All the lonely people

I'm a big fan of the band OneRepublic, but I don't think any of their songs has struck me like their 2018 hit "Connection."

"There's so many people here to be so damn lonely."  Yeah, brother, I feel that hard.  This whole culture has fostered disconnection -- or, more accurately, bogus connections.  Social media gives you the appearance of authentic interaction, but the truth is what you see is chosen for you by an algorithm that often has little to do with what (or whom) you're actually interested in.  A host of studies has documented the correlation between frequent social media use and poor mental health, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem -- but as usual, the causation could run either way.  Rather than social media causing the decline in emotional wellness, it could be that people who are already experiencing depression gravitate toward social media because they lack meaningful real-life connections -- and at least the interactions on Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and whatnot are better than nothing.

Whichever way it goes, it appears that social media, which has long billed itself as being the new way to make friends, has left a great many people feeling more isolated than ever.

I know that's true for me.  I'm pretty shy, and don't get out much.  I volunteer sorting books for our local Friends of the Library book sale once a week; I see my athletic trainer once a week; I have a friend with whom I go for walks on Saturday mornings.  That's about it.  My social calendar is more or less non-existent.  And despite my natural tendency toward introversion, it's not a good thing.  I've had the sense -- undoubtedly inaccurate, but that doesn't make it feel any less real -- that if I were to vanish from the face of the Earth, maybe a dozen people would notice, and half that would care.

It's a hell of a way to live.

Sadly, I'm far from the only person who feels this way.  Disconnection and isolation are endemic in our society, and the scary part is the toll it takes.  Not only are there the obvious connections to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, a study out of Oregon State University published this week in the Journal of Psychology found that chronic loneliness is connected to a slew of other problems -- including poor sleep, nightmares, heart disease, stroke, dementia, and premature death.  The study, which involved 1,600 adults between the ages of eighteen and eighty, was absolutely unequivocal.

"Interpersonal relationships are very much a core human need," said psychologist Colin Hesse, director of the School of Communication in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts, who led the study.  "When people’s need for strong relationships goes unmet, they suffer physically, mentally and socially.  Just like hunger or fatigue means you haven’t gotten enough calories or sleep, loneliness has evolved to alert individuals when their needs for interpersonal connection are going unfulfilled...  Quality restorative sleep is a linchpin for cognitive functioning, mood regulation, metabolism and many other aspects of well-being.  That’s why it’s so critical to investigate the psychological states that disrupt sleep, loneliness being key among them."

The open question is what to do about it.  Social media clearly isn't the answer.  I don't want to paint it all as negative; I have good interactions on social media, and it allows me to keep in touch with friends who live too far away to see regularly, which is why I'm willing to participate in it at all.  But to have those interactions requires wading through all of the other stuff the algorithm desperately wants me to see (including what appear to be eighteen gazillion "sponsored posts," i.e., advertisements).  The bottom line is that people like Mark Zuckerberg and the other CEOs of large social media organizations don't give a flying rat's ass about my feelings; it's all about making money.  If it makes MZ money, you can bet you'll see it lots.  If it doesn't?

Meh.  Maybe.  Probably not.  Certainly you shouldn't count on it.

So the alternative is to try to get out there more and form some authentic connections, which is much easier said than done.  All I know is that it's important.  There may be people in this world who are natural loners, but I suspect they're few and far between.  The majority of us need deep connection with friends, and suffer if we don't have it.

And the Hesse et al. study has shown that there's more at risk than just your mood if you don't.

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Look me in the eye

It's fascinating how much information can transfer between two humans solely through eye contact.

I say that as a person who has a serious issue with doing this at all.  I have no idea where my avoidant behavior comes from, although I do recall hearing "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" a lot as a kid when I was in trouble.  But I find making sustained eye contact dreadfully uncomfortable.  I recall vividly being in a men's workshop a while back where one of the exercises was standing, a foot or so apart, face-to-face with another man, and simply holding each other's gazes for three minutes.  Those three minutes seemed to drag on forever, and it required phenomenal willpower on my part not to look away.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Perhaps part of it is my intense dislike of being the focus of attention, another outcome of my rather unfortunate childhood.  Interestingly, this tendency never bothered me much while I was teaching; to me, a teacher isn't (or shouldn't be) saying "Hey, look at me!", (s)he is saying about the topic being studied, "Hey, let's look at this other thing together, isn't this cool?"

