pointing out that the
| cause is ambiguous. Actually, technically, they are
| attributing causality to the opposite direction, but in
| practice, I'd say it gets the point across.
| viciousvoxel wrote:
| My intuition is that it goes both ways and it's a
| feedback loop/downward spiral.
| wigglyartichoke wrote:
| Yes, a social feedback loop, but the internal feedback
| loop is what causes the downward spiral
| kaffekaka wrote:
| Indeed, but the article does not mention causality at
| all.
| zusammen wrote:
| I was a standup comedian in the 1980s and was occasionally
| asked why "my people" were so funny, and it's odd because there
| are a lot of things that are funny about us, but not the real
| answer to this one. We had to be, for thousands of years, or we
| died. If we had humorless dumb ones (and we do, but not as
| many, again, because of what happened to them, as well as quite
| a number of our best) they didn't do as well.
|
| I was also a clinical psychologist for a few years, and could
| say more on this, but some other time.
|
| Jewish humor, gay humor, autistic humor... they're all more
| similar than they are different. You learn, from atypical
| experience, to see everything one degree off and you have a
| story that people will listen to and eventually they might even
| like you. You see things three degrees off and you shut up so
| no one else knows. You get six degrees off and even you don't
| know, but everyone else does.
| viciousvoxel wrote:
| As they say, tragedy (or alternatively, adversity) plus time
| equals comedy.
| wigglyartichoke wrote:
| I think a lot about Victor Frankl's description of the use of
| dark comedy while in concentration camps
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This is why the male oriented dating communities call it
| "goofmaxxing" or "jester maxing" to get good at comedy for
| the purposes of attracting others.
|
| The need to become funny for literal survival is among the
| worst of all humiliation rituals that most of us will be
| forced to do. I want people to be funny because they like
| being funny - not because they will literally not breed or be
| killed without it!
| PrismCrystal wrote:
| There's also being funny not quite for attracting others,
| but for avoiding alienating people one has already
| attracted. As someone surely autistic somehow, I find
| myself making frequent jokes because I know my
| interlocutors don't want to hear about the subjects I'd
| _really_ like to talk about, so joking seems the least-
| offensive and least-effort part I can play in socializing.
| When I saw Mike Leigh's 1987 short film _The Short and
| Curlies_ , about a young man who reacts to every single
| thing with a little joke, I very much recognized myself.
| wigglyartichoke wrote:
| Lonely people are weird because there's no social feedback
| loop, a lot of teachings are "self-taught" (for example how not
| to be an asshole), and even in engineering there's a
| "different" way self-taught engineers think
|
| For a lot people this lack of a feedback loop started as
| children. In the worst cases, where there's child hood abuse
| and neglect, any seeking out of positive feedbacks either goes
| unheard or punished
|
| The feedback loop reinforces itself in the short-term because
| being lonely and staying in the "hell you know" is better than
| dealing with the social failure, which might "prove" you don't
| belong in society and it will never change
|
| Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to do
| especially being born into it
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to
| do especially being born into it
|
| And it doesn't happen overnight. It's taken myself five years
| just to be at a level where by you can defensively stand for
| myself and look at myself in the mirror and be pleased at
| where I am. The only support being my mother.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Hence why the term "oversocialization" is more real than
| ever. Autists don't deserve the hell they get just because
| everyone else around them was over socialized. It's telling
| that these days, the majority of real advancements in the
| world are done by people with ASD. Maybe the world should try
| being nicer to them.
| valec wrote:
| terms like "oversocialized" suggest you spend too much time
| on imageboards and you would do well to get off those
| sites. same with "humiliation ritual"
| valec wrote:
| well, thankfully there are tools [1]
|
| 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3
| dinkblam wrote:
| > Loneliness corresponded with idiosyncratic [unusual, unique]
| neural representations of celebrities as well as more
| idiosyncratic communication about celebrities
|
| must be the best argument to date for being more lonely.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Could mean the opposite of what you might think. I imagine the
| mean perception of Zuck is weirdo, Bieber is 'no clue, I'm not
| a teen girl' and so on.
| bawolff wrote:
| I mean, if you get to enjoy a pop star that society normally
| relegates to teen girls, that seems like a positive to me.
|
| (I don't particularly like bieber, but if he's your jam,
| don't let society get in the way)
| portaouflop wrote:
| People are strange when you're a stranger.
