In a steady stream of recent papers, social psychologists have identified several potentially unhealthy changes in the cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems of chronically lonely people. The findings could help explain why epidemiological studies have often found that socially isolated people have shorter life spans and increased risk of a host of health problems, including infections, heart disease, and depression. The work also adds a new wrinkle, suggesting that it's the subjective experience of loneliness that's harmful, not the actual number of social contacts a person has. An impressive network of collaborations with researchers in other disciplines is now pioneering a new science of loneliness.
Read the story in Science 14 January 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6014 pp. 138-140
I don't see the correlation between Nerds and loneliness in this article.
ReplyDeleteI think you may have assigned your own slant to this one.
I am a nerd, my friends are nerds, and we are all very social. We may make bad jokes and be socially challenged (which fork is it), but isolated and lonely ...not!