Tag: Social Alienation

What is Social Rejection?

Published on by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

Introduction

Social rejection occurs when an individual is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or social interaction. The topic includes interpersonal rejection (or peer rejection), romantic rejection, and familial estrangement. A person can be rejected or shunned by individuals or an entire group of people. Furthermore, rejection can be either active by bullying, teasing, or ridiculing, or passive by ignoring a person, or giving the “silent treatment”. The experience of being rejected is subjective for the recipient, and it can be perceived when it is not actually present. The word “ostracism” is also commonly used to denote a process of social exclusion (in Ancient Greece, ostracism was a form of temporary banishment following a people’s vote).

Although humans are social beings, some level of rejection is an inevitable part of life. Nevertheless, rejection can become a problem when it is prolonged or consistent, when the relationship is important, or when the individual is highly sensitive to rejection. Rejection by an entire group of people can have especially negative effects, particularly when it results in social isolation.

The experience of rejection can lead to a number of adverse psychological consequences such as loneliness, low self-esteem, aggression, and depression. It can also lead to feelings of insecurity and a heightened sensitivity to future rejection.

Need for Acceptance

Social rejection may be emotionally painful, due to the social nature of human beings, as well as the essential need for social interaction between other humans. Abraham Maslow and other theorists have suggested that the need for love and belongingness is a fundamental human motivation. According to Maslow, all humans, even introverts, need to be able to give and receive affection to be psychologically healthy.

Psychologists believe that simple contact or social interaction with others is not enough to fulfil this need. Instead, people have a strong motivational drive to form and maintain caring interpersonal relationships. People need both stable relationships and satisfying interactions with the people in those relationships. If either of these two ingredients is missing, people will begin to feel lonely and unhappy. Thus, rejection is a significant threat. In fact, the majority of human anxieties appear to reflect concerns over social exclusion.

Being a member of a group is also important for social identity, which is a key component of the self-concept. Mark Leary of Duke University has suggested that the main purpose of self-esteem is to monitor social relations and detect social rejection. In this view, self-esteem is a sociometer which activates negative emotions when signs of exclusion appear.

Social psychological research confirms the motivational basis of the need for acceptance. Specifically, fear of rejection leads to conformity to peer pressure (sometimes called normative influence, cf. informational influence), and compliance to the demands of others. The need for affiliation and social interaction appears to be particularly strong under stress.

In Childhood

Peer rejection has been measured using sociometry and other rating methods. Studies typically show that some children are popular, receiving generally high ratings, many children are in the middle, with moderate ratings, and a minority of children are rejected, showing generally low ratings. One measure of rejection asks children to list peers they like and dislike. Rejected children receive few “like” nominations and many “dislike” nominations. Children classified as neglected receive few nominations of either type.

According to Karen Bierman of Pennsylvania State University, most children who are rejected by their peers display one or more of the following behavior patterns:

  • Low rates of prosocial behaviour, e.g. taking turns, sharing.
  • High rates of aggressive or disruptive behaviour.
  • High rates of inattentive, immature, or impulsive behaviour.
  • High rates of social anxiety.

Bierman states that well-liked children show social savvy and know when and how to join play groups. Children who are at risk for rejection are more likely to barge in disruptively, or hang back without joining at all. Aggressive children who are athletic or have good social skills are likely to be accepted by peers, and they may become ringleaders in the harassment of less skilled children. Minority children, children with disabilities, or children who have unusual characteristics or behaviour may face greater risks of rejection. Depending on the norms of the peer group, sometimes even minor differences among children lead to rejection or neglect. Children who are less outgoing or simply prefer solitary play are less likely to be rejected than children who are socially inhibited and show signs of insecurity or anxiety.

Peer rejection, once established, tends to be stable over time, and thus difficult for a child to overcome. Researchers have found that active rejection is more stable, more harmful, and more likely to persist after a child transfers to another school, than simple neglect. One reason for this is that peer groups establish reputational biases that act as stereotypes and influence subsequent social interaction. Thus, even when rejected and popular children show similar behaviour and accomplishments, popular children are treated much more favourably.

Rejected children are likely to have lower self-esteem, and to be at greater risk for internalising problems like depression. Some rejected children display externalising behaviour and show aggression rather than depression. The research is largely correlational, but there is evidence of reciprocal effects. This means that children with problems are more likely to be rejected, and this rejection then leads to even greater problems for them. Chronic peer rejection may lead to a negative developmental cycle that worsens with time.

Rejected children are more likely to be bullied and to have fewer friends than popular children, but these conditions are not always present. For example, some popular children do not have close friends, whereas some rejected children do. Peer rejection is believed to be less damaging for children with at least one close friend.

An analysis of 15 school shootings between 1995 and 2001 found that peer rejection was present in all but two of the cases (87%). The documented rejection experiences included both acute and chronic rejection and frequently took the form of ostracism, bullying, and romantic rejection. The authors stated that although it is likely that the rejection experiences contributed to the school shootings, other factors were also present, such as depression, poor impulse control, and other psychopathology.

There are programs available for helping children who suffer from social rejection. One large scale review of 79 controlled studies found that social skills training is very effective (r = 0.40 effect size), with a 70% success rate, compared to 30% success in control groups. There was a decline in effectiveness over time, however, with follow-up studies showing a somewhat smaller effect size (r = 0.35).

In the Laboratory

Laboratory research has found that even short-term rejection from strangers can have powerful (if temporary) effects on an individual. In several social psychology experiments, people chosen at random to receive messages of social exclusion become more aggressive, more willing to cheat, less willing to help others, and more likely to pursue short-term over long-term goals. Rejection appears to lead very rapidly to self-defeating and antisocial behaviour.

Researchers have also investigated how the brain responds to social rejection. One study found that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is active when people are experiencing both physical pain and “social pain,” in response to social rejection. A subsequent experiment, also using fMRI neuroimaging, found that three regions become active when people are exposed to images depicting rejection themes. These areas are the posterior cingulate cortex, the parahippocampal gyrus, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Furthermore, individuals who are high in rejection sensitivity (see below) show less activity in the left prefrontal cortex and the right dorsal superior frontal gyrus, which may indicate less ability to regulate emotional responses to rejection.

An experiment performed in 2007 at the University of California at Berkeley found that individuals with a combination of low self-esteem and low attentional control are more likely to exhibit eye-blink startle responses while viewing rejection themed images. These findings indicate that people who feel bad about themselves are especially vulnerable to rejection, but that people can also control and regulate their emotional reactions.

A study at Miami University indicated that individuals who recently experienced social rejection were better than both accepted and control participants in their ability to discriminate between real and fake smiles. Though both accepted and control participants were better than chance (they did not differ from each other), rejected participants were much better at this task, nearing 80% accuracy. This study is noteworthy in that it is one of the few cases of a positive or adaptive consequence of social rejection.

Ball Toss/Cyberball Experiments

A common experimental technique is the “ball toss” paradigm, which was developed by Kip Williams and his colleagues at Purdue University. This procedure involves a group of three people tossing a ball back and forth. Unbeknownst to the actual participant, two members of the group are working for the experimenter and following a pre-arranged script. In a typical experiment, half of the subjects will be excluded from the activity after a few tosses and never get the ball again. Only a few minutes of this treatment are sufficient to produce negative emotions in the target, including anger and sadness. This effect occurs regardless of self-esteem and other personality differences.

Gender differences have been found in these experiments. In one study, women showed greater nonverbal engagement whereas men disengaged faster and showed face-saving techniques, such as pretending to be uninterested. The researchers concluded that women seek to regain a sense of belonging whereas men are more interested in regaining self-esteem.

A computerised version of the task known as “cyberball” has also been developed and leads to similar results. Cyberball is a virtual ball toss game where the participant is led to believe they are playing with two other participants sitting at computers elsewhere who can toss the ball to either player. The participant is included in the game for the first few minutes, but then excluded by the other players for the remaining three minutes. A significant advantage of the Cyberball software is its openness; Williams made the software available to all researchers. In the software, the researcher can adjust the order of throwing the balls, the user’s avatar, the background, the availability of chat, the introductory message and much other information. In addition, researchers can obtain the programme’s latest version by visiting the official website of CYBERBALL 5.0.

This simple and short time period of ostracism has been found to produce significant increases to self-reported levels of anger and sadness, as well as lowering levels of the four needs. These effects have been found even when the participant is ostracised by out-group members, when the out-group member is identified as a despised person such as someone in the Ku Klux Klan, when they know the source of the ostracism is just a computer, and even when being ostracised means they will be financially rewarded and being included would incur a financial cost. People feel rejected even when they know they are playing only against the computer. A recent set of experiments using cyberball demonstrated that rejection impairs willpower or self-regulation. Specifically, people who are rejected are more likely to eat cookies and less likely to drink an unpleasant tasting beverage that they are told is good for them. These experiments also showed that the negative effects of rejection last longer in individuals who are high in social anxiety.

