The Lethality of Loneliness: John Cacioppo at TEDxDesMoines

John Cacioppo demonstrate the importance of social interaction for humans as social species, and how loneliness can actually impair our health and even kill us. He gives us some clues as to how to reconnect to others.

When you look out
onto the world,

it certainly appears the Earth is flat.

The ground beneath you

is stable and unmoving,

and stars and sun circle the Earth.

Hundreds of years ago,

elaborated theories were developed

based on these common sense observations

to explain and predict
the reach of the oceans

and the movement of celestial bodies.

When science demonstrated

that these common sense observations

were illusions,

and depicted the Earth and the Universe

in a completely different way,

people slowly came to accept

that the world was not as it seemed.

Scientific measurements and

sophisticated calculations

have repeatedly demonstrated that

what we think is intuitive,
obvious and common sense

cannot be trusted to be true.

For that reason, modern sciences

based on the denial of common sense

until apparently it comes to ourselves:

when science confirms a particular way

of thinking about
our mind and behaviour,

or depicts it in
an unusual and a new way,

we tend to be skeptical

that such a science is worthwhile

even if possible.

And instead, we fall back on intuition,

prior beliefs, and yes, common sense.

For instance, if I told you,

scientific research has demonstrated
that opposites attract,

wouldn't you tell me
that we don't need a science

to tell us something we already know?

But what if I told you that

birds of a feather flock together

according to scientific research,

wouldn't you say,
we don't need a science

to tell us something we already know?

Or you may have realised already,

of course, that these both
may be self-evident truths,

but they can't both be true

since they are internally inconsistent.

The science of mind and behaviour

is full of such examples:

self-evident truths
that both can't be true.

We know, for instance,

that two heads are better than one

and we know that
too many cooks spoil the broth.

The next time you hear

a science report
of some obvious result,

remember that the obvious result
was equally obvious,

but it'd just been proven to be wrong.

It's obvious there
we're rugged individualists.

True, true, true!

We're born to the most
prolonged period of dependency,

but in a transition to adulthood,
we achieve autonomy,

independence, to become
kings of the mountain,

captains of our universe.

It's easy to think about our brain,

how's deep within a cranial vault

separated, isolated, protected from others,

when we look out into the social world

other individuals certainly

look distinct,
independent, self vicinities

with no forces binding them together.

No wonder that we forget

that we are members of a social species,

born dependent on our parents,
for our species to survive,

these infants must instantly
engage their parents

in protective behaviour
and the parents must care enough

about these offspring
to nurture and protect them.

Even when grown, we are not
particularly splendid specimens.

Other animals can run faster

see and smell better,

and fight much more
effectively than we can.

Our evolutionary advantage

is our brain and our ability to communicate,

plan and reason and work together.

Our survival depends
on our collective abilities,

not on our individual mind.

We are connected across
our lifespan to one another,

through a myriad of invisible forces,

that, like gravitity,
are ubiquitous and powerful.

After all, social species, by definition,
create a merging structures

that extend beyond an organism,

structures that range
from couples and families

to schools and nations and cultures.

These structures evolved hand in hand

with neural, hormonal and
genetic mechanisms to support them

because the consequent social behaviour

helps these organisms survive,

reproduce and leave a genetic legacy.

To grow into an adulthood

for a social species, including humans,

is not to become
autonomous and solitary,

it's to become the one
on whom others can depend.

Whether we know it or not,
our brain and biology

have been shaped
to favour this outcome.

The evolutionary biologist,
David Sloan Wilson,

notes that if you ask people:

"What are the traits of a good person?",

you'll hear traits such as kind,
generous, compassionate and empathic.

If you ask people what are
the traits of an evil person,

you'll hear traits such as

cruel, greedy, exploitative and selfish.

Said differently,
the traits of a good person

depict someone who cares
about themselves and others,

and an evil person
cares about themselves

at the expense of others.

Across our biological heritage,

our brain and biology
have been sculpted to incline us

to certain ways of feeling,
thinking and behaving.

For instance,

we have a number of
biological machineries

that capitalise on aversive signals
to motivate us to act

in ways that are essential
for our survival.

