Perceived Loneliness and Social Stimuli

While the research in general social stimuli like empathy and cooperation is growing incrementally, little research has been conducted regarding how perceived loneliness affects our general perception of social stimuli. Evolutionary Psychology shows that humans created their own social constructs out of survival and protection purposes in order to sustain the next generation to reproduce. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have suggested that individuals who build social connections find it fundamentally rewarding. This may be intuitive, but what about those who choose not to be as proactive at building social relationships?

Recent research out of the University of Chicago (Cacioppo, Norris, Decety Monteleone, Nusbaum) in the Journal of Cognitive Science shows that perceived loneliness has an impact on how we receive social stimuli. Their fMRI research conducted on 23 female participants from the University of Chicago shows that the ventral striatum, a brain region that is critical in social reward processes and social learning, was less activated for individuals that perceived themselves as lonely than individuals who perceived themselves as non-lonely.

Perceived loneliness was established through the UCLA Loneliness Scale which consists of "20 items measuring general loneliness and degrees of satisfactions within one's social relationships." fMRI results in the ventral striatum and surrounding brain regions were established through showing various pictorial scenes ranging from pleasant pictures of people to pleasant pictures of objects. Individuals who did not perceive themselves as lonely found the pleasant pictures of people to be more rewarding in general and more rewarding than the pictures of objects. These results suggest that individuals who perceive themselves as lonely do not find as much reward in social stimuli as those who perceive themselves as non-lonely. In addition, these results suggest that perceived lonely individuals actually find similar rewarding in non-social stimuli and social stimuli.

Social interactions evoke the opportunities for trust, support and cooperation; but they also can elicit opportunities for betrayal and conflict. This research gives insight into how lonely and non-lonely individuals interpret these social interactions, and what kind of repercussions can come from those interpretations. Moreover, this research raises new questions about the roles of the ventral striatum and surrounding brain regions on social interactions with lonely and non-lonely individuals.


Cacioppo, John T., Catherine J. Norris, Jean Decety, George Monteleone, and Howard Nusbaum. "In the Eye of the Beholder: Individual Differences in Perceived Social Isolation Predict Regional Brain Activation to Social Stimuli." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 28 May 2015. .

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