Life-Alone Paradigm

Another mainstream research method is the Life Alone Paradigm, which was first developed by Twenge and other scholars to evoke feelings of rejection by informing subjects of false test results. In contrast to ball toss and cyberball, it focuses on future rejection, i.e. the experience of rejection that participants may potentially experience in the future. Specifically, at the beginning of the experiment, participants complete a personality scale (in the original method, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire). They are then informed of their results based on their experimental group rather than the real results. Participants in the rejected group will be told that their test results indicate that they will be alone in the future, regardless of their current state of life. Participants in the accepted group will be told they will have a fulfilling relationship. In the control group, participants were told they would encounter some accidences. In this way, the participants’ sense of rejection is awakened to take the subsequent measurement. After the experiment, the researcher will explain the results to the participants and apologise.

Scholars point out that this method may cause more harm to the subjects. For example, the participants will likely experience a more severe effect on executive functioning during the test. Therefore, this method faces more significant issue with research ethics and harms than other rejection experiments. Consequently, researchers should use this test with caution in experiments and pay attention to the subjects’ reaction afterwards.

Psychology of Ostracism

Most of the research on the psychology of ostracism has been conducted by the social psychologist Kip Williams. He and his colleagues have devised a model of ostracism which provides a framework to show the complexity in the varieties of ostracism and the processes of its effects. There he theorises that ostracism can potentially be so harmful that humans have evolved an efficient warning system to immediately detect and respond to it.

In the animal kingdom as well as in primitive human societies, ostracism can lead to death due to the lack of protection benefits and access to sufficient food resources from the group. Living apart from the whole of society also means not having a mate, so being able to detect ostracism would be a highly adaptive response to ensure survival and continuation of the genetic line.

Temporal Need-Threat Model

The predominant theoretical model of social rejection is the temporal-need threat model proposed by Williams and his colleagues, in which the process of social exclusion is divided into three stages:

  1. Reflexive;
  2. Reflective; and
  3. Resignation.

The reflexive stage happens when social rejection first occurs. It is an immediate effect happened on individuals. Then, the reflective stage enters when the individual starts to reflect and cope with social rejection. Finally, if the rejection last for the long term and the individual cannot successfully cope with it, the social rejection would turn to the resignation stage, where the individual is likely to suffer from severe depression and helplessness. These will likely push the individual into suicide or other extreme behaviour.

Reflexive Stage

The reflexive stage is the first stage of social rejection and refers to the period immediately after social exclusion has occurred. During this stage, Williams proposed that ostracism uniquely poses a threat to four fundamental human needs; the need to belong, the need for control in social situations, the need to maintain high levels of self-esteem, and the need to have a sense of a meaningful existence. When social rejection is related to the individual’s social relationships, the individual’s need for belonging and self-esteem is threatened; when it is not associated with it, it is primarily a threat to a sense of control and meaningful existence.

Another challenge that individuals need to face at this stage is the sense of pain. Previous scholars have used neurobiological methods to find that social exclusion, whether intentional or unintentional, evokes pain in individuals. Specifically, neurobiological evidence suggests that social exclusion increases the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation. This brain region, in turn, is associated with physiological pain in individuals. Notably, the right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC) is also further activated when individuals find that social rejection is intentional; this brain region is associated with the regulation of pain perception, implying that pain perception decreases when individuals understand the source of this social rejection. Further research suggests that personal traits or environmental factors do not affect this pain.

Thus, people are motivated to remove this pain with behaviours aimed at reducing the likelihood of others ostracising them any further and increasing their inclusionary status.

Reflective Stage

In the reflective stage, individuals begin to think about and try to cope with social rejection. In the need-threat model, their response is referred to as need fortification, i.e. the creation of interventions that respond to the needs they are threatened by in the reflective stage. Specifically, when individuals’ self-esteem and sense of belonging are threatened, they will try to integrate more into the group. As a result, these rejected individuals develop more pro-social behaviours, such as helping others and giving gifts. In contrast, when their sense of control and meaning is threatened, they show more antisocial behaviour, such as verbal abuse, fighting, etc., to prove they are essential.

Resignation Stage

When individuals have been in social rejection for a long time and cannot improve their situation through effective coping, they move to the third stage, resignation, in which they do not try to change the problem they are facing but choose to accept it. In Zadro’s interview study, in which she interviewed 28 respondents in a state of chronic rejection, she found that the respondents were depressed, self-deprecating and helpless. This social rejection can significantly impact the physical and psychological health of the individual.

Controversy

The controversy over temporal need-threat model has focused on whether it enhances or reduces people’s perception of pain. DeWall and Baumeister’s research suggests that individuals experience a reduction in pain after rejection, a phenomenon they refer to as emotional numbness, which contradicts Williams et al.’s theory that social rejection enhances pain perception. In this regard, Williams suggests that this phenomenon is likely due to differences in the paradigm used in the study, as when using a long-term paradigm such as Life-Alone, individuals do not feel the possibility of rejoining the group, thus creating emotional numbness. This is further supported by Bernstein and Claypool, who found that in separate cyberball and life-alone experiments, stronger stimuli of rejection, such as life-alone, protected people through emotional numbness. In contrast, in the case of minor rejection, such as that in cyberball, the individual’s system detects the rejection cue and draws attention to it through a sense of pain.

Popularity Resurgence

There has been recent research into the function of popularity on development, specifically how a transition from ostracisation to popularity can potentially reverse the deleterious effects of being socially ostracised. While various theories have been put forth regarding what skills or attributes confer an advantage at obtaining popularity, it appears that individuals who were once popular and subsequently experienced a transient ostracisation are often able to employ the same skills that led to their initial popularity to bring about a popularity resurgence.

Romantic

In contrast to the study of childhood rejection, which primarily examines rejection by a group of peers, some researchers focus on the phenomenon of a single individual rejecting another in the context of a romantic relationship. In both teenagers and adults, romantic rejection occurs when a person refuses the romantic advances of another, ignores/avoids or is repulsed by someone who is romantically interested in them, or unilaterally ends an existing relationship. The state of unrequited love is a common experience in youth, but mutual love becomes more typical as people get older.

Romantic rejection is a painful, emotional experience that appears to trigger a response in the caudate nucleus of the brain, and associated dopamine and cortisol activity. Subjectively, rejected individuals experience a range of negative emotions, including frustration, intense anger, jealousy, hate, and eventually, resignation, despair, and possible long-term depression. However, there have been cases where individuals go back and forth between depression and anger.

Rejection Sensitivity

Karen Horney was the first theorist to discuss the phenomenon of rejection sensitivity. She suggested that it is a component of the neurotic personality, and that it is a tendency to feel deep anxiety and humiliation at the slightest rebuff. Simply being made to wait, for example, could be viewed as a rejection and met with extreme anger and hostility.

Albert Mehrabian developed an early questionnaire measure of rejection sensitivity. Mehrabian suggested that sensitive individuals are reluctant to express opinions, tend to avoid arguments or controversial discussions, are reluctant to make requests or impose on others, are easily hurt by negative feedback from others, and tend to rely too much on familiar others and situations so as to avoid rejection.

A more recent (1996) definition of rejection sensitivity is the tendency to “anxiously expect, readily perceive, and overreact” to social rejection. People differ in their readiness to perceive and react to rejection. The causes of individual differences in rejection sensitivity are not well understood. Because of the association between rejection sensitivity and neuroticism, there is a likely genetic predisposition. Rejection sensitive dysphoria, while not a formal diagnosis, is also a common symptom of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), estimated to affect a majority of people with ADHD. Others posit that rejection sensitivity stems from early attachment relationships and parental rejection; also peer rejection is thought to play a role. Bullying, an extreme form of peer rejection, is likely connected to later rejection sensitivity. However, there is no conclusive evidence for any of these theories.

Health

Social rejection has a large effect on a person’s health. Baumeister and Leary originally suggested that an unsatisfied need to belong would inevitably lead to problems in behaviour as well as mental and physical health. Corroboration of these assumptions about behaviour deficits were seen by John Bowlby in his research. Numerous studies have found that being socially rejected leads to an increase in levels of anxiety. Additionally, the level of depression a person feels as well as the amount they care about their social relationships is directly proportional to the level of rejection they perceive. Rejection affects the emotional health and well being of a person as well. Overall, experiments show that those who have been rejected will suffer from more negative emotions and have fewer positive emotions than those who have been accepted or those who were in neutral or control conditions.

In addition to the emotional response to rejection, there is a large effect on physical health as well. Having poor relationships and being more frequently rejected is predictive of mortality. Also, as long as a decade after the marriage ends, divorced women have higher rates of illness than their non-married or currently married counterparts. In the case of a family estrangement, a core part of the mother’s identity may be betrayed by the rejection of an adult child. The chance for reconciliation, however slight, results in an inability to attain closure. The resulting emotional state and societal stigma from the estrangement may harm psychological and physical health of the parent through end of life.

The immune system tends to be harmed when a person experiences social rejection. This can cause severe problems for those with diseases such as HIV. One study by Cole, Kemeny, and Taylor investigated the differences in the disease progression of HIV positive gay men who were sensitive to rejection compared to those who were not considered rejection sensitive. The study, which took place over nine years, indicated significantly faster rate of low T helper cells, therefore leading to an earlier AIDS diagnosis. They also found that those patients who were more sensitive to rejection died from the disease an average of 2 years earlier than their non-rejection sensitive counterparts.

