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loneliness social individuals interventions
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Chapter 14¹⁴

Visible Efforts to Change Invisible Connections

¹⁴ The lead author is Christopher M. Masi, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago. He is co-founder of Every Block A Village Online, an Internet-based community development program, and is past president of the Illinois chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. He is the current president of the Midwest Society of General Internal Medicine and has received numerous awards, including a Models That Work Award from the United States Bureau of Primary Health Care and the New Investigator Health Sciences Research Award from the Gerontological Society of America. With a medical degree, as well as a PhD in social service administration, Dr. Masi’s research focuses on the socioeconomic factors underlying health disparities. He currently has two projects, one aimed at developing an intervention to reduce loneliness and one focused on the role of sex hormones in gender, age, and racial differences in cardiovascular disease. He is a reviewer for several scientific journals and grant-making organizations and has published research and reviews on diverse topics, including health insurance reform and racial disparities in breast cancer and hypertension.

Human capacity for creativity, compassion, and learning is unparalleled in the animal kingdom. However, humans reach their full potential only when they are socially engaged. Lack of social engagement impairs creativity and learning, and limits opportunities for caregiving and emotional growth. Numerous studies have shown that loneliness is also a risk factor for illness and premature mortality. Because loneliness is increasing in modern society, it is critically important to understand this condition, as well as strategies to reduce it. This essay describes our review of the literature regarding loneliness reduction interventions.

The 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes proposed that without the organizing structure of government, humans would experience bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all) and life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”(1). While this colorful description is often quoted, less attention is paid to Hobbes’ premise that such misery can be avoided if humans codify and enforce the rules of a civil society. Not everyone agrees with Hobbes’ views, but history is replete with examples of human misery when anarchy reigns and of relative peace when a social contract is observed. A question that philosophers continue to debate is whether collaboration for mutual benefit is part of human nature or whether promotion of the self above all others is man’s primary motivation. In this volume, Cacioppo argues that sociality is an integral part of human nature. He notes that given each child’s prolonged period of total dependence, survival into child-bearing age depends entirely upon the support and protection of adults, most often parents or kin. As a result, those who survive long enough to procreate pass along genes for nurturing and protection, thereby hardwiring a form of sociality into our genetic code.

This protective behavior helps ensure that genes within a family are passed on to future generations. Cooperation among unrelated adults or the support and protection of children by adults exists beyond kin, as well, because these activities also provide survival benefit. Examples from early human existence include hunting and gathering, which are more likely to succeed when pursued as a group than individually. To these structural benefits

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