Loneliness ebbs and flows for some people. For others, it latches on tight and doesn’t let go. A 2023 Surgeon General’s Advisory declared loneliness to be an epidemic in the United States, citing evidence that one of every two adults report being lonely (HHS, 2023). With broad reaching consequences on health and wellness, loneliness can color your mood, your appetite, your energy. It also, as new research suggests, changes how you see the world.
Loneliness Makes Us Lonelier
Recent research out of the University of Maryland (LeMay et al., 2024) tested the idea that loneliness interferes with social perception, distorting how lonely people view others’ interactions with them, and, ultimately, keeping us lonely. Loneliness, they postulated, might actively hinder people from experiencing the full impact of everyday positive interpersonal interactions. Further, loneliness may work to keep people lonely. By changing how lonely people experience interacting with others, loneliness may lower the quality of those relationships.
Explaining Chronic Loneliness
Researchers Lemay and colleagues (2024) used three empirical studies employing both survey and daily dairy methods and assessing the responses of over 1,000 volunteers to identify how loneliness might beget more loneliness, even in the face of favorable social interaction. Their work showed that lonely people often have access to caring and supportive friends and romantic partners, but they don’t see the positivity these people are sending their way. People higher in loneliness perceived less care and less regard from interactions with people close to them compared to non-lonely people, even when other measures (e.g., observer reports, partner reports) showed no difference (Lemay et al., 2024). Loneliness may prevent us from seeing others’ kindness.
To make matters worse, the negativity bias that prevents lonely people from fully feeling their friends’ and romantic partners’ care and admiration may ultimately predict a worse relationship. For indeed, not perceiving a friend or partner’s care and regard, when it was present, helped explain lower relationship quality, less commitment, less self-disclosure, and less support provision (Lemay et al., 2024).
Interestingly, these findings were observed while controlling for attachment and self-esteem. In other words, it is loneliness itself that distorts reality and then people end up experiencing their relationships differently, including in ways that fail to encourage relationship health (e.g., giving less support).
Having Social Interactions May Not Improve Loneliness
Imagine feeling the heaviness of loneliness and then chatting with a friend or catching up in the evening routine with a romantic partner. One would think these moments could lift the shadow of loneliness. The current research, however, points to key limitations anchored to the social cognitive bias in loneliness (Lemay et al., 2024).
Specifically, loneliness may alter how people think such that they cannot perceive the very kindnesses that might reduce loneliness. Unfortunately, failure to perceive others’ warmth is not just a missed opportunity for connection. People who are lonely and cannot see others’ admiration and care end up having lower relationship quality, which won’t help their loneliness (Lemay et al., 2024).
Breaking the Loneliness Cycle
From an evolutionary perspective, the social cognitive bias inherent in loneliness might be protective: if I keep you at a distance (and don’t even perceive your care or admiration) then I will be safe (Cacioppo et al., 2014). This makes sense if people are living in threatening social situations, but when caring others are trying to be supportive and you can’t see the support, loneliness begets loneliness at a steep cost.
This research suggests the negative cognitive bias associated with loneliness may be one reason loneliness can be chronic (Lemay et al., 2024). By revealing how loneliness distorts perception, however, this research also offers a path toward breaking the loneliness cycle, namely, challenging these maladaptive thought patterns. From this lens, cognitive behavioral therapy may be a productive intervention: people can be taught to question their negative thoughts and to test what they are thinking against other markers of reality.