Perceived social isolation and cognition

The mechanism behind week 11's mortality figures — what loneliness does to attention, threat detection and sleep.

Cacioppo & Hawkley (2009). Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13(10), 447–454. Read it.

Secondary reading — not required, but it is the one to follow next.

Loneliness is not the same as being alone: it is the perceived gap between the relationships you have and the ones you want. Cacioppo and Hawkley show that this perception puts the brain into a state of implicit hypervigilance for social threat, which biases attention, distorts how you read other people, and fragments sleep — and which then makes connection harder to achieve.

This runs alongside week 11 and is the answer to “but how would that kill anyone”. It also matters for your fieldwork: the lonely person in the room you are watching is likely reading that room more suspiciously than you are.