| atmavatar wrote:
| Faces look ugly when you're alone.
| grvbck wrote:
| > Lonelier individuals were also more likely to use unusual
| language when describing well-known celebrities and to describe
| them in ways that were not typical for their group.
|
| How is that surprising? If they are lonely, they are not part of
| the group and intergroup communication (including shared values,
| opinions, gossip etc).
|
| The text fails to define "unusual" in a meaningful way other than
| "not part of the majority". It's like saying "we found that the
| minority tends to vote differently than the majority".
| gilleain wrote:
| Indeed, I struggle to even imagine what "use unusual language
| when describing well-known celebrities" even means! Maybe like
| using "musician" rather than "artist" or some other
| combination?
|
| edit: Ok, I've read through the paper, and still have no idea.
| Apparently the responses to questions were compared as semantic
| vectors using cosine similarity in Google's Universal Sentence
| Encoder space. Or something lol.
| nielsole wrote:
| "hello fellow Taylor Swift fans"
| zug_zug wrote:
| and interestingly they say they share their data, but after
| looking through the data I don't see what I'm looking for,
| which is closest-approximate words for each celebrity.
| adammarples wrote:
| Very unsurprising but perhaps still valid research that needs
| to be done to be known. A better conclusion might have been:
| increasing socialisation increases homogeneity of language use.
| quesera wrote:
| This rings true to me.
|
| You can infer (with various degrees of fidelity) a lot about
| people by their communication patterns: age, gender,
| education, hobbies, reading habits, news sources, place of
| origin or residence.
|
| And obviously, socialization.
|
| This study suggests socialization is a(n inverse) proxy for
| loneliness, and there's surely some truth to that, but it is
| not the same thing.
| tyho wrote:
| All psychology research falls in one of two categories:
|
| a) common sense intuitive result
|
| b) does not replicate
| unplug8224 wrote:
| I think a study is required to test your thesis
| throw310822 wrote:
| So they tested disconnected individuals against connected
| individuals in the perception of socially constructed objects
| (celebrities). And they found that people who don't socialise
| much don't share that socially constructed perception. What else
| did they expect? Seems quite obvious.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Exactly. To highlight: the point of social objects like
| celebrities is _to bond over them with other people_.
| Obviously, lonely people do less of that.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Feels like fancy neuroimaging being used to scientifically
| justify excluding people who don't conform to mainstream social
| norms. Classic case of using tech to medicalize being different.
| Also kind of makes sense from an evolutionary psych perspective -
| groups have always tried to identify and push out "others" for
| survival. But maybe in 2024 we can do better than using million-
| dollar brain scanners to shame people who see the world (oh
| sorry, "famous" people) differently?
| TekMol wrote:
| Do you guys know who the most popular artists of our time are?
|
| Reading this article and its mention of celebrities I was like
| "Who are today's celebrities anyhow?"? And typed
| most popular artists 2024
|
| into Google. It came back with: Taylor Swift
| The Weeknd Lady Gaga Drake Karol G
| Bruno Mars Beyonce Eminem Charli XCX
| Harry Styles
|
| I have heard 8 of the 10 names before. Never heard about "Karol
| G" and "Charli XCX".
|
| I can only think of one song performed by one of them:
| "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga.
|
| Does that make me very disconnected with today's culture?
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't listen to 8/10 of these musicians, but I've heard of
| all of them except for Karol G. So yeah; I'd say you are very
| disconnected.
| gilleain wrote:
| I thought they were saying they _had_ heard of 8 in 10?
| Strangely Karol G was also new to me. I'll resist searching
| for the name - I enjoy not knowing things sometimes.
| keiferski wrote:
| Whoops, either he edited his comment or I misread it.
| Probably my mistake.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Doesn't this just mean that some people don't connect with
| this kind of music. I don't. Possibly my loss but there's a
| lot of music out there and life is short.
| keiferski wrote:
| I think the commenter meant disconnected from popular music
| culture, not disconnected from music entirely.
| mikrl wrote:
| Meanwhile I don't listen to anyone on that list except for
| Charli XCX because I arrived at her music from a rave/hyperpop
| background and then became a stan with her last album Crash in
| 2022.
|
| I was tired of BRAT though about 2 weeks after release because
| I listened to the teasers so much... then it blew up and even
| attached itself to VP Harris...
