Saturday, April 08, 2006

Loneliness

3-31-06
Loneliness kills according to a recent study. Lonely people have blood pressure readings as much as 30 points higher than non-lonely people, said the study leaders Louise Hawkley and Christopher Masi. Blood pressure differences between lonely and non-lonely people were smallest at age 50 and greatest among the oldest people tested. It is not surprising in that we humans are social by nature, and it is a very advantageous adaptation. Dr. Alan Fiske has identified four forms of sociality that we engage in on a daily basis, these are: Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing. Each model increases in complexity and interestingly each corresponds to the four levels of analysis identified by S.S. Stephens: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.

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