Loneliness and Social Behaviors
Abstract
The essay is about how loneliness can affect individuals but through cooperation and understating social behavior, we can reduce the fear of being rejected and alone. By watching John Cacioppo: The lethality of loneliness we can see the effects that loneliness as on an individuals and how society perceives it while reading The ‘ Black Sheep Effect’: Social Categorization, Rejection of Ingroup Deviates, and Perception of Group Variability and Human Motivation and Social Cooperation: Experimental and Analytical Foundations we can see how we can overcome that through social behaviors such as social cooperation.
Loneliness and Social Behaviors
Humans are very clever individuals who rely on social groups for survival. We try our best not to be isolated or rejected by the standards that are defined by our societal norms and culture. In order to do so, we form some sort of cooperation through social behaviors so we have a better chance of surviving by today’s standards in society.
Like hunger or thirst, approval from our society has become a vital mechanism for our survival. This is why an individual goes through so much mental and physical pain when being rejected from their groups. This rejection can cause the feeling of isolation or loneliness to steam as a result of our biological mechanism warning us that something is wrong. Humans, as we know, are very social creatures and our chance for survival increase when we are accepted in a group that values are same beliefs and values. While reading Dr. Marque’s and D. Presz’s article on The Black Sheep Effects, I found it interesting that, “ Most beliefs are not susceptible to validation… so people will search for alternative sources of that validation.” If they cannot find a crowd that is biased towards their views, then they become the black sheep of that group. There’s also a huge stigmatism attached to being the black sheep; Dr. John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist with expertise in loneliness states that “ Loneliness is stigmatized… the psychological equivalent to being a loser in life or weak person.” No one wants to be placed in this category or viewed as a lesser. It’s also interesting to see that people are more likely to reject those who are in their group more easily than outsiders. It may be because its easier to have outsiders conform to a new idea but if someone has a different idea within the group this can cause disruptions in the flow and a “ bad seed” will be planted. That “ seed” not only causes changed can threaten to challenge the norms that certain group or society may have, thus being rejected. For any induvial such as myself, we don’t want to be looked down or shunned by our group because that makes us feel too different. We have that fear of not being able to belong in that same boat as everyone. As a result, we push down our inner voices of difference and try to mesh with our group to prevent from straying away from them.
Now we will look at how social behavior plays a role in society. In sociology, the term social behavior is behaviors aimed towards societies or taken place between members of the same species. Social behaviors come in many different forms such as aggression, love, and need, But a major aspect that derives from social behaviors is communication. Communication is a key part in everyday life, without it we wouldn’t be able to tell others our thoughts and feelings. In the past social behaviors helped us obtain food, reproduce and avoid harmful predators. Even though we still do that, in modern times we also use it too expresses our values and beliefs to other individuals who may have similar to different viewpoints. In present times social behaviors are a bit more complex than just the basic needs because we have evolved so much emotionally and mentally. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and cultures and may view ideas differently. This can cause a lot of emotional turmoil and we need to be able to communicate well to get our points across. Sometimes that might not go as well due so we hold back due to the fear of rejection and isolation from our circle. But if we let this fear take hold of us we won’t get anything done and be able to move forward in life. It’s especially important that we learn how to cooperate with each other and learn what social behaviors are appropriate so everything will end well.
Cooperation is essential to getting along with others especially when they are trying to work towards the same goal. As Dr. Ernest Fehr and Dr. Herbert Ginits states, “ Social cooperation have emphasized that internalization of values that induce norm compliance.” Without this everyone would be all over the place with a similar goal in mind but no foundation to build upon. AS said before rejection is a big factor in holding a person back so we need to really be able to communicate our thoughts efficiently. After er have expressed our desire it’s up to the individuals to be cohesive to make this vision happen. Many people will have different perspectives on how that should be achieved but if we start sharing and incorporating ideas then we will be able to come up with better solutions. For an example a couple months ago I had a community festival and I was in charge of decorating and coordinating between the food and money. The year before we had some feedback and based on that I tried to see if I could change some stuff up this year. Doing it by myself took hours and I didn’t know if the majority of the people would like my ideas so I was pretty hesitant about it. But after discussing ideas and thoughts, with some of my seniors and asking them to help, since we all wanted this year to be better than the last, it turned out great. Some of my visions didn’t make it through but we had some great ideas from others that made the experience great in the end.
Form all the reading and videos we can see that loneliness as such a big impact on our society and it may be the result of us not having the proper social behaviors and the effective methods to communicate them. It blows my mind that humans are such social that depend on each other but sometimes we are so that we reject others that may have a different viewpoint then us instead of being able to communicate, understand an incorporate them into our lives. Its essential we learn how to in order for us to survive.
References
- Talks, T. (2013, September 09). The lethality of loneliness: John Cacioppo at TEDxDesMoines. Retrieved from https://www. youtube. com/watch? v= _0hxl03JoA0
- Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. (2017). Social psychology and human nature (3rd ed.). Australia: Cengage Learning.
- Fehr, E., & Gintis, H. (2007). Human Motivation and Social Cooperation: Experimental and Analytical Foundations. Annual Review of Sociology, 33 (1), 43-64. doi: 10. 1146/annurev. soc. 33. 040406. 131812
- Marques, J. M., & Paez, D. (1994). The ‘ Black Sheep Effect’: Social Categorization, Rejection of Ingroup Deviates, and Perception of Group Variability. European Review of Social Psychology, 5 (1), 37-68. doi: 10. 1080/14792779543000011
- Talks, T. (2013, September 09). The lethality of loneliness: John Cacioppo at TEDxDesMoines. Retrieved from https://www. youtube. com/watch? v= _0hxl03JoA0
