Taking moments to be alone, going for a walk or going to the cinema in your own company are good examples of solitude. Unlike loneliness, this is an experience characterized by the conscious desire to be alone and can bring several health benefits — but when it is not done intensely, according to a new study published earlier this month in the journal Plos One.
THE workcarried out by researchers at Oregon State University (OSU), in the United States, provides an analysis of the role of solitude in building social connections. Several studies have already found the benefits of strong social ties for longevity, better mental health and a lower risk of serious illnesses.
To understand the influence of loneliness on health, researchers interviewed nearly 900 adults in the United States. They found that activities that provide less complete forms of solitude, such as playing a game on your cell phone or going to the movies alone, offer more advantages compared to a walk in the desert or writing in an isolated cabin, for example.
“We’ve learned that less complete solitude is more likely to restore energy and maintain a feeling of connection with others,” says Morgan Quinn Ross, assistant professor of communication in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts in press release. “In a world where social interaction is often just a click away, we need to understand how to balance social interaction with different types of loneliness.”
Researchers have examined the conditions under which a person’s solitude can be “overshadowed” by people or technology. According to the authors, accessibility to others and engagement with media can overshadow the experience, making alone time more social in nature.
They constructed a matrix of solitude that goes from the base level (no interaction with people) to the total level (which refers to being inaccessible to others and not engaging with the media). This allowed them to observe that experiencing solitude more fully maximizes energy restoration, while experiencing it less fully maximizes relationships with other people.
“Our study suggests that solitude is not, in fact, the flip side of social interaction,” comments Ross. “While more intense social interaction produces connection but depletes energy, more intense loneliness depletes both energy and connection. Loneliness does not seem to function simply as a way to recover energy used in social interaction.”
Scientists also found that solitude was less detrimental to the well-being of individuals who felt it helped them restore energy and maintain connection, regardless of how much energy their social interactions cost them.
From the researchers’ perspective, the study’s findings apply to both extroverts and introverts. They suggest that people try to seek solitude only when motivated in a constructive way.
“If you have a positive attitude toward solitude—because you use it to restore energy and know you’ll be able to connect with people later—then choosing it will probably make you feel better,” he says. “But if you choose loneliness because of a negative attitude toward social interaction — because you don’t want to talk to people — it will probably make you feel worse.”
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This content was originally published in Is solitude good for your health? See what the new study says on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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