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I recognise some of these words
| christophilus wrote:
| There are many cultures. You're on HN, so my guess is you're
| connected with today's hacker culture. I've heard of 6 of those
| names, but can't name any song from any of them. It just means
| I have my own interests.
| Fraaaank wrote:
| These artists are definitely popular, but I doubt they are the
| _most_ popular. The list doesn 't fully match up with the most
| streamed artists list on Spotify, for example.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Both Google results and Spotify "most streamed artists" stats
| are _heavily gamed_ , but in different ways and by different
| groups, so no surprise they diverge.
| sersi wrote:
| Same result here, never heard about karol G and Charli XCX but
| to be fair, I find most modern pop music to be very
| manufactured and boring. People like Max Martin can create a
| lot of hits but it makes the music rather uninteresting.
|
| Just listened to Brat from Charli XCX and yeah, not missing
| much.
|
| I feel that when it comes to Music, being in sync with pop
| music is more of a generation thing.
|
| On the other hand, I wouldn't describe myself as lonely... I'm
| not super social (I've worked remotely for 13 years because I
| don't particularly like working in an office) but I do meet up
| with friends 2 times a week (used to be more but with a kid at
| home, there's less time).
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Something that's been talked about every so often is that there
| aren't representative (generational) pop icons for the past few
| generations (probably from millenials onwards).
|
| One theory from Japan, that I still remember and think is most
| likely, is that the democratization of entertainment since the
| 80s and especially from the 90s onwards with the invention of
| the internet has eliminated the very concept of pop culture.
|
| Back in ye olde days a person's choices for entertainment were
| fairly limited, basically a small regional selection. People in
| the same locale ended up consuming the same entertainment and
| thus gravitated towards forming similar tastes and directing
| their fervor on that small selection of entertainment.
|
| Entire generations identify with icons of their time like Gary
| Cooper, Gregory Peck, Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Elvis
| Presley, and so on. Entire generations sang "the song of their
| people" so to speak.
|
| Today, though? _Everyone_ can access _any_ entertainment _they_
| want from _anytime anywhere_. The entertainment consumed by one
| person is very likely completely different from that consumed
| by a person right next to him; entertainment has been
| democratized. There is no longer a "song of our people"
| because everyone has a "song of me", there are no longer
| generational icons because everyone has their own icon.
|
| The intense political push from the Left to make any form of
| social cohesion and loyalty undesirable also hasn't helped. The
| dismantling and removal of tradition, religion, and
| nationalism/patriotism from society means there can't be a
| "song of the people" from outside of entertainment either.
|
| So no, I don't think you're disconnected with today's culture.
| Rather, today's culture doesn't value social cohesion and unity
| as much as it does freedom and power. Everyone has their own
| icon and song, everyone is their own generation.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > The intense political push from the Left to make any form
| of social cohesion and loyalty undesirable also hasn't
| helped. The dismantling and removal of tradition, religion,
| and nationalism/patriotism from society means there can't be
| a "song of the people" from outside of entertainment either.
|
| Funny, because I don't think there is a "song of the people"
| on the right at all, while every leftist I know are all in on
| Charlie XCX and Brat Summer.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Lol
| alistairSH wrote:
| Maybe if you're young (20s, early 30s)?
|
| I recognize 8/10 as well, but like you, can't name actual songs
| from most.
|
| Same would have been true if I was tested in the mid-90s (HS
| and college). Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys - I
| know the names, but can't think of the names of songs. I'd test
| better on alt/grunge rock of the era - STP, Nirvana, REM, etc.
|
| And I don't think I'm particularly lonely - I happily married,
| have a few office friends, and see normal friends regularly.
| I'm not as social as I was in my 20s, but I assume that's
| normal.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Does that make me very disconnected with today's culture?
|
| Just disconnected with pop culture. I only know 6 of the names
| on that list and can only name Brain Damage by Eminem off the
| top of my head. I don't know what Taylor Swift sounds like
| though I have probably heard a few of her songs in my day to
| day without noticing. Just don't worry about it and do what
| makes you happy.
| bitwize wrote:
| Charli XCX is a standard-issue pop singer. She's a brunette.
| She's probably best known for doing the singing bits on
| "Fancy", the only Iggy Azalea song you know (if you know any at
| all).
