What causes some people to get stuck in “chronic” loneliness?
Because loss of social connection was such a threat, loneliness engenders fear as well as pain. For each of us, our need for social connection and our sensitivity to social pain is biased by our individual genetic inheritance. Fear-based responses, understandably, prompt us to look out for ourselves, which can interfere with the accurate perceptions we need to effectively connect with others and the selection of the social skills or appropriate social responses in any given occasion. Thus, when a person becomes lonely, he or she can get caught in a feedback loop in which the undercurrent of danger and threat associated in evolutionary terms with social isolation can promote a form of social cognition and interaction that becomes a self-perpetuating, self-fulfilling prophecy. Could you share with us some of the solutions for the individual and society to decrease loneliness and to increase connection and social cooperation? We go into this in some depth in our book. Briefly, our individ