I've wondered, though, if my tendency to look away when people glance at me has influenced my ability to form relationships.  I can see how this might make me seem aloof or unfriendly.  It's certainly contributed to a regrettable inability on my part to be able to tell when someone is flirting with me.  My friends, knowing my general cluelessness, have been known to say, "Um... you do realize (s)he was flirting with you, right?"  The answer almost always is "no."  The sad truth is that I wouldn't know if someone was flirting with me unless they were holding up a sign that said, "HEY.  STUPID.  I AM CURRENTLY FLIRTING WITH YOU."

And given the fact that I would probably be looking away the whole time, even that might not help.

The reason all this squirm-inducing stuff comes up is because of a study out of the University of Würzburg published this week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, entitled, "Don't Look At Me Like That: Integration of Gaze Direction and Facial Expression," in which we find out that for most people, whether or not we have a desire to meet someone's eyes depends strongly on what their facial expression is.

The researchers, led by Christina Breil, used photos of individuals who were either looking toward or away from the viewer, and had one of four emotional expressions: joy, anger, disgust, and fear.  The team measured how quickly volunteers looked into the eyes of the person in the photograph, and how long that (virtual) eye contact was maintained.  What they found was that we tend to look more quickly into the eyes of people expressing joy or anger (and hold the gaze longer), and be reluctant to look at those expressing disgust or fear.  In fact, the disgust and fear photos attracted more attention when the person in the photo was looking away from the viewer.

The anger results interested me the most, because I get really uncomfortable (even more uncomfortable than normal, which is saying something) around angry people.  I'm a champion conflict-avoider, which probably won't come as any real shock.  Breil et al. explain that this is thought to occur because anger, while generally considered unpleasant, is still an "approach-oriented" emotion; note that we even call angry confrontations "getting in your face."  Disgust and fear, on the other hand, are "avoidance-oriented;" they make us want to retreat from whatever it was that elicited the response.

I wonder how someone with a generally avoidant orientation, like myself, would have done with this experiment.  I certainly don't have nearly the problem looking at a photograph that I do looking into the eyes of a real person.  But if I hadn't known what the gist of the experiment was beforehand (which the volunteers, of course, didn't), it'd have been interesting to see how I'd have reacted.

The eyes, they say, are the window to the soul.  Certainly we express a great deal of feeling with them.  And how we respond to those expressions seems to be pretty nearly universal -- illustrating that once again, for social animals, effective communication is a strong driver for evolution.

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Judgment calls

I had two experiences in the last couple of weeks, one funny and one maddening, both of which at their heart boil down to the same thing.  I work as an aide for a developmentally disabled man, and mostly what he likes doing is going for long walks.  And both of these incidents happened in almost the same place -- a nearby park which is my friend's favorite spot to go on nice days.

The first I kind of saw coming.  We were heading around a bend in the path, and standing there was a guy holding pamphlets of some sort.  As soon as we got in range, he started telling us that he was there to spread Jesus's word, and could he give us some pamphlets to read.  I said, "No, thanks," but the guy wasn't gonna be brushed off that easily.

"We all need to hear the message of the Lord," he said.

I just kind of stared at him.

"It's how we know right from wrong."  He gave me a disapproving scowl.  "For example, St. Paul said that it is a disgrace for a man to have long hair."

I laughed, a little incredulously, and said, "Tell St. Paul he needs to mind his own damn business," and kept walking.

The second, though, just pissed me off.  There's a nice spot in the park down by a marina, where my friend likes to spend some time watching the boats.  He was standing near the water, and I sat on a bench close by.  I pulled out my phone to check my messages -- at the time, a dear friend of mine was in the hospital, and I wanted to see if there were any updates on her condition.