| cluckindan wrote:
| This is a bullshit study. It is entirely based on trying to
| confirm a priori assumptions about "lonely" people, who are seen
| by authors as pathologically abnormal.
| mocha_nate wrote:
| > Chronic loneliness is linked to mental health issues like
| depression and anxiety, as well as physical health problems,
| including weakened immunity, cardiovascular disease, and an
| increased risk of mortality. Lonely individuals tend to
| experience lower self-esteem, heightened sensitivity to social
| rejection, and difficulty forming or maintaining relationships.
| They may also perceive social interactions more negatively,
| creating a cycle that reinforces their isolation. In older
| adults, loneliness is particularly concerning, as it is
| strongly associated with cognitive decline and dementia. In
| children and adolescents, it can hinder social development and
| academic performance.
|
| I think they are trying to learn more about it to see if there
| is something that can be done in cases where there are negative
| outcomes. Not where someone is alone and happy.
| mapt wrote:
| People who don't interact a lot with other people. Hrrm.
|
| It would be really weird if they thought and talked in accordance
| with the current social pablum.
| cjaackie wrote:
| Interesting premise but did this article _feel_ off to anyone
| else? Maybe it was me , but did it seem a bit redundant while
| also not saying a whole lot?
| FranklinMaillot wrote:
| Exactly. It looks like it was written by a very bad LLM. It
| keeps repeating the title over and over again.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| Probably written by a lonely person. It expresses things in
| unusual ways and has repetition that is not typical when
| compared to articles written by non-lonely people.
| le-mark wrote:
| > The second study was an online survey conducted with 923 Amazon
| Mechanical Turk workers, whose average age was 40 years.
|
| So psychology is now the study of mice, college freshman, and
| mechanical Turks? I have not seen this before.
| svnt wrote:
| It is very common. There are lines of research on dealing with
| the shortcomings of using mturk this way.
|
| e.g. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-
| core/c...
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > Interestingly, the study also revealed a particularly strong
| consensus among participants regarding the neural representations
| of Justin Bieber compared to the other four celebrities.
|
| is this academic speak for "yeah...... _that guy_ ...... nope."?
| blueflow wrote:
| I'm disgusted that they took celebrity gossip as reference point
| for healthy social behavior.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't think the article says that, does it?
| blueflow wrote:
| The consumption of boulevard media is implied, either
| directly or via friends.
| criddell wrote:
| Boulevard media?
|
| The article mentions a popular musical artist. Are there
| popular artists whose work you have an opinion on? Well
| then as soon as you express those thoughts, you are talking
| about a celebrity and this study says the way you talk
| about it may reveal something about you.
| blueflow wrote:
| I have no TV, no radio, no tiktok and no facebook. I
| don't know much about the people in there.
| criddell wrote:
| Surely you recognize that you are an outlier then. Most
| people have some opinions on at least one popular
| musician or actor or writer. If you don't, then I'm a
| little envious. There's so much great stuff out there
| waiting for you to discover it. I'd recommend checking
| out the Beatles.
| blueflow wrote:
| I'm not missing out, I'm not interested in the persons.
|
| And i don't think I'm an outlier. Some people find other
| meanings in life than watching others.
| dsign wrote:
| I agree with this interpretation. Plus, I don't think it
| generalizes that well. In my stomping grounds, there are three
| circles of trust where people tend to talk about different
| things:
|
| - Outer circle: the weather, dead relatives (yes, dead
| relatives!) and "expensive vs cheap" but without actual
| figures.
|
| - Middle circle: what to eat, where to travel.
|
| - Inner intimacy circle (people who are okay sharing a bed):
| money with actual figures. But you may not discuss the salary.
|
| Celebrities don't show up in any of the circles, because one
| needs a measure of lightheartedness and humor to deal with that
| topic _and_ use it on gossip about somebody else... which is a
| combination not everybody can or want to manage...not sure if
| that 's a good or a bad thing, but it is what it is.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Oversocialization.
| thrance wrote:
| So many words used to convey so little meaning, what a waste of
| time. _How_ do they think differently about celebrities, _why_ ,
| and is it a bad thing in and of itself?
