---
author: Big Think
date: '2026-05-21'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8QxTRI72js
speaker: Big Think
tags:
- loneliness
- social-connection
- psychology
- friendship-recession
- mental-health
title: 超越孤独：重构社会连接与自我认知
summary: 本文探讨了孤独的本质、其对生理健康的负面影响以及孤独与社会连接之间的深层关联。专家通过神经科学研究揭示了社会支持如何调节应激反应，分析了当今社会面临的“友谊衰退”现象，并提出通过重构信念将孤独感转变为积极的自我探索机会。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: psychology
area: society-thinking
project: []
people:
- Daniel Cox
companies_orgs:
- American Enterprise Institute
products_models: []
media_books: []
status: evergreen
---
### 孤独的社会烙印与生理损伤
从很小的时候起，我们就习得了一种污名化观念：如果一个人独处，那么他一定出了什么问题。这种对孤独的感知以及我们对自己孤独感的叙事，反过来改变了我们在世界上的行为模式。当我们感到孤独时，更容易在社交情境中陷入反刍思维，将问题灾难化，从而被这些负面的思维模式和信念所困扰。这种心态不仅改变了我们的行为，还深入影响了我们的**大脑**和**身体**。
一些研究表明，缺乏亲密朋友或感到孤独，其对健康的危害程度等同于每天吸烟15支。虽然我们常听到孤独对健康有害，但实际上，在许多情境下，独处本身是有益的。孤独并非反映了我们是谁，而是反映了我们需要什么；它是信息，是数据。孤独始于一种思维模式或情绪，它会触发体内的**应激反应**，导致皮质醇水平升高，增加炎症反应，进而削弱免疫系统，使我们更容易受到疾病侵害。
Original English Source
- From a very young age,
there's a stigma that we learn, where, if
you're alone, something's wrong with you.
Our perceptions and the stories
that we tell ourselves
about feeling lonely, in turn,
change the behaviors that we go out
and do in the world.
When we feel lonely, we're more likely to start
to ruminate, to catastrophize
in social situations
and to get caught up in these sort
of negative thought patterns and beliefs
but then influence our behaviors,
but they also influence our brains
and our bodies.
- There are some studies
that suggest, for example,
that being without a close friend,
being lonely is
as bad for your health as smoking
15 cigarettes a day.
- We often hear that
being alone is bad for us.
This messaging is getting us to believe
that being alone is bad for us.
But there are many situations in which
being alone can actually be good for us.
- Our social lives are rewiring our brains
and in turn, changing the experience
that we have
inside of our bodies.
Loneliness is not a reflection on who
we are.
It's a reflection of what we need.
It's information. It's data.
Loneliness starts out
as a thought pattern or an emotion.
This actually triggers
a stress response in our body
that is associated
with heightened levels of cortisol,
that's associated with more inflammation,
which weakens our immune systems
and actually makes us more susceptible
to disease.
### 神经科学视角下的连接需求
神经科学研究清晰地揭示了这一点。在一项研究中，参与者在观看浪漫伴侣或完全陌生人的照片时接受轻微的电击。结果显示，当人们观看浪漫伴侣的照片时，报告的恐惧感更低，且大脑中与疼痛相关的区域活动也更弱。这表明，个人的感知会因是否感到与他人连接而产生巨大差异。如果认识到健康不仅是生理和心理层面的，更是社会层面的，我们将改变自己的行为。拥有丰富的友谊、深深扎根于社区并获得强有力的支持，将彻底改变你体验世界的方式。
目前，一个重大课题是我们是否正面临“友谊衰退”（Friendship Recession）。这是**美国企业研究所**（American Enterprise Institute: 美国的一家保守派智库）的学者**丹尼尔·考克斯**（Daniel Cox）提出的术语，用于描述缺乏一定数量亲密朋友、在危机时刻求助无门的人数上升的现象。如今，15%的年轻男性表示没有亲密朋友，而这一比例在20世纪90年代仅为3%。有趣的是，大流行期间女性受到的影响最大，超过一半的女性表示与至少部分朋友失去了联系。传统机构如家庭、宗教和劳动力市场的衰落，意味着人们需要在这些机构之外寻求社会关系和连接，这使得友谊显得格外重要。
Original English Source
We can see this in the neuroscience
research.
In one study, people went through mild
electric shocks while looking at photos
of either their romantic partner
or a complete stranger.
What researchers found
was that people who are looking
at a photo of their romantic partners
reported feeling less fearful
and the brain activity in the regions
associated with pain was lower.