Other aspects of health are also affected by rejection. Both systolic and diastolic blood pressure increase upon imagining a rejection scenario. Those who are socially rejected have an increased likelihood of suffering from tuberculosis, as well as suicide. Rejection and isolation were found to affect levels of pain following an operation as well as other physical forms of pain. Social rejection may cause a reduction in intelligence. MacDonald and Leary theorise that rejection and exclusion cause physical pain because that pain is a warning sign to support human survival. As humans developed into social creatures, social interactions and relationships became necessary for survival, and the physical pain systems already existed within the human body.

In Popular Culture

Artistic depictions of rejection occur in a variety of art forms. One genre of film that most frequently depicts rejection is romantic comedies. In the film He’s Just Not That Into You, the main characters deal with the challenges of reading and misreading human behaviour. This presents a fear of rejection in romantic relationships as reflected in this quote by the character Mary, “And now you have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

Social rejection is also depicted in theatrical plays and musicals. For example, the film Hairspray shares the story of Tracy Turnblad, an overweight 15-year-old dancer set in the 1960s. Tracy and her mother are faced with overcoming society’s expectations regarding weight and physical appearances.

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What is Emptiness?

Published on by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

Introduction

Emptiness as a human condition is a sense of generalised boredom, social alienation, nihilism and apathy. Feelings of emptiness often accompany dysthymia, depression, loneliness, anhedonia, despair, or other mental/emotional disorders, including schizoid personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizotypal personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. A sense of emptiness is also part of a natural process of grief, as resulting death of a loved one, or other significant changes. The particular meanings of “emptiness” vary with the particular context and the religious or cultural tradition in which it is used.

While Christianity and Western sociologists and psychologists view a state of emptiness as a negative, unwanted condition, in some Eastern philosophies such as Buddhist philosophy and Taoism, emptiness (Śūnyatā) represents seeing through the illusion of independent self-nature.

In Western Culture

Sociology, Philosophy, and Psychology

In the West, feeling “empty” is often viewed as a negative condition. Psychologist Clive Hazell, for example, attributes feelings of emptiness to problematic family backgrounds with abusive relationships and mistreatment. He claims that some people who are facing a sense of emptiness try to resolve their painful feelings by becoming addicted to a drug or obsessive activity (be it compulsive sex, gambling or work) or engaging in “frenzied action” or violence. In sociology, a sense of emptiness is associated with social alienation of the individual. This sense of alienation may be suppressed while working, due to the routine nature of work tasks, but during leisure hours or during the weekend, people may feel a sense of “existential vacuum” and emptiness.

In political philosophy, emptiness is associated with nihilism. Literary critic Georg Lukács (born in 1885) argued against the “spiritual emptiness and moral inadequacy of capitalism”, and argued in favour of communism as an “entirely new type of civilization, one that promised a fresh start and an opportunity to lead a meaningful and purposeful life.”

The concept of “emptiness” was important to a “certain type of existentialist philosophy and some forms of the Death of God movement”. Existentialism, the “philosophic movement that gives voice to the sense of alienation and despair”, comes from “man’s recognition of his fundamental aloneness in an indifferent universe”. People whose response to the sense of emptiness and aloneness is to give excuses live in bad faith; “people who face the emptiness and accept responsibility aim to live ‘authentic’ lives”. Existentialists argue that “man lives in alienation from God, from nature, from other men, from his own true self.” Crowded into cities, working in mindless jobs, and entertained by light mass media, we “live on the surface of life”, so that even “people who seemingly have ‘everything’ feel empty, uneasy, discontented.”

In cultures where a sense of emptiness is seen as a negative psychological condition, it is often associated with depression. As such, many of the same treatments are proposed: psychotherapy, group therapy, or other types of counselling. As well, people who feel empty may be advised to keep busy and maintain a regular schedule of work and social activities. Other solutions which have been proposed to reduce a sense of emptiness are getting a pet or trying Animal-Assisted Therapy; getting involved in spirituality such as meditation or religious rituals and service; volunteering to fill time and bring social contact; doing social interactions, such as community activities, clubs, or outings; or finding a hobby or recreational activity to regain their interest in life.

Christianity

In Austrian philosopher/educator Rudolf Steiner’s (1861–1925) thinking, spiritual emptiness was a major problem in the educated European middle class. In his 1919 lectures he argued that European culture became “empty of spirit” and “ignorant of the needs, the conditions, that are essential for the life of the spirit”. People experienced a “spiritual emptiness” and their thinking became marked by a “lazy passivity” due to the “absence of will from the life of thought”. In modern Europe, Steiner claimed that people would “allow their thoughts to take possession of them”, and these thoughts were increasingly filled with abstraction and “pure, natural scientific thinking”. The educated middle classes began to think in a way that was “devoid of spirit”, with their minds becoming “dimmer and darker”, and increasing empty of spirit.

Louis Dupré, a professor of philosophy at Yale University, argues that the “spiritual emptiness of our time is a symptom of its religious poverty”. He claims that “many people never experience any emptiness: they are too busy to feel much absence of any kind”; they only realize their spiritual emptiness if “painful personal experiences — the death of a loved one, the collapse of a marriage, the alienation of a child, the failure of a business” shock them into reassessing their sense of meaning.

Spiritual emptiness has been associated with juvenile violence. In John C. Thomas’ 1999 book How Juvenile Violence Begins: Spiritual Emptiness, he argues that youth in impoverished indigenous communities who feel empty may turn to fighting and aggressive crime to fill their sense of meaninglessness. In Cornell University professor James Garbarino’s 1999 book Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, he argues that “neglect, shame, spiritual emptiness, alienation, anger and access to guns are a few of the elements common to violent boys”. A professor of human development, Garbarino claims that violent boys have an “alienation from positive role models” and “a spiritual emptiness that spawns despair”. These youth are seduced by the violent fantasy of the US gun culture, which provides negative role models of tough, aggressive men who use power to get what they want. He claims that boys can be helped by giving them “a sense of purpose” and “spiritual anchors” that can “anchor boys in empathy and socially engaged moral thinking”.

Spiritual emptiness is often connected with addiction, especially by Christian-influenced addiction organisations and counsellors. Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, argued that one of the impacts of alcoholism was causing a spiritual emptiness in heavy drinkers. In Abraham J. Twerski’s 1997 book Addictive Thinking: Understanding Self-Deception, he argues that when people feel spiritually empty, they often turn to addictive behaviors to fill the inner void. In contrast to having an empty stomach, which is a clear feeling, having spiritual emptiness is hard to identify, so it fills humans with a “vague unrest”. While people may try to resolve this emptiness by obsessively having sex, overeating, or taking drugs or alcohol, these addictions only give temporary satisfaction. When a person facing a crisis due to feeling spiritually empty is able to stop one addiction, such as compulsive sex, they often just trade it in for another addictive behaviour, such as gambling or overeating.

Fiction, Film, Design and Visual Arts

A number of novelists and filmmakers have depicted emptiness. The concept of “emptiness” was important to a “good deal of 19th–20th century Western imaginative literature”. Novelist Franz Kafka depicted a meaningless bizarre world in The Trial and the existentialist French authors sketched a world cut off from purpose or reason in Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausée and Albert Camus’ L’étranger. Existentialism influenced 20th century poet T.S. Eliot, whose poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” describes an “anti-hero or alienated soul, running away from or confronting the emptiness of his or her existence”. Professor Gordon Bigelow argues that the existentialist theme of “spiritual barrenness is commonplace in literature of the 20th century”, which in addition to Eliot includes Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and Anderson.

Film adaptations of a number of existentialist novels capture the bleak sense of emptiness espoused by Sartre and Camus. This theme of emptiness has also been used in modern screenplays. Mark Romanek’s 1985 film Static tells the surreal story of a struggling inventor and crucifix factory worker named Ernie who feels spiritually empty because he is saddened by his parents’ death in an accident. Screenwriter Michael Tolkin’s 1994 film The New Age examines “cultural hipness and spiritual emptiness”, creating a “dark, ambitious, unsettling” film that depicts a fashionable LA couple who “are miserable in the midst of their sterile plenty”, and whose souls are stunted by their lives of empty sex, consumption, and distractions. The 1999 film American Beauty examines the spiritual emptiness of life in the US suburbs. In Wes Anderson’s 2007 film The Darjeeling Limited, three brothers who “suffer from spiritual emptiness” and then “self-medicate themselves through sex, social withdrawal, and drugs.” The 2008 film The Informers is a Hollywood drama film written by Bret Easton Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki and directed by Gregor Jordan. The film is based on Ellis’ 1994 collection of short stories of the same name. The film, which is set amidst the decadence of the early 1980s, depicts an assortment of socially alienated, mainly well-off characters who numb their sense of emptiness with casual sex, alcohol, and drugs.

Contemporary architecture critic Herbert Muschamp argues that “horror vacui” (which is Latin for “fear of emptiness”) is a key principle of design. He claims that it has become an obsessive quality that is the “driving force in contemporary American taste”. Muschamp states that “along with the commercial interests that exploit this interest, it is the major factor now shaping attitudes toward public spaces, urban spaces, and even suburban sprawl.”