| zug_zug wrote:
| > Lonely individuals tend to think and talk in an unusual way,
| study finds
|
| That's not really what this article finds... the title is
| "Loneliness corresponds with neural representations and language
| use that deviate from shared cultural perceptions", but even that
| title is too general when it's only talking about a handful of
| pop-culture celebrities.
|
| And also, remember when a researcher says "loneliness" they mean
| "self-reported loneliness," I know a lot of people with very
| little companionship who might insist they are a 0 out of 10 on
| the loneliness scale.
|
| There's so many different ways to interpret this data:
|
| Perhaps people who are willing to admit they are lonely (usually
| something that's very mildly frowned upon in my experience) are
| more willing to break with social norms. Or perhaps having wild
| takes on reality results in you becoming lonelier. Or perhaps a
| few outlier individuals really pushed the average. Or perhaps
| people who are less lonely are generally more knowledgeable/well-
| informed about these individuals. Etc etc.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| All of what you mentioned looks like a possible contributing
| factor, but this one stood out to me:
|
| > _Or perhaps people who are less lonely are generally more
| knowledgeable /well-informed about these individuals._
|
| I'd go as far as saying, people who are less lonely are more
| interested in those individuals in the first place. Celebrities
| are _social objects_. There 's nothing inherently interesting
| in life or personality of any specific celebrity - what makes
| them interesting is that other people know about them too, so
| discussing them is a way to bond with others, have fun, etc.
| Lonely people do less of that, so they have less of a
| motivation to care about celebrities in the first place.
| gilleain wrote:
| Yes, from the Discussion section of the paper:
|
| > Prior work even finds that celebrities that generate common
| ground between strangers are disproportionately discussed in
| conversation, suggesting shared celebrity knowledge can
| provide a "foot in the door" to forming ties with others
|
| Heh, I know that studying obvious things is the "bread and
| butter" of scientific study, but it's still funny to read
| sometimes...
|
| "Hello, fellow coworkers! How about the local sports team,
| did you see them play last night?"
| bawolff wrote:
| > And also, remember when a researcher says "loneliness" they
| mean "self-reported loneliness," I know a lot of people with
| very little companionship who might insist they are a 0 out of
| 10 on the loneliness scale.
|
| That seems reasonable. Lonliness is a subjective phenomenon.
| There are people who don't interact as much as other people but
| feel content about it and aren't lonely. There are people who
| are desperate for interaction and get a lot but who are never
| satisfied. I can't imagine any other way to measure this than
| by asking.
| rendaw wrote:
| But there are also people who believe they are fine alone but
| are negatively affected by it, and people who have lots of
| friends and interaction but nonetheless lack connection.
| People aren't very good at judging their own emotions.
|
| Not having a better way to measure doesn't mean this measure
| is sufficient.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| "People who self identify as lonely" is a different class
| of people from "people who are negatively affected". It's
| worth researching both groups. This study happens to be
| about the former.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Not having a better way to measure doesn't mean this
| measure is sufficient.
|
| It necessarily does mean that. Empiricists (such as
| scientists) must work with the tools with which they are
| equipped. Sure you're not going to get deductively-true
| results out of it (true for any scientific field), and
| certainly psychological findings are on the emphatically
| less-certain side of the scientific fields, but that
| doesn't imply that results aren't meaningful.
|
| Granted, scientific reporting is so terrible the hedging
| the (good) scientists engage in to reflect this uncertainty
| invariably goes out the window. But c'est la vie.
| PrismCrystal wrote:
| "There are people who don't interact as much as other people
| but feel content about it and aren't lonely."
|
| Yet the difficulty about self-reported degrees of loneliness,
| is that it doesn't tell you how _resilient_ a person's
| contentedness is. Put that person in a crisis situation, like
| a suddenly precarious financial situation or a serious
| illness, and they might feel that they desperately crave
| human contact and were masking it before.
| ksymph wrote:
| The article has some weird stuff in it which makes the whole
| thing seem ridiculous (did we really need two paragraphs
| detailing the effects of loneliness?). The paper frames it much
| better:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00088-3
| dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00088-3
|
| The original article this one links to is a better read.
| hasbot wrote:
| The linked article is a summary of a much longer article
| (https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00088-3).
|
| From the conclusion of the original article:
|
| > Shared reality fosters social connections between people and
| increases confidence in one's knowledge because it is
| corroborated by others. While lonely individuals report feeling
| disconnected from others in terms of their interests and ideas it
| was previously unclear to what extent this is true with respect
| to the zeitgeist--defined here as the widely shared perceptions
| between members of contemporary culture.