People's perception differs according
to whether or not
they feel connected to another person.
If we start to understand
that health is not only physical
and mental, it's also social
that's going to change our behaviors.
If you think about having rich friendships
and being embedded in your community
and having a really strong
sense of support,
that's going to completely transform
the way that you experience the world.
- I think a big question now is
whether we're facing
a friendship recession.
That's the term that Daniel Cox, a scholar
at the American Enterprise Institute,
has used to describe this rise
in the number of people who lack
a certain number of close friends,
who have fewer people
to turn to in times of crisis.
Today, 15% of young men
say that they don't have a close friend.
That was just 3% back in the 1990s.
The pandemic, interestingly, there we see that
it's women who've been most affected.
With more than half of women saying
they've lost touch
with at least some of their friends.
We've seen a decline in lots
of traditional institutions,
including a family, people marrying later
if they do marry.
Obviously in areas like religion.
In some cases, the labor market.
And so what that means is
there's more of a need for people to have
social relationships, connections
outside of those institutions.
That's where friends are hugely important.
### 重构信念：从孤独到创造
如果没有朋友，不仅会导致经济或社会意义上的孤立，还会让人感到悲伤。而悲伤同样对生理和心理健康有害。友谊对于人类的繁荣至关重要。交友的一个必要步骤是承认自己想交朋友，并对此持开放态度，这需要一定的脆弱性。随着年龄增长，没有足够朋友往往会带来一种羞耻感，而真正说出“我需要一个朋友”或许是人类最难开口的话语之一。
近年来，对孤独负面后果的关注度日益增加。媒体将独处经历描述为负面的频率大约是描述为正面频率的十倍。然而，针对时间的跟踪研究显示，如果你认为独处是有益的，那么你在独处时实际上会感到愉悦。这一发现非常关键，因为它给了我们干预的机会：我们可以改变人们对独处的信念。我们不必将独处视为反映自身或环境出了问题，而可以将其重构为发挥创造力、与自己的思想进行愉悦交流的机会。当我们谈论这些话题时，它们便会进入人们的思维，并在更广泛的文化中产生影响。
连接自己与连接他人同样重要。对于你而言，最佳的社会健康状态可能与他人不同，这取决于你享受社交的程度以及何种连接方式让你感到满足。孤独只是一个进一步探索社会健康、在“社会生活”这个实验室中充当科学家的机会。我们可以拓宽你所处的“感知箱”（Perception Box），帮助你感到更紧密的连接，从而克服孤独带来的孤立体验。
Original English Source
And so it's not just that being
without friends can make you isolated
in a sort of economic or social sense,
but it can also make you sad.
And being sad, it turns out, is also bad
in terms of your physical
as well as emotional health.
There's obviously a dystopian version
of how these trends could continue,
which is a world of, essentially,
atomized individuals
without friends, isolated,
perhaps in ill health.
I think that's why
we have to recognize that
friendship is incredibly important
for human flourishing.
One of the necessary steps
to making a friend
is to admitting
that you want to make a friend.
To being open to that.
That requires a certain vulnerability.
And I think as we get older, there's
sometimes a sense of shame
that comes along
with not having enough friends.
And actually saying I need a friend
is maybe one of the hardest sentences
that any human being can utter.
- There's been an increasing amount of attention
over the past several years
about the negative consequences
of loneliness.
We've done research on this and found
that the media is
approximately ten times more likely
to describe experiences of being alone
as negative as compared to positive.
When we do research
where we track people over time,
what we see
is that if you're the kind of person
who thinks being alone is good for you,
you actually feel good
when you spend time alone.
What I love about that finding
is it gives us the opportunity
to potentially intervene
because we can shift
people's beliefs about being alone.
Rather than thinking about that experience
as reflecting
something wrong about me
or the circumstances,
we can reframe that situation
as an opportunity
to be creative, to be alone
with our thoughts in a pleasant way.
The more we talk about these things,
the more gets on our minds
and the more it penetrates
into the culture more broadly.
- Connection with yourself is
as important as connection
with other people.
Being optimally socially healthy
for you might be different
than someone else
based on how much socializing you enjoy,
and what kinds of connection
feel fulfilling to you.
Loneliness is just an opportunity
to go further, to explore
your social health, to be a scientist in
the laboratory that is your social life.
We can broaden the Perception Box
that you're living in and help you
to feel more connected and overcome
that isolated experience of loneliness.