Films that depict nothingness, shadows and vagueness, either in a visual sense or a moral sense are appreciated in genres such as film noir. As well, travellers and artists are often intrigued by and attracted to vast empty spaces, such as open deserts, barren wastelands or salt flats, and the open sea.

In visual arts emptiness and absence were recognised as phenomena that characterise not only particular works of art (e.g. Yves Klein) but also as a more general tendency within the history of modern art and aesthetics. Following Davor Džalto’s argument on the modern concept of art, the gradual elimination of particular elements that traditionally characterised visual arts, which results in emptiness, is the most important phenomenon within the history and theory of art over the past two hundred years.

In Eastern Cultures

Buddhism

The Buddhist term emptiness (Skt. śūnyatā) refers specifically to the idea that everything is dependently originated, including the causes and conditions themselves, and even the principle of causality itself. It is not nihilism, nor is it meditating on nothingness. Instead, it refers to the absence (emptiness) of inherent existence. Buddhapalita says:

What is the reality of things just as it is? It is the absence of essence. Unskilled persons whose eye of intelligence is obscured by the darkness of delusion conceive of an essence of things and then generate attachment and hostility with regard to them. (Buddhapālita-mula-madhyamaka-vrtti P5242,73.5.6-74.1.2).

In an interview, the Dalai Lama stated that tantric meditation can be used for “heightening your own realization of emptiness or mind of enlightenment”. In Buddhist philosophy, attaining a realisation of emptiness of inherent existence is key to the permanent cessation of suffering, i.e. liberation.

Even while an ordinary being, if upon hearing of emptiness great joy arises within again and again, the eyes moisten with tears of great joy, and the hairs of the body stand on end, such a person has the seed of the mind of a complete Buddha; He is a vessel for teachings on thatness, and ultimate truth should be taught to him. After that, good qualities will grow in him. ( Chandrakirti, Guide to the Middle Way, vv. 6:4-5).

The Dalai Lama argues that tantric yoga trainees need to realise the emptiness of inherent existence before they can go on to the “highest yoga tantra initiation”; realizing the emptiness of inherent existence of the mind is the “fundamental innate mind of clear light, which is the subtlest level of the mind”, where all “energy and mental processes are withdrawn or dissolved”, so that all that appears to the mind is “pure emptiness”. As well, emptiness is “linked to the creative Void, meaning that it is a state of complete receptivity and perfect enlightenment”, the merging of the “ego with its own essence”, which Buddhists call the “clear light”.

In Ven. Thubten Chodron’s 2005 interview with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the lama noted that “ordinary beings who haven’t realized emptiness don’t see things as similar to illusions”, and one does not “realize that things are merely labeled by mind and exist by mere name”. He argues that “when we meditate on emptiness, we drop an atom bomb on this [sense of a] truly existent I” and to realize that “what appears true…isn’t true”. By this, the lama is claiming that what is thought to be real—our thoughts and feelings about people and things—”exists by being merely labeled”. He argues that meditators who attain knowledge of a state of emptiness are able to realise that their thoughts are merely illusions from labelling by the mind.

Taoism

In Taoism, attaining a state of emptiness is viewed as a state of stillness and placidity which is the “mirror of the universe” and the “pure mind”. The Tao Te Ching claims that emptiness is related to the “Tao, the Great Principle, the Creator and Sustainer of everything in the universe”. It is argued that it is the “state of mind of the Taoist disciple who follows the Tao”, who has successfully emptied the mind “of all wishes and ideas not fitted with the Tao’s Movement”. For a person who attains a state of emptiness, the “still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of all things”, a state of “vacancy, stillness, placidity, tastelessness, quietude, silence, and non-action” which is the “perfection of the Tao and its characteristics, the “mirror of the universe” and the “pure mind”.

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emptiness >; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.

What is Social Alienation?

Published on by Andrew Marshall1 Comment

Introduction

Social alienation is a person’s feeling of disconnection from a group – whether friends, family, or wider society – with which the individual has an affiliation. Such alienation has been described as “a condition in social relationships reflected by (1) a low degree of integration or common values and (2) a high degree of distance or isolation (3a) between individuals, or (3b) between an individual and a group of people in a community or work environment [enumeration added]”. It is a sociological concept developed by several classical and contemporary theorists. The concept has many discipline-specific uses and can refer both to a personal psychological state (subjectively) and to a type of social relationship (objectively).

Brief History

The term alienation has been used over the ages with varied and sometimes contradictory meanings. In ancient history it could mean a metaphysical sense of achieving a higher state of contemplation, ecstasy or union—becoming alienated from a limited existence in the world, in a positive sense. Examples of this usage have been traced to neoplatonic philosophers such as Plotinus (in the Greek alloiosis). There have also long been religious concepts of being separated or cut off from God and the faithful, alienated in a negative sense. The New Testament mentions the term apallotrioomai in Greek—”being alienated from”. Ideas of estrangement from a Golden Age, or due to a fall of man, or approximate equivalents in differing cultures or religions, have also been described as concepts of alienation. A double positive and negative sense of alienation is broadly shown in the spiritual beliefs referred to as Gnosticism.

Alienation also had a particular legal-political meaning since as early as Ancient Roman times, where to alienate property (alienato) is to transfer ownership of it to someone else. The term alienation itself comes from the Latin alienus which meant ‘of another place or person’, which in turn came from alius, meaning “other” or “another”. Another usage of the term in Ancient Greco-Roman times was by physicians referring to disturbed, difficult or abnormal states of mind, generally attributed to imbalanced physiology. In Latin alienatio mentis (mental alienation), this usage has been dated to Asclepiades. Once translations of such works had resurfaced in the West in the 17th century, physicians again began using the term, which is typically attributed to Felix Platter.

In medieval times, a relationship between alienation and social order has been described, mediated in part by mysticism and monasticism. The Crusades and witch-hunts have been described as forms of mass alienation.

17th Century

In the 17th century, Hugo Grotius put forward the concept that everyone has ‘sovereign authority’ over themselves but that they could alienate that natural right to the common good, an early social contract theory. In the 18th century, Hutcheson introduced a distinction between alienable and unalienable rights in the legal sense of the term. Rousseau published influential works on the same theme, and is also seen as having popularised a more psychological-social concept relating to alienation from a state of nature due to the expansion of civil society or the nation state.

In the same century a law of alienation of affection was introduced for men to seek compensation from other men accused of taking away ‘their’ woman.

In the history of literature, the German Romantics appear to be the first group of writers and poets in whose work the concept of alienation is regularly found. Around the start of the 19th century, Hegel popularized a Christian (Lutheran) and Idealist philosophy of alienation. He used German terms in partially different senses, referring to a psychological state and an objective process, and in general posited that the self was a historical and social creation, which becomes alienated from itself via a perceived objective world, but can become de-alienated again when that world is seen as just another aspect of the self-consciousness, which may be achieved by self-sacrifice to the common good.

Around the same time, Pinel was popularising a new understanding of mental alienation, particularly through his ‘medical-philosophical treatise’. He argued that people could be disturbed (alienated) by emotional states and social conditions, without necessarily having lost (become alienated from) their reason, as had generally been assumed. Hegel praised Pinel for his ‘moral treatment’ approach, and developed related theories. Nevertheless, as Foucault would later write, “… in an obscure, shared origin, the ‘alienation’ of physicians and the ‘alienation’ of philosophers started to take shape—two configurations in which man in any case corrupts his truth, but between which, after Hegel, the nineteenth century stopped seeing any trace of resemblance.”

Marx

Marx was initially in the Young Hegelian camp and, like Feuerbach, rejected the spiritual basis, and adapted Hegel’s dialectic model to a theory of (historical) materialism. Marx’s theory of alienation is articulated most clearly in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology (1846). The ‘young’ Marx wrote more often and directly of alienation than the ‘mature’ Marx, which some regard as an ideological break while others maintain that the concept remained central. Structuralists generally hold that there was a transition from a philosophical-anthropological (Marxist humanism) concept (e.g. internal alienation from the self) to a structural-historical interpretation (e.g. external alienation by appropriation of labour), accompanied by a change in terminology from alienation to exploitation to commodity fetishism and reification. Marx’s concepts of alienation have been classed into four types by Kostas Axelos: economic and social alienation, political alienation, human alienation, and ideological alienation.

In the concept’s most prominent use, it refers to the economic and social alienation aspect in which workers are disconnected from what they produce and why they produce. Marx believed that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism. Essentially, there is an “exploitation of men by men” where the division of labour creates an economic hierarchy. His theory of alienation was based upon his observation that in emerging industrial production under capitalism, workers inevitably lose control of their lives and selves by not having any control of their work. Workers never become autonomous, self-realised human beings in any significant sense, except in the way the bourgeoisie wants the worker to be realised. His theory relies on Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1841), which argues that the idea of God has alienated the characteristics of the human being. Stirner would take the analysis further in The Ego and Its Own (1844), declaring that even ‘humanity’ is an alienating ideal for the individual, to which Marx and Engels responded in The German Ideology (1845). Alienation in capitalist societies occurs because in work each contributes to the common wealth but they can only express this fundamentally social aspect of individuality through a production system that is not publicly social but privately owned, for which each individual functions as an instrument, not as a social being. Kostas Axelos summarizes that for Marx, in capitalism “work renders man an alien to himself and to his own products.” “The malaise of this alienation from the self means that the worker does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy….The worker only feels himself outside his work, and in his work he feels outside himself….Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is avoided like the plague.”. Marx also wrote, in a curtailed manner, that capitalist owners also experience alienation, through benefiting from the economic machine by endlessly competing, exploiting others and maintaining mass alienation in society.