|
| I kinda get what they were looking for but knowledge and
| description of "celebrities" seems like a poor metric for many
| reasons including somebody just not interested in celebrities.
| For example, one can be lonely but online all day and so very
| connected to the "zeitgeist." Or one can have many interactions
| with other people but never discuss celebrities.
|
| But, ignoring all that, the headline suggested that loneliness
| alters something in the brain akin to how blindness alters ones
| view of reality. Or maybe it's the different way of thinking and
| talking that leads to loneliness.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Justin Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama,
| and Mark Zuckerberg_
|
| The celebs in the test. I'm not sure I could say anything
| meaningful about Bieber other than he's a pop star from Canada.
| Similar for Kardashian - Instagram influencer with lots of
| cosmetic surgery and makeup. Is the test expecting me to know
| other details beyond the completely inane and superficial?
|
| It would be even worse if they tested on athletes. I haven't
| watched any of the big US sports in decades. NFL, NBA, MLB - no
| clue. I guess I could answer a few questions about World Tour
| cyclists, but that's not likely to be on a test outside of
| Belgium or Italy.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I keep up with the _Cardassians_ , so I guess I'd flunk this
| test quite spectacularly.
| gilleain wrote:
| Yes, I wonder how the responses would be to "Describe Gul
| Dukat to someone who doesn't know him"
| em-bee wrote:
| but see, we got our own celebrities and a way to talk
| about them. doesn't that kind of confirm the idea? the
| problem is just that the content of the test is to
| limited.
|
| every group has their own language and people not in that
| group have a different one.
| wigglyartichoke wrote:
| All this stuff can very much lead to depression, and there
| seems to plenty of evidence that depression changes the brain
|
| There's a reason emotional security is 3rd on the Maslow
| Hierarchy, after food and physical security
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| I wonder if loneliness improves (at least correlates) creativity.
| Can I make myself inventive by becoming lonely?
| bawolff wrote:
| Lonliness is also correlated with depression which i think
| would be pretty bad for creativity. Maybe there is a fine line.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| You can hijack your longing for love and companionship sure.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Anyone else find that article repeating itself over and over
| without getting to the damn point?
| spuds wrote:
| As someone who's considered himself lonely for most of his life,
| I can very much relate with the idea of feeling like an outcast,
| like an alien, someone who doesn't really fit in or understand
| what others find interest in. I think, in my case at least, it
| was probably related to being told over and over as I kid that I
| was doing everything wrong, that I wasn't acting manly enough,
| etc. Being told I didn't fit in led me to believe it. After a
| long journey of rebuilding my self-worth, I'm a lot less lonely
| this days, but I still feel it pulling at me, especially when I'm
| in a situation where I feel like an outsider.
| htk wrote:
| I'm a state that resonates a lot with what you wrote, thank you
| for that. Checking out your bio I found out you have a very
| interesting blog, I really liked "Unexpected Benefits of Being
| Vulnerable on the Internet" as it's something that I often
| wonder about, how we condition ourselves to say things we
| believe will be accepted (and to receive upvotes) instead of
| what we truly feel, leaving our true self behind.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| > five well-known celebrities (Justin Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres,
| Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, and Mark Zuckerberg)
|
| It feels weird to me to bundle a tech CEO and a former President
| of the United States in with a pop idol, a talk show host, and a
| reality TV influencer as "celebrities".
| williamdclt wrote:
| Why? They're all undeniably celebrities, and I guess the point
| was to have a spread of source of celebrity?
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Why not? They are all celebrities. Celebrity status is not
| really correlated to the actual work they do [although some
| work requires some notoriety]. Gordon Ramsey's a restaurant
| owner and chef but he's also been on reality TV. Malala became
| internationally famous for being the target of an assassination
| plot, not her years of advocacy for women's education
| beforehand.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Hmm... I don't know anything about 2 of the 5 celebrities other
| than their names. Ellen somethingorother I've never even heard
| of.
| whoisstan wrote:
| Is the reverse true as well? Unusual preferences can lead to
| lonliness?
| brokegrammer wrote:
| > Chronic loneliness is linked to mental health issues like
| depression and anxiety, as well as physical health problems,
| including weakened immunity, cardiovascular disease, and an
| increased risk of mortality.