Hunger, for instance,
is triggered by low blood sugar

and motivates you to eat,

an important early warning system
for an organism

that'd require much more
time and effort to find food

than going to the regrigerator door,
kitchen cabinet

or fast food restaurants.

Thirst is an aversive signal,

that motivate s us to search
for drinkable water

prior to fall in victim to dehydration.

And pain is an aversive system that
notifies us of potential tissue damage

and motivates us to take care
of our physical body.

You might think that the biological
warning machinery stops there

but there's more.

Although not common sense,
although not intuitive,

the pain and aversiveness of loneliness,

of feeling isolated
from those around you,

is also a part of biological
early warning machinery

to alert you to threats
and damage to your social body,

which you also need
to survive and prosper.

Just about all of us
have felt physical pain

and nearly all of us have felt

the heartbreak of home sickness,

the agony of bereavement,

the torment of unrequited love

and the pain of being shunt.

All of these are variations
on the experience of loneliness.

When I started to study
the effects of loneliness

and brain and biology
a couple of decades ago,

loneliness has been characterized
as a non-chronic disease

without redeeming features.

It was even equated
with shyness and depression

with being a loner, a person
with marginal social skills.

Scientific measurements
and sophisticated calculations,

to our surprise, revealed
that these were myths.

Science and common sense
had again produced

two very different depictions
of a phenomenon.

And yet if you look at the way
we are increasingly living our lives,

it shows the extent
to which we still buy in to

those myths of loneliness and
values of autonomy and independence.

For instance, if you look at

the percentage of one-person
housesolds in 1940 across the US

it was largely less than 15%

of the housesolds by state.

Fastforward to 1970,

and it's grown to be
between 15 and 20%.

Fastforward to 2000

and it now exceeds 25%
in most states in America.

And that light blue state, Uhah

in 2010 census has gone darker blue.

The prevalence of loneliness
is also on the rise.

In the 1980s, scholars have
estimated that about 20% of Americans

felt lonelier than
at any given point of time.

Two recent nationally
representative surveys indicate

that this number has doubled,

but you don't hear people
talking about feeling lonely,

and that's because
loneliness is stigmatised.

The psychological equivalent to
being a loser in life or a weak person.

And this is truly unfortunate,

because it means we are
more likely to deny feeling lonely,

which makes no more sense
than denying we feel

hunger, thirst or pain.

For living with loneliness
we now know is the major risk factor

for broad-based morbidity and mortality.

Consider a couple of
the conditions we know about -

premature death.

Living with air pollution increases
your odds of an early death by 5%,

Living with obesity, we know,
a national health problem,

increases your odds
of an early death by 20%.

Excessive alcohol consumption: 30%.

A recent med analysis of around
a hundred thousand participants

shows that living with loneliness increases your odds

of an early death by 45%.

We're not the only social species
and the experimental investigation

of non-human social animals
who were isolated shows

they too suffer deleterious
physiological consequences

and an abbreviated lifespan.

Across our history, as a species,
we have survived and prospered

by banding together,

couples, families and tribes,
for mutual protection and assistance.

We think of loneliness
as a sad condition,

but for social species,
being on the social perimeters,

not only sad, it is dangerous.

The brains of social species
including our own have evolved

to respond to being
on the social perimeter

by going into a self-preservation mode.

If you isolate a rodent
and then put it in an open field

such as these dots
at the bottom of the image,

it engages into what's called
predator revision,

it walks around the outside
and doesn't venture into the middle

where escape from a flying predator
would be more more difficult.

When humans feel isolated,

they're too, and not only in
an unhappy circumstance,

but in a dangerous circumstance.

There brains too snap
into a self-preservation mode.

In a brain-imaging study
that we conducted,

we showed people negative images

that had nothing to do with other people

or negative social images,

while they were sitting in a scanner
and we were scanning.

What we found was

the lonelier the brain,

when a negative social image
was presented,

that is in a person's environment,

when something negative
socially happened,

the brain allocated more attention,

greater visual cortical activity
depicted in yellow here, to that image.

Now, as you follow that image forward,

you come to those two blue areas:

that's a temporal parietal junction.

This is a piece of brain tissue
that's involved in theory of mind,

in mind reading and mentalizing,

in taking another person's perspective
and empathy.