I was looking at my phone -- no texts or updates, unfortunately -- when a woman who was on the path nearby said, "Isn't it too beautiful a day to spend your time with your nose in your phone?"

I looked up at her, trying to figure out how to respond.  I certainly wasn't going to explain my actions to her; I didn't feel like I was obliged to justify myself to a prying stranger.  I finally shrugged and said, "Yeah," and slipped my phone back into my pocket.  Apparently gratified that she had awakened me to the beauty of nature, she went off with a smile.

In both cases, the issue is about judgment, isn't it?  Neither the fact that I have a ponytail nor my checking my text messages in the park is anyone's business but my own; I'm a bit baffled that anyone would even have an opinion on either of those things.  My mom used to say, "My rights end where your nose begins," and I think that's spot-on, but I'd extend it.

My right to pass judgment ends where your nose begins.

It's easy to judge someone harshly when you don't know the full story.  And you seldom ever do.  What does it cost you to start from the assumption that most people, most of the time, are working from good intentions?  I don't mean you should become gullible, or ignore or excuse truly obnoxious behavior; but why do so many people feel like it's required that they have an opinion about everything and everyone, whether or not it concerns them in the slightest -- the vast majority of them negative?

How about we all do our best to focus not on judging people, but on simply being kind?

The Doctor, as always, has things figured out.

You could argue that both the religious guy and the nature woman were themselves acting out of good intentions; the religious guy trying to save me from hell, the nature woman trying to clue me in to what she thought I was missing.  But the fundamental issue here is that neither of them had the least idea who I was, nor bothered to find out.  Without any knowledge of me or my situation, they both were convinced they knew what I needed to be doing better than I did.

The whole incident with the phone reminded me of this photograph that was making the rounds a couple of years ago, did you see it?

It was usually accompanied by a sneery message about teenagers and how they don't care about anything but social media and why would you even be in an art museum if all you want to do is stare at your phone.  Finally, someone who was there at the time tried to set the record straight; these young people were staring at their phones...

... because they were participating in an online self-guided tour about the lives and work of the artists in the museum.

But as far as I'm aware, that didn't cause any sheepish retractions, and I still sometimes see this photo making the rounds to highlight what slackers teenagers are and/or how technology will destroy us all.

Somehow, indignation seems to come far more easily to people than charity does.  

I'll end with another of my experiences -- this one when I was about six.  Something had happened at school -- I don't even recall what -- and I was bristling with annoyance toward some classmate of mine whom I perceived as having wronged me.  As I was walking home I passed the house of our wonderful friend Garnett, who was out working in her garden, and proceeded to her tell my tale of woe, assuming she'd commiserate with me a little.

What she said knocked me back, and I've never forgotten her gentle words to me that day.  "Gordon, I know you're mad at your friend, but whenever you're tempted to be angry, I want you to remember something," she said.  "Always be kinder than you think you need to be, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."

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As someone who is both a scientist and a musician, I've been fascinated for many years with how our brains make sense of sounds.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman makes the point that our ears (and other sense organs) are like peripherals, with the brain as the central processing unit; all our brain has access to are the changes in voltage distribution in the neurons that plug into it, and those changes happen because of stimulating some sensory organ.  If that voltage change is blocked, or amplified, or goes to the wrong place, then that is what we experience.  In a very real way, your brain creates your world.

This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week looks specifically at how we generate a sonic landscape, from vibrations passing through the sound collecting devices in the ear that stimulate the hair cells in the cochlea, which then produce electrical impulses that are sent to the brain.  From that, we make sense of our acoustic world -- whether it's a symphony orchestra, a distant thunderstorm, a cat meowing, an explosion, or an airplane flying overhead.

In Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World, neuroscientist Nina Kraus considers how this system works, how it produces the soundscape we live in... and what happens when it malfunctions.  This is a must-read for anyone who is a musician or who has a fascination with how our own bodies work -- or both.  Put it on your to-read list; you won't be disappointed.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]