Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection »

John T. Cacioppo is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and president of the Association for Psychological Science. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

William Patrick, former editor for science and medicine at Harvard University Press, is editor in chief of the Journal of Life Sciences. He lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

“One of the most important books about the human condition to appear in a decade.”—Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness

Publishers Weekly

Eleanor Rigby might have been in worse shape than the Beatles imagined: not only lonely but angry, depressed and in ill health. University of Chicago research psychologist Cacioppo shows in studies that loneliness can be harmful to our overall well-being. Loneliness, he says, impairs the ability to feel trust and affection, and people who lack emotional intimacy are less able to exercise good judgment in socially ambiguous situations; this makes them more vulnerable to bullying as children and exploitation by "unscrupulous salespeople" in old age. But Cacioppo and Patrick (editor of the Journal of Life Sciences) want primarily to apply evolutionary psychology to explain how our brains have become hard-wired to have regular contact with others to aid survival. So intense is the need to connect, say the authors, that isolated individuals sometimes form "parasocial relations" with pets or TV characters. The authorsa' advice for dealing with loneliness-psychotherapy, positive thinking, random acts of kindness-are overly general, but this isna't a self-help book. It does present a solid scientific look at the physical and emotional impact of loneliness. 12 illus. (Aug. 25)

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Pt. 1 The lonely heart

Ch. 1 Lonely in a social world 3

Ch. 2 Variation, regulation, and an elastic leash 20

Ch. 3 Losing control 35

Ch. 4 Selfish genes, social animals 52

Ch. 5 The universal and the particular 73

Ch. 6 The wear and tear of loneliness 92

Pt. 2 From selfish genes to social beings

Ch. 7 Sympathetic threads 113

Ch. 8 An indissociable organism 128

Ch. 9 Knowing thyself, among others 145

Ch. 10 Conflicted by nature 169

Ch. 11 Conflicts in nature 182

Pt. 3 Finding meaning in connection

Ch. 12 Three adaptations 201

Ch. 13 Getting it right 221

Ch. 14 The power of social connection 247

Notes 271

Index 297