It's responsible for the attentional
control required to step out of your head

and put yourself, at least figuratively,
inside the head of someone else

so you can take their point of view.

The lonelier the brain,

when something negative
in the social context was depicted,

the less the activation in this region.

It's dangerous on the social perimeter.

When something happens negative
in the social environment,

that brain is focused on self-preservation,

not a concern of the other person.

The similarity in neural and
behavioral effects across phylogeny

is a testimony to the importance
of the social environment

for social species.

And these deep evolutionary roots
tilting our brain and biology

towards our self-preservation

also suggest that
much of what's triggered

by social isolation is non-conscious.

For instance, when you feel isolated

you feel this motive,
this desire, this intention

to connect with other people again.

What you don't feel,

is that your brain has gone into
a hypervigilance for social threats

and this hypervigilance
means you introduce

intentional, confirmatory
and even memory biases

in terms of those social interactions.

And if you're looking for dangers,

you more like to see dangers

whether they exist or not,

meaning that you more likely

to have negative interactions.

And that threat surveillance
of always looking for the next foe

activates neuro-biological mechanisms

that can degrade your health
and lead to early mortality.

Loneliness increases defensiveness

because you're focused
on your own wellfare

rather than taking
the position or perspective

of people with whom you interact.

Loneliness increases depressive symptoms

which has the odd effect
of decreasing your likelihood

of having social conflict

and through the acoustic and postural

and facial expressions of sadness,

such as this child on
this picture serves as a signal

to others in the vicinity
to reconnect with you,

if they are willing to do so

so it's a safe call for connection.

Loneliness increases
morning cortisol levels,

a powerful stress hormon,

the consecuence of
the brain's preparation

for yet another dangerous day.

And loneliness increases
prepotent responding,

which means you are more likely

to fall victim to a whole host
of unhealthy impulsive behaviours.

And the end of the day

doesn't bring an end to
the brain's high alert state.

If it's dangerous to fend off
wild beasts by yourself by a stick,

imagine how dangerous it is
to lay that stick down at night

when predators are out

and you're without
that safe social surround.

We've found that loneliness
also decreases sleep salubrity,

increases the number
of micro awakenings,

increases the fragmentation of sleep

and thereby decreases
the detoxificaxion of stressful days

over the course of the night.

Loneliness even alters
gene expression such as

inflammatory biology
to deal with assaults.

Not long ago we thought about
the genes as the keyboard

on which life's song played out.

What this research
suggests is that

if the genes are the keys on the piano,

then the environment including
your social environment

is the pianist influencing
which keys are turned on and off.

Well if loneliness is dangerous,

what can we do about it?

When we are hungry,

we can go to the refrigerator
and get a snack.

When we are thirsty,

we can go to the faucet
and draw a glass of water.

But when we are lonely,
we have no pantry full of friends

with whom we can connect

and no online social networking

does not replace
the comforting touch of a friend.

First, recognize what the signal is

and don't deny it.

Second, understand
what it does to your brain,

to your body, to your behavior.

It's dangerous,

as a member of a social species,
to feel isolated.

And our brain snaps
into a self-preservation mode.

That brings with it some
unwanted and unknown effects

on our thoughts and
our actions toward others.

Be aware of those,
understand those effects

and take responsability
for your actions toward others.

And third, respond.

Understanding that
it's not the quantity of friends,

it's a quality of a few relationships
that actually matter.

Attend to the three components
of connectedness.

One can promote inament connections
by developing one individual

who's trusted, in whom can confide
and who can confide in you.

You can promote
relational connectance

by simply sharing good time
with friends and family.

We often go to the dinner table
happy that we've provided for our family,

but having forgotten to share
any good time with them en route.

Collective connectedness
can be promoted by becoming

a part of something bigger than yourselves.

If the obstacles to connection
seem insurmauntable,

consider volunteering
for something that you enjoy.

Perhaps helping to serve the needy,
volunteering in a museum,

a zoo, a running club or a TedEx event.

Or simply taking time to speak
to elders at the retirement home.

Sharing good times is
one of the keys to connection.

And don't wait, the next time
you feel alienated, isolated or excluded,

respond to that aversive signal

as you would hunger, thirst and pain

and get connected.

Thank you.

(Applause)