Political Alienation refers specifically to the idea that “politics is the form that organizes the productive forces of the economy” in a way that is alienating because it “distorts the logic of economic development”.

Through Human Alienation, individuals become estranged to themselves in the quest to stay alive, where “they lose their true existence in the struggle for subsistence”. Marx focuses on two aspects of human nature which he calls “historical conditions.” The first aspect refers to the necessity of food, clothes, shelter, and more. Secondly, Marx believes that after satisfying these basic needs people have the tendency to develop more “needs” or desires that they will work towards satisfying, hence, humans become stuck in a cycle of never ending wants which makes them strangers to each other.

When referring to ideological alienation, Axelos proposes that Marx believes that all religions divert people away from “their true happiness” and instead turn them towards “illusory happiness”.

There is a commonly noted problem of translation in grappling with ideas of alienation derived from German-language philosophical texts: the word alienation, and similar words such as estrangement, are often used interchangeably to translate two distinct German words, Entfremdung and Entäußerung. The former means specifically interpersonal estrangement, while the latter can have a broader and more active meaning that might refer also to externalisation, relinquishment, or sale (alienation) of property. In general, and contrary to his predecessors, Marx may have used the terms interchangeably, though he also wrote “Entfremdung… constitutes the real interest of this Entäußerung.”

Late 1800s to 1900s

Many sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were concerned about alienating effects of modernisation. German sociologists Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies wrote critical works on individualisation and urbanisation. Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money describes how relationships become more and more mediated by money. Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Community and Society) is about the loss of primary relationships such as familial bonds in favour of goal-oriented, secondary relationships. This idea of alienation can be observed in some other contexts, although the term may not be as frequently used. In the context of an individual’s relationships within society, alienation can mean the unresponsiveness of society as a whole to the individuality of each member of the society. When collective decisions are made, it is usually impossible for the unique needs of each person to be taken into account.

The American sociologist C. Wright Mills conducted a major study of alienation in modern society with White Collar in 1951, describing how modern consumption-capitalism has shaped a society where you have to sell your personality in addition to your work. Melvin Seeman was part of a surge in alienation research during the mid-20th century when he published his paper, “On the Meaning of Alienation”, in 1959. Seeman used the insights of Marx, Emile Durkheim and others to construct what is often considered a model to recognize the five prominent features of alienation: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation and self-estrangement. Seeman later added a sixth element (cultural estrangement), although this element does not feature prominently in later discussions of his work.

In a broader philosophical context, especially in existentialism and phenomenology, alienation describes the inadequacy of the human being (or the mind) in relation to the world. The human mind (as the subject who perceives) sees the world as an object of perception, and is distanced from the world, rather than living within it. This line of thought is generally traced to the works of Søren Kierkegaard in the 19th century, who, from a Christian viewpoint, saw alienation as separation from God, and also examined the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. Many 20th-century philosophers (both theistic and atheistic) and theologians were influenced by Kierkegaard’s notions of angst, despair and the importance of the individual. Martin Heidegger’s concepts of anxiety (angst) and mortality drew from Kierkegaard; he is indebted to the way Kierkegaard lays out the importance of our subjective relation to truth, our existence in the face of death, the temporality of existence and the importance of passionately affirming one’s being-in-the-world. Jean-Paul Sartre described the “thing-in-itself” which is infinite and overflowing, and claimed that any attempt to describe or understand the thing-in-itself is “reflective consciousness”. Since there is no way for the reflective consciousness to subsume the pre-reflective, Sartre argued that all reflection is fated to a form of anxiety (i.e. the human condition). As well, Sartre argued that when a person tries to gain knowledge of the “Other” (meaning beings or objects that are not the self), their self-consciousness has a “masochistic desire” to be limited. This is expressed metaphorically in the line from the play No Exit, “Hell is other people”.

In the theory of psychoanalysis developed around the start of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud did not explicitly address the concept of alienation, but other analysts subsequently have. It is a theory of divisions and conflicts between the conscious and unconscious mind, between different parts of a hypothetical psychic apparatus, and between the self and civilisation. It postulates defence mechanisms, including splitting, in both normal and disturbed functioning. The concept of repression has been described as having functionally equivalent effects as the idea of false consciousness associated with Marxist theory.

A form of Western Marxism developed during the century, which included influential analyses of false consciousness by György Lukács. Critics of bureaucracy and the Protestant Ethic also drew on the works of Max Weber.

Figures associated with critical theory, in particular with the Frankfurt School, such as Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm, also developed theories of alienation, drawing on neo-Marxist ideas as well as other influences including neo-Freudian and sociological theories. One approach applies Marxist theories of commodification to the cultural, educational and party-political spheres. Links are drawn between socioeconomic structures, psychological states of alienation, and personal human relationships. In the 1960s the revolutionary group Situationist International came to some prominence, staging ‘situations’ intended to highlight an alternative way of life to advanced capitalism, the latter conceptualised as a diffuse ‘spectacle’, a fake reality masking a degradation of human life. The Theory of Communicative Action associated with Jürgen Habermas emphasizes the essential role of language in public life, suggesting that alienation stems from the distortion of reasoned moral debate by the strategic dominance of market forces and state power.

This critical programme can be contrasted with traditions that attempt to extract problems of alienation from the broader socioeconomic context, or which at least accept the broader context on its own terms, and which often attribute problems to individual abnormality or failures to adjust.

After the boom in alienation research that characterised the 1950s and 1960s, interest in alienation research subsided, although in sociology it was maintained by the Research Committee on Alienation of the International Sociological Association (ISA).

In the 1990s, there was again an upsurge of interest in alienation prompted by the fall of the Soviet Union, globalization, the information explosion, increasing awareness of ethnic conflicts, and post-modernism. Felix Geyer believes the growing complexity of the contemporary world and post-modernism prompted a reinterpretation of alienation that suits the contemporary living environment. In late 20th and early 21st century sociology, it has been particularly the works of Lauren Langman and Devorah Kalekin-Fishman that address the issue of alienation in the contemporary western world.

Modalities

Powerlessness

Alienation in the sense of a lack of power has been technically defined by Seeman as “the expectancy or probability held by the individual that his own behaviour cannot determine the occurrence of the outcomes, or reinforcements, he seeks.” Seeman argues that this is “the notion of alienation as it originated in the Marxian view of the worker’s condition in capitalist society: the worker is alienated to the extent that the prerogative and means of decision are expropriated by the ruling entrepreneurs”. More succinctly, Kalekin-Fishman says, “A person suffers from alienation in the form of ‘powerlessness’ when she is conscious of the gap between what she would like to do and what she feels capable of doing”.

In discussing powerlessness, Seeman also incorporated the insights of the psychologist Julian Rotter. Rotter distinguishes between internal control and external locus of control, which means “differences (among persons or situations) in the degree to which success or failure is attributable to external factors (e.g. luck, chance, or powerful others), as against success or failure that is seen as the outcome of one’s personal skills or characteristics”. Powerlessness, therefore, is the perception that the individual does not have the means to achieve his goals.

Ultimately breaking with the Marxist tradition, Geyer remarks that “a new type of powerlessness has emerged, where the core problem is no longer being unfree but rather being unable to select from among an overchoice of alternatives for action, whose consequences one often cannot even fathom”. Geyer adapts cybernetics to alienation theory, and writes that powerlessness is the result of delayed feedback: “The more complex one’s environment, the later one is confronted with the latent, and often unintended, consequences of one’s actions. Consequently, in view of this causality-obscuring time lag, both the ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’ for one’s actions increasingly tend to be viewed as random, often with apathy and alienation as a result”.

Meaninglessness

A sense of meaning has been defined by Seeman as “the individual’s sense of understanding events in which he is engaged”. Seeman writes that meaninglessness “is characterized by a low expectancy that satisfactory predictions about the future outcomes of behaviour can be made.” Whereas powerlessness refers to the sensed ability to control outcomes, this refers to the sensed ability to predict outcomes. In this respect, meaninglessness is closely tied to powerlessness; Seeman argues, “the view that one lives in an intelligible world might be a prerequisite to expectancies for control; and the unintelligibility of complex affairs is presumably conducive to the development of high expectancies for external control (that is, high powerlessness)”.

Geyer believes meaninglessness should be reinterpreted for postmodern times: “With the accelerating throughput of information … meaningless is not a matter anymore of whether one can assign meaning to incoming information, but of whether one can develop adequate new scanning mechanisms to gather the goal-relevant information one needs, as well as more efficient selection procedures to prevent being overburdened by the information one does not need, but is bombarded with on a regular basis.” Information overload or the so-called “data tsunami” are well-known information problems confronting contemporary man, and Geyer thus argues that meaninglessness is turned on its head.

