their hypothesis : lonely people cause the people around them to be lonely
supporting evidence:
1. "This model shows that each additional lonely LP significantly increases the number of days a FP feels
lonely at the next exam"
2. "Each extra day of loneliness in a “nearby” friend (who lives within a mile) increases the number of days FP is lonely by 0.29 days"
3. "The longitudinal results suggest that loneliness appears in social networks through the operation of induction (e.g., contagion) rather than simply arising from lonely individuals finding themselves isolated from others and choosing to become connected to other lonely individuals (i.e., the homophily hypothesis)."
:P
alternative hypothesis: lonely people tend to connect better with people who are either lonely or prone to loneliness.
if I wanted to test for loneliness as an infection that spreads from lonely people to non-lonely people I would put particular focus on the groups of people where we know that network self-selection is minimal or at high cost, such as family and spouses. that is to say, if loneliness were catchy, the most obvious place to look would be the people who are the most physically attached.
1. "But siblings do not appear to affect one another at all (even the ones who live nearby, see first model in Table 5b)"
2. "Table 6 shows that spouses are significantly less influential than friends in the spread of loneliness from person to person."
3. "..loneliness spreads more quickly among friends than family..."
hmm... i think i am going to stick with my common sense.
"These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater." my god! :)
supporting evidence:
1. "This model shows that each additional lonely LP significantly increases the number of days a FP feels
lonely at the next exam"
2. "Each extra day of loneliness in a “nearby” friend (who lives within a mile) increases the number of days FP is lonely by 0.29 days"
3. "The longitudinal results suggest that loneliness appears in social networks through the operation of induction (e.g., contagion) rather than simply arising from lonely individuals finding themselves isolated from others and choosing to become connected to other lonely individuals (i.e., the homophily hypothesis)."
:P
alternative hypothesis: lonely people tend to connect better with people who are either lonely or prone to loneliness.
if I wanted to test for loneliness as an infection that spreads from lonely people to non-lonely people I would put particular focus on the groups of people where we know that network self-selection is minimal or at high cost, such as family and spouses. that is to say, if loneliness were catchy, the most obvious place to look would be the people who are the most physically attached.
1. "But siblings do not appear to affect one another at all (even the ones who live nearby, see first model in Table 5b)"
2. "Table 6 shows that spouses are significantly less influential than friends in the spread of loneliness from person to person."
3. "..loneliness spreads more quickly among friends than family..."
hmm... i think i am going to stick with my common sense.
"These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater." my god! :)
good thing i put question marks at the end of my thread titles, huh?
:)
:)
i know, and I noticed your skepticism in the original post. i just thought it would be an interesting exercise reading through the paper and seeing if their model seemed sound.
"I don't think we anticipated that something like loneliness would cluster like this in a population. It's surprising."
Hm, I'm not surprised.
Hm, I'm not surprised.