New discoveries published in the Journal of Research in Personality provide evidence that social isolation is associated with reduced social perception and emotion recognition skills. In this study, it is explained that social cognitive capacity can predict objective isolation, but not feelings of loneliness.
Loneliness has become an increasingly recognized problem in society, especially after the last year. Research has been done on loneliness, and it has been proven through population studies that loneliness has a higher impact on mortality rates than obesity and hypertension. It is important to note that the feeling of seclusion is mainly driven by an individual’s perception of social relationships, instead of objective observations about social dynamics. Any relationship may be described in two vastly different ways by both people because of the differences in perception.
This explains how people can feel lonely despite having friends and other social ties. Loneliness can be linked to objective social isolation, but perception can greatly warp this and create feelings that do not consider objective facts. Cognitive processes play an important role in your evaluation of social relationships. Therefore, it is important to examine the subjective and objective social isolation, as well as cognitive processes that underlie processing and interpretation of the information you receive in social settings.
In the study provided by the Journal of Research in Personality, two hundred and fifty-two individuals between the ages of eighteen and fifty with no history of psychiatric or neurological disorders were asked to complete assessments of objective loneliness and objective social isolation. The researchers measured objective social isolation by asking the participants the number of relatives that they were in regular contact with, could seek help from, and could confide in. Subjective loneliness was measured by asking the individuals the extent that they agreed with statements like “No one actually knows me well” and “I feel isolated from other people.” There were also multiple validated tests of social cognitive capacity that were implemented, such as the ability to recognize other people’s emotional states or the ability to infer another person's state of mind.
Through this experiment, it was discovered that individuals with a higher level of objective social isolation tended to show less social cognitive capacity. However, this did not apply to subjective feelings of loneliness. Essentially, social perception and emotion recognition was associated with objective social isolation, but not loneliness. The tendency to assign hostile intentions in ambiguous social situations was associated with both objective social isolation and loneliness.
Significantly more research is needed on the associations between social cognitive abilities and social isolation. Study author Łukasz Okruszek explains, “While we have shown which cognitive mechanisms are linked with loneliness and objective social isolation, the trajectories linking these findings with health outcomes observed in lonely and isolated individuals are still to be explored. Previous studies have found that structural and functional abnormalities may be observed in lonely individuals in key brain structures that are involved in the processing of social information.”
Overall, loneliness is a public health challenge. Since the isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become an even more prevalent issue. It is incredibly important to understand how loneliness affects both health and overall quality of life. This research is a great start to broaden the understanding of this emotion.