Normlessness

Normlessness (or what Durkheim referred to as anomie) “denotes the situation in which the social norms regulating individual conduct have broken down or are no longer effective as rules for behaviour”. This aspect refers to the inability to identify with the dominant values of society or rather, with values that are perceived to be dominant. Seeman adds that this aspect can manifest in a particularly negative manner, “The anomic situation … may be defined as one in which there is a high expectancy that socially unapproved behaviours are required to achieve given goals”.

Neal and Collas write that “[n]ormlessness derives partly from conditions of complexity and conflict in which individuals become unclear about the composition and enforcement of social norms. Sudden and abrupt changes occur in life conditions, and the norms that usually operate may no longer seem adequate as guidelines for conduct”. This is a particular issue after the fall of the Soviet Union, mass migrations from developing to developed countries, and the general sense of disillusionment that characterised the 1990s.

Relationships

One concept used in regard to specific relationships is that of parental alienation, where a separated child expresses a general dislike for one of their parents (who may have divorced or separated). The term is not applied where there is child abuse. The parental alienation might be due to specific influences from either parent or could result from the social dynamics of the family as a whole. It can also be understood in terms of attachment, the social and emotional process of bonding between child and caregiver. Adoptees can feel alienated from both adoptive parents and birth parents.

Familial estrangement between parents and adult children “is attributed to a number of biological, psychological, social, and structural factors affecting the family, including attachment disorders, incompatible values and beliefs, unfulfilled expectations, critical life events and transitions, parental alienation, and ineffective communication patterns.” The degree of alienation has been positively correlated with decreased emotional functioning in the parent who feels a loss of identity and stigma.

Attachment relationships in adults can also involve feelings of alienation. Indeed, emotional alienation is said to be a common way of life for many, whether it is experienced as overwhelming, unacknowledged in the midst of a socioeconomic race, or contributes to seemingly unrelated problems.

Social Isolation

Social isolation refers to “The feeling of being segregated from one’s community”. Neal and Collas emphasize the centrality of social isolation in the modern world: “While social isolation is typically experienced as a form of personal stress, its sources are deeply embedded in the social organization of the modern world. With increased isolation and atomization, much of our daily interactions are with those who are strangers to us and with whom we lack any ongoing social relationships.”

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, migrants from Eastern Europe and developing countries have flocked to developed countries in search of a better living standard. This has led to entire communities becoming uprooted: no longer fully part of their homelands, but neither integrated into their adopted communities. Diaspora literature depicts the plights of these migrants, such as Hafid Bouazza in Paravion.

Political Alienation

One manifestation of the above dimensions of alienation can be a feeling of estrangement from the political system and a lack of engagement therein. Such political alienation could result from not identifying with any particular political party or message, and could result in revolution, reforming behaviour, or abstention from the political process, possibly due to voter apathy.

A similar concept is policy alienation, where workers experience a state of psychological disconnection from a policy programme being implemented.

Self-Estrangement

Self-estrangement is an elusive concept in sociology, as recognized by Seeman, although he included it as an aspect in his model of alienation. Some, with Marx, consider self-estrangement to be the result and thus the heart of social alienation. Self-estrangement can be defined as “the psychological state of denying one’s own interests – of seeking out extrinsically rather than intrinsically satisfying, activities…”. It could be characterised as a feeling of having become a stranger to oneself, or to some parts of oneself, or alternatively as a problem of self-knowledge, or authenticity.

Seeman recognised the problems inherent in defining the “self”, while post-modernism in particular has questioned the very possibility of pin-pointing what precisely “self” constitutes. Further in that way, if the self is relationally constituted, does it make sense to speak of “self-estrangement” rather than “social isolation”? Costas and Fleming suggest that although the concept of self-estrangement “has not weathered postmodern criticisms of essentialism and economic determinism well”, the concept still has value if a Lacanian reading of the self is adopted. This can be seen as part of a wider debate on the concept of self between humanism and antihumanism, structuralism and post-structuralism, or nature and nurture.

Mental Disturbance

Until early in the 20th century, psychological problems were referred to in psychiatry as states of mental alienation, implying that a person had become separated from themselves, their reason or the world. From the 1960s alienation was again considered in regard to clinical states of disturbance, typically using a broad concept of a ‘schizoid’ (‘splitting’) process taken from psychoanalytic theory. The splitting was said to occur within regular child development and in everyday life, as well as in more extreme or dysfunctional form in conditions such as schizoid personality and schizophrenia.

Varied concepts of alienation and self-estrangement were used to link internal schizoid states with observable symptoms and with external socioeconomic divisions, without necessarily explaining or evidencing underlying causation. R.D. Laing was particularly influential in arguing that dysfunctional families and socioeconomic oppression caused states of alienation and ontological insecurity in people, which could be considered adaptations but which were diagnosed as disorders by mainstream psychiatry and society. The specific theories associated with Laing and others at that time are not widely accepted, but work from other theoretical perspectives sometimes addresses the same theme.

In a related vein, for Ian Parker, psychology normalizes conditions of social alienation. While it could help groups of individuals emancipate themselves, it serves the role of reproducing existing conditions. This view can be seen as part of a broader tradition sometimes referred to as critical psychology or liberation psychology, which emphasizes that an individual is enmeshed within a social-political framework, and so therefore are psychological problems. Likewise, some psychoanalysts suggest that while psychoanalysis emphasizes environmental causes and reactions, it also attributes the problems of individuals to internal conflicts stemming from early psychosocial development, effectively divorcing them from the wider ongoing context. Slavoj Zizek (drawing on Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis) argues that in today’s capitalist society, the individual is estranged from their self through the repressive injunction to “enjoy!” Such an injunction does not allow room for the recognition of alienation and, indeed, could itself be seen as an expression of alienation.

More to the political right, however, psychotherapy and associated notions have long been considered anywhere from ineffectual due to their inherent bias against the reality of inborn such as group-specific (genetic) traits to actively destructive much rather than emancipatory. On the other hand, they are not alone in this sentiment either as Marcuse, among others, goes on to speak of repressive desublimation.

Disability

Differences between persons with disabilities and individuals in relative abilities, or perceived abilities, can be a cause of alienation. One study, “Social Alienation and Peer Identification: A Study of the Social Construction of Deafness”, found that among deaf adults one theme emerged consistently across all categories of life experience: social rejection by, and alienation from, the larger hearing community. Only when the respondents described interactions with deaf people did the theme of isolation give way to comments about participation and meaningful interaction. This appeared to be related to specific needs, for example for real conversation, for information, the opportunity to develop close friendships and a sense of family. It was suggested that the social meaning of deafness is established by interaction between deaf and hearing people, sometimes resulting in marginalisation of the deaf, which is sometimes challenged. It has also led to the creation of alternatives and the deaf community is described as one such alternative.

Physicians and nurses often deal with people who are temporarily or permanently alienated from communities, which could be a result or a cause of medical conditions and suffering, and it has been suggested that therefore attention should be paid to learning from experiences of the special pain that alienation can bring.

Criticisms

Eric Voegelin with whom also originates the related phrase “to Immanentise the eschaton”, may be read as rather accepting of alienation:

The human condition has radical limits, and humans do not feel perfectly comfortable (to say the least). But it is not “ideological” to feel dissatisfaction or to desire something more perfect than what we have. Indeed such feelings as disquiet, anxiety, frustration and even alienation are, according Voegelin, normal. “Man is in deadly anguish,” writes Voegelin, “because he takes life seriously and cannot bear existence without meaning.” For reflection on the limits of the human condition to give rise to ideology, a certain “mood” must be present. What is this mood? It is the mood not only of alienation but of revolt. Ideology involves the active revolt against existential truth and the effort to construct a different world. Voegelin designates this mood as “pneumopathological,” a term he found in Schelling. It is the feeling of “estrangement from the spirit” so intense that it entails a willful closing of the soul to the transcendent.

Philosophers Heidegger, Peter Sloterdijk and more recently Alexander Grau argue for a similar fact of alienation.

In Art and Popular Culture

Alienation is most often represented in literature as the psychological isolation of an individual from society or community. In a volume of Bloom’s Literary Themes, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is described as the ‘supreme literary portrait’ of alienation, while noting that some may argue for Achilles in the Iliad. In addition, Bartleby, the Scrivener is introduced as a perfect example because so many senses of alienation are present. Other literary works described as dealing with the theme of alienation are: The Bell Jar, Black Boy, Brave New World, The Catcher in the Rye, The Chosen, Dubliners, Othello, Fahrenheit 451, Invisible Man, Mrs Dalloway, Notes from Underground, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, The Trial, The Castle, Waiting for Godot, The Waste Land, and Young Goodman Brown. Contemporary British works noted for their perspective on alienation include The Child in Time, London Fields, Trainspotting, and Regeneration.

Sociologist Harry Dahms has analysed The Matrix Trilogy of films in the context of theories of alienation in modern society. He suggests that the central theme of The Matrix is the “all-pervasive yet increasingly invisible prevalence of alienation in the world today, and difficulties that accompany attempts to overcome it”.

British progressive rock band Pink Floyd’s concept album The Wall (1979) and British alternative rock band Radiohead’s album OK Computer (1997), both deal with the subject of alienation in their lyrics.

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_alienation >; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.

What is Social Isolation?

Published on by Andrew Marshall2 Comments

Introduction

Social isolation is a state of complete or near-complete lack of contact between an individual and society. It differs from loneliness, which reflects temporary and involuntary lack of contact with other humans in the world. Social isolation can be an issue for individuals of any age, though symptoms may differ by age group.

Social isolation has similar characteristics in both temporary instances and for those with a historical lifelong isolation cycle. All types of social isolation can include staying home for lengthy periods of time, having no communication with family, acquaintances or friends, and/or wilfully avoiding any contact with other humans when those opportunities do arise.

Effects

True social isolation over years and decades can be a chronic condition affecting all aspects of a person’s existence. Social isolation can lead to feelings of loneliness, fear of others, or negative self-esteem. Lack of consistent human contact can also cause conflict with (peripheral) friends. The socially isolated person may occasionally talk to or cause problems with family members.

In the case of mood-related isolation, the individual may isolate during a depressive episode only to ‘surface’ when their mood improves. The individual may attempt to justify their reclusive or isolating behaviour as enjoyable or comfortable. There can be an inner realisation on the part of the individual that there is something wrong with their isolating responses which can lead to heightened anxiety. Relationships can be a struggle, as the individual may reconnect with others during a healthier mood only to return to an isolated state during a subsequent low or depressed mood.

Perceived Social Isolation in Humans

Research indicates that perceived social isolation (PSI) is a risk factor for and may contribute to “poorer overall cognitive performance and poorer executive functioning, faster cognitive decline, more negative and depressive cognition, heightened sensitivity to social threats, and a self-protective confirmatory bias in social cognition.” PSI also contributes to accelerating the ageing process: Wilson et al. (2007) reported that, after controlling for social network size and frequency of social activity, perceived social isolation is predictive of cognitive decline and risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Moreover, the social interactions of individuals who feel socially isolated are more negative and less subjectively satisfying. This contributes to a vicious cycle in which the person becomes more and more isolated.

Neuroimaging Studies

In the first resting state fMRI functional connectivity (FC) study on PSI, PSI was found to be associated with increased resting-state FC between several nodes of the cingulo-opercular network, a neural network associated with tonic alertness. PSI was also associated with reduced resting-state FC between the cingulo-opercular network and the right superior frontal gyrus, suggesting diminished executive control. Cacioppo and colleagues (2009) found that lonely individuals express weaker activation of the ventral striatum in response to pleasant pictures of people than of objects, suggesting decreased reward to social stimuli. Lonely individuals also expressed greater activation of the visual cortex in response to unpleasant depictions of people (i.e. negative facial expressions) than of objects; non-lonely individuals show greater activation of the right and left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), a region implicated in theory of mind. The authors interpreted the findings to represent that lonely individuals pay greater attention to negative social stimuli, but non-lonely individuals, to a greater degree than lonely individuals, insert themselves into the perspective of others. Moreover, Kanai et al. (2012) reported that loneliness negatively correlated with gray matter density in the left posterior temporal sulcus, an area involved in biological motion perception, mentalising, and social perception.

Overall, several neuroimaging studies in humans on perceived social isolation have emphasized implications of the visual cortex and right-hemispheric stress-related circuits underlying difference between lonely and non-lonely individuals. One population-genetics study marked a 50× increase in the neuroimaging research on perceived social isolation. The investigators tested for signatures of loneliness in grey matter morphology, intrinsic functional coupling, and fibre tract microstructure. The loneliness-linked neurobiological profiles converged on a collection of brain regions known as the default mode network. This higher associative network shows more consistent loneliness associations in grey matter volume than other cortical brain networks. Lonely individuals display stronger functional communication in the default network, and greater microstructural integrity of its fornix pathway. The findings fit with the possibility that the up-regulation of these neural circuits supports mentalising, reminiscence and imagination to fill the social void.

Social Isolation in Rodents

Experimental manipulations of social isolation in rats and mice (e.g. isolated rearing) are a common means of elucidating the effects of isolation on social animals in general. Researchers have proposed isolated rearing of rats as an etiologically valid model of human mental illness. Indeed, chronic social isolation in rats has been found to lead to depression-, anxiety-, and psychosis-like behaviours as well signs of autonomic, neuroendocrine, and metabolic dysregulation. For example, a systematic review found that social isolation in rats is associated with increased expression of BDNF in the hippocampus, which is associated with increased anxiety-like symptoms. In another example, a study found that social isolation in rats is associated with increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression in the prefrontal cortex. This results in the dysregulation of neural activity which is associated with anxiety, depression, and social dysfunction.

The effects of experimental manipulations of isolation in nonhuman social species has been shown to resemble the effects of perceived isolation in humans, and include: increased tonic sympathetic tone and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activation and decreased inflammatory control, immunity, sleep salubrity, and expression of genes regulating glucocorticoid responses. However, the biological, neurological, and genetic mechanisms underlying these symptoms are poorly understood.

Neurobiology

Social isolation contributes to abnormal hippocampal development via specific alterations to microtubule stability and decreased MAP-2 expression. Social isolation contributes to decreased expression of the synaptic protein synaptophysin and decreased dendritic length and dendritic spine density of pyramidal cells. The underlying molecular mechanism of these structural neuronal alterations are microtubule stabilisations, which impair the remodelling and extension of axons and dendrites.

Research by Cole and colleagues showed that perceived social isolation is associated with gene expression – specifically, the under-expression of genes bearing anti-inflammatory glucocorticoid response elements and over-expression of genes bearing response elements for pro-inflammatory NF-κB/Rel transcription factors. This finding is paralleled by decreased lymphocyte sensitivity to physiological regulation by the HPA axis in lonely individuals. This, together with evidence of increased activity of the HPA axis, suggests the development of glucocorticoid resistance in chronically lonely individuals.

Social isolation can be a precipitating factor for suicidal behaviour. A large body of literature suggests that individuals who experience isolation in their lives are more vulnerable to suicide than those who have strong social ties with others. A study found social isolation to be among the most common risk factors identified by Australian men who attempt suicide. Professor Ian Hickie of the University of Sydney said that social isolation was perhaps the most important factor contributing to male suicide attempts. Hickie said there was a wealth of evidence that men had more restricted social networks than women, and that these networks were heavily work-based.

A lack of social relationships negatively impacts the development of the brain’s structure. In extreme cases of social isolation, studies of young mice and monkeys have shown how the brain is strongly affected by a lack of social behaviour and relationships.

In Social Animal Species in General

In a hypothesis proposed by Cacioppo and colleagues, the isolation of a member of a social species has detrimental biological effects. In a 2009 review, Cacioppo and Hawkley noted that the health, life, and genetic legacy of members of social species are threatened when they find themselves on the social perimeter. For instance, social isolation decreases lifespan in the fruit fly; promotes obesity and type 2 diabetes in mice; exacerbates infarct size and oedema and decreases post-stroke survival rate following experimentally induced stroke in mice; promotes activation of the sympatho-adrenomedullary response to an acute immobilisation or cold stressor in rats; delays the effects of exercise on adult neurogenesis in rats; decreases open field activity, increases basal cortisol concentrations, and decreases lymphocyte proliferation to mitogens in pigs; increases the 24-hour urinary catecholamine levels and evidence of oxidative stress in the aortic arch of rabbits; and decreases the expression of genes regulating glucocorticoid response in the frontal cortex.

Social isolation in the common starling, a highly social, flocking species of bird, has also been shown to stress the isolated birds.

Background

Social isolation is both a potential cause and a symptom of emotional or psychological challenges. As a cause, the perceived inability to interact with the world and others can create an escalating pattern of these challenges. As a symptom, periods of isolation can be chronic or episodic, depending upon any cyclical changes in mood, especially in the case of clinical depression.

Every day aspects of this type of deep-rooted social isolation can mean:

  • Staying home for an indefinite period of time due to lack of access to social situations rather than a desire to be alone;
  • Both not contacting, and not being contacted by, any acquaintances, even peripherally; for example, never being called by anybody on the telephone and never having anyone visit one’s residence; and
  • A lack of meaningful, extended relationships, and especially close intimacy (both emotional and physical).

Contributing Factors

The following risk factors contribute to reasons why individuals distance themselves from society.

  • Ageing – Once a person reaches an age where problems such as cognitive impairments and disabilities arise, they are unable to go out and socialise.
  • Health and disabilities – People may be embarrassed by their disabilities or health problems, such that they have a tendency to isolate themselves to avoid social interaction out of fear that they would be judged or stigmatised. Sometimes, rather than embarrassment, the disability itself and a person’s lack of a support network can be the cause of social isolation.
  • Autism – autistic and allistic (non-autistic) people communicate very differently, leading to a mutual friction when they try talking to each other. As autistic people are in a steep minority, often unable to find peers who communicate the same way they do, they are often ostracised by the majority, who mistake their direct, semantic communication style for them being purposefully arrogant, brash, and obtuse.
  • Hearing loss – hearing loss can cause communication impairment, which can lead to social isolation particularly in older adults.
  • The loss of a loved one can contribute to social isolation. Studies have shown that widows who keep in contact with friends or relatives have better psychological health. A study conducted by Jung-Hwa Ha and Berit Ingersoll-Dayton concluded that widows who had a lot of social contact and interactions lead to fewer depressive symptoms. During a time of loss social isolation is not beneficial to an individual’s mental health.
  • Living alone – A 2015 study by the National Centre for Family & Marriage Research found 13% of adults in the United States were living alone, up from 12% in 1990. The rate of living alone for people under 45 has not changed, but the rate for Americans aged 45 – 65 has increased over the past 25 years. People over the age of 65 are living alone less often.
  • Isolation may be imposed by an abusive spouse.
  • Rural isolation – In rural areas, factors such as living far apart from one another, rural flight, a negligible amount of public spaces and entertainment, and lack of access to mental health-related resources all contribute to isolation. Limited access to broadband internet and cellular activity also make it harder for those experiencing isolation to connect online or reach people.
  • Unemployment – This can begin if someone is fired, dismissed, or released from a job or workplace, or leaves one of their own accords. If the person struggles or is unable to find a new job for a long period of time (i.e. months or years) the sense of isolation can become exacerbated, especially in men.
  • Independent home worker – The tasks implied in this kind of job generally doesn’t imply social interaction in the physical level, nor going outside. Interactions and payments can be made by digital media so the person remains isolated from society.
  • Retirement – or other source of fixed income, makes it unnecessary for the person to search for a job, this situation is similar to unemployment but with better living on one hand but without the need to go outside on the other hand.
  • Transportation problems – If the person does not have transportation to attend gatherings or to simply get out of the house, they have no choice but to stay home all day, which can lead to those feelings of depression.
  • Societal adversity – Desire to avoid the discomfort, dangers, and responsibilities arising from being among people. This can happen if other people are sometimes, or often, rude, hostile, critical or judgemental, crude, or otherwise unpleasant. The person would just prefer to be alone to avoid the hassles and hardships of dealing with people. Being a part of an outgroup and social categorisation can also play a part in creating adverse circumstances that the individual may attempt to avoid depending on the policies and attitudes of the society.
  • Substance abuse can be both cause and/or effect of isolation, often coinciding with mood-related disorders, especially among those living alone.
  • Economic inequality – Poorer children have fewer school-class friends and are more often isolated. Adults on welfare, such as the Ontario Disability Support Programme prioritise their monthly entitlement towards rent and low-cost meals, leaving opportunities to socialise at restaurants and movie theatres out of the question.
  • Self-esteem – A person with a low self-esteem or lack of self love can contribute to that person’s isolation. Having a low self-esteem can cause one to overthink and stress themselves out when being around people, and can ultimately eliminate that feeling by isolating themselves. Removing this feeling can lead to an unfortunate social life in the future and can also harm potential relationships with others. According to Northeastern University, having a low self-esteem can hold us back from reaching out to making plans with other people. It can make a person feel like they’re a burden to them, therefore once again isolating themselves from going out. This can also lead a person into thinking that they are not worthy of making friends and deserve any love; and also feeling like they do not deserve to have a happy life.
  • Lockdowns, such as those imposed in 2020 and 2021 in an attempt to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Social isolation can begin early in life. During this time of development, a person may become more preoccupied with feelings and thoughts of their individuality that are not easy to share with other individuals. This can result from feelings of shame, guilt, or alienation during childhood experiences. Social isolation can also coincide with developmental disabilities. Individuals with learning impairments may have trouble with social interaction. The difficulties experienced academically can greatly impact the individual’s esteem and sense of self-worth. An example would be the need to repeat a year of school. During the early childhood developmental years, the need to fit in and be accepted is paramount. Having a learning deficit can in turn lead to feelings of isolation, that they are somehow ‘different’ from others.

Whether new technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones exacerbate social isolation (of any origin) is a debated topic among sociologists, with studies showing both positive correlation of social connections with use of social media as well as mood disorders coinciding with problematic use.

Isolation among the Elderly

Social isolation impacts approximately 24% of older adults in the United States, approximately 9 million people. The elderly have a unique set of isolating dynamics that often perpetuate one another and can drive the individual into deeper isolation. Increasing frailty, possible declines in overall health, absent or uninvolved relatives or children, economic struggles can all add to the feeling of isolation. Among the elderly, childlessness can be a cause for social isolation. Whether their child is deceased or they did not have children at all, the loneliness that comes from not having a child can cause social isolation. Retirement, the abrupt end of daily work relationships, the death of close friends or spouses can also contribute to social isolation.

In the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom, a significant sector of the elderly who are in their 80s and 90s are brought to nursing homes if they show severe signs of social isolation. Other societies such as many in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, East Asia, and also the Caribbean and South America, do not normally share the tendency towards admission to nursing homes, preferring instead to have children and extended-family of elderly parents take care of those elderly parents until their deaths.] On the other hand, a report from Statistics Norway in 2016 stated that more than 30% of seniors over the age of 66 have two or fewer people to rely on should personal problems arise. Even still, nearly half of all members of senior communities are at high risk for social isolation, this is especially prevalent with seniors of a lower education and within the lower economic class and compounded with diminished availability of socialising options to these lower class individuals. There has also been an observed increase in physical gait among members of these communities.

Social isolation among older adults has been linked to an increase in disease morbidity, a higher risk of dementia, and a decrease in physical mobility along with an increase in general health concerns. Evidence of increased cognitive decline has been link to an increase in social isolation in depressed elderly women. At the same time, increasing social connectedness has been linked to health improvements among older adults.

The use of video communication/video calls has been suggested as a potential intervention to improve social isolation in seniors. However, its effectiveness is not known.

Isolation and Health and Mortality

Social isolation and loneliness in older adults is associated with an increased risk for poor mental and physical health and increased mortality. There is an increased risk for early mortality in individuals experiencing social isolation compared to those who are not socially isolated. Studies have found social isolation is associated with increased risk in physical health conditions including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, elevated stress hormones, and weakened immune systems. Research also suggests that social isolation and mortality in the elderly share a common link to chronic inflammation with some differences between men and women. Social isolation has also been found to be associated with poor mental health including increased risk for depression, cognitive decline, anxiety, and substance use. Social isolation in elderly individuals is also associated with an increased risk for dementia. However, not all studies found social isolation associated with the risk of poor health outcome.

Isolation among Children and Teens

Middle school is a time when youth tend to be sensitive to social challenges and their self-esteem can be fragile. During this vulnerable time in development, supporting students’ sense of belonging at school is of critical importance. Existing research finds that adolescents’ development of a sense of belonging is an important factor in adolescence for creating social and emotional well-being and academic success. Studies have found that friendship-related loneliness is more explanatory for depressive symptoms among adolescents than parent-related loneliness. One possible explanation is that friends are the preferred source of social support during adolescence.

Scientists have long known that loneliness in adults can predispose depressive symptoms later in life. Lately, scientists have also seen that lonely children are more susceptible to depressive symptoms in youth. In one study, researchers conclude that prevention of loneliness in childhood may be a protective factor against depression in adulthood. Socially isolated children tend to have lower subsequent educational attainment, be part of a less advantaged social class in adulthood, and are more likely to be psychologically distressed in adulthood. By receiving social assistance, studies show that children can cope more easily with high levels of stress. It is also shown that social support is strongly associated with feelings of mastery and the ability to deal with stressful situations, as well as strongly associated with increased quality of life.

Demographics

Research has shown that men and boys are more likely to experience social isolation in their lives.

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What is Weathering Hypothesis?

Published on by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

Introduction

The weathering hypothesis was proposed to account for early health deterioration as a result of cumulative exposure to experiences of social, economic and political adversity.

It is well documented that minority groups and marginalised communities suffer from poorer health outcomes. This may be due to a multitude of stressors including prejudice, social alienation, institutional bias, political oppression, economic exclusion and racial discrimination. The weathering hypothesis proposes that the cumulative burden of these stressors as individuals age is “weathering,” and the increased weathering experienced by minority groups compared to others can account for differences in health outcomes. In recent years, the biological plausibility of the weathering hypothesis has been investigated in studies evaluating the physiological effects of social, environmental and political stressors among marginalised communities. This has led to more widespread use of the weathering hypothesis as a framework for explaining health disparities on the basis of differential exposure to racially based stressors. Researchers have also identified patterns connecting weathering to biological phenomena associated with stress and aging, such as allostatic load, epigenetics, and telomere shortening.

Origins

The weathering hypothesis was initially formulated by Dr. Arline T. Geronimus to explain the poor maternal health and birth outcomes of African American women that she observed in correspondence with increased age. While working part-time at a school for pregnant teenagers in Trenton, New Jersey, Geronimus first noticed that the teens who came to the school tended to have far more health problems than her classmates at Princeton University. She thus began to wonder whether the health conditions of the teens at that clinic may have been caused by their environment. Subsequent research on the disparity in maternal health between African American and white women led Geronimus to propose the weathering hypothesis. She proposed that the accumulation of