|
| A lot of pshycologists make that claim but I haven't found any
| compelling studies that prove it. Depression and axiety is
| understandable because we're social animals but the physical
| aspect isn't convincing unless the socially isolated person is
| lying around in bed doing drugs and eating unhealthy food all
| day. In that case instead of loneliness, we should blame drug
| abuse. It's unclear whether drug use is causing social isolation
| or if the latter is causing drug use.
|
| All the studies I've seen so far have weak evidence and most of
| them don't address confounding factors. I'm no scientist but I'd
| appreciate if someone could point to studies with strong evidence
| about this claim.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > the physical aspect isn't convincing unless the socially
| isolated person is lying around in bed doing drugs and eating
| unhealthy food all day. In that case instead of loneliness, we
| should blame drug abuse.
|
| It's important to remember that "linked to" does not mean
| "causes"
|
| You are saying "we should blame the drug abuse and not the
| loneliness" but "linked to" doesn't imply blame at all already
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| From the article: "lonely individuals tend to perceive that their
| ideas are not shared by others"
|
| I wonder how the current loneliness epidemic is intertwined with
| our current social/political climate and "us vs them"
| polarization.
|
| I suspect almost everyone has some secret disagreements with
| their in-group, even if only by a matter of degree, but are
| afraid to voice that opinion. There have to be tens of millions
| of Americans who identify as a INSERT_POLITICAL_IDENTITY but
| disagree with some aspect of that group's platform, narrative or
| goals.
|
| It's a wonder that anyone _doesn 't_ feel like their ideas are
| not shared by others.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Yeah I think this is the end result of defining people more by
| their group membership than who they are as individuals.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > I suspect almost everyone has some secret disagreements with
| their in-group
|
| This is assuming they have anyone close enough to even call
| them an in-group
|
| I think there has been an over-emphasis on individuality and a
| strong resistance to conformity that has been instilled in a
| lot of people, which has led to a lot of those people cutting
| ties with anyone that has even minor disagreements with them
|
| They are forever in search of their perfect friend group that
| doesn't exist, made up of only people who agree with them about
| every single thing
| pragma_x wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding the abstract here, but doesn't this
| also suggest that lonely individuals more readily reach their own
| conclusions about common ideas and concepts? I can't get away
| from the thought that all this confirms is that groups tend to
| converge their thinking and speech through regular contact, and
| that different social groups (including groups of one) will
| diverge in thinking over time.
| grantmuller wrote:
| "Our findings provide evidence that loneliness is associated with
| deviations from the zeitgeist, specifically when it comes to
| perceptions of well-known celebrities"
|
| Soooooo... thinking differently than the majority of people may
| lead to loneliness, because those who think differently than the
| zeitgeist have a hard time connecting with the majority of people
| because of the way they think?
| bitwize wrote:
| I find it strange that there's so much alignment in gen pop on
| how celebrities are perceived, and that any original opinion on
| these celebrities is considered "idiosyncratic". I feel like
| there's a Spiegelgrund being built somewhere for people who don't
| think Taylor Swift is the absolute cat's ass, because that means
| they're _different_ and different is threatening.
|
| Also, what constitutes idiosyncratic neural representation of
| celebrities? Back when Britney Spears became huge, my nickname
| for her was "the succubus", after a contemporaneous episode of
| _South Park_ in which Chef fell under the sway of a succubus when
| she sang "The Morning After" to him. Britney Spears was clearly
| an idiot, and she had a weak voice compared to other female
| singers, yet when people saw her gyrating and mewling on MTV'S
| TRL they went absolutely bonkers and I didn't get it. Is _that_
| idiosyncratic celebrity ideation?
| rolph wrote:
| self report should be crossed with frequency of interpersonal
| contacts
| krackers wrote:
| So having individualized, original thoughts not arising from the
| herd-mind is considered "unusual." What a world we live in.
| lincon127 wrote:
| What a weird thing to take offense to.
|
| Also yes, if there's a consensus on something, thinking
| different to said consensus would be unusual because it's not
| the usual. There are no value judgements in this article, so
| really interpreting this in any other way other than the
| literal sense makes you come off as defensive.
|
| More to the article itself, I wonder which comes first, the
| unusual thoughts, or the loneliness?
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