Feeling Alone is an Infectious Disease

Loneliness can spread like a virus, finds a University of Chicago study.

Loneliness can spread like a virus, finds a University of Chicago study. But unlike a virus, people could catch the loneliness bug through negative interactions. An odd look or phrasing, that won’t even be noticed by a more cheerful person, can trigger a cycle of negative interactions that causes people to lose friends. This person could affect another person similarly, and both could end up on the fringes of a social group. The results come from a 10-year study of more than 5,000 individuals. In many cases friends and relatives of the subjects also took part in the study. The researchers pieced together social networks showing connections between each individual and the average number of lonely days for the participant and that person’s links. They found loneliness is contagious, with three degrees of separation. So a person’s loneliness depended not just on his friend’s loneliness but also on his friend’s friend and his friend’s friend’s friend. The number of family members had no effect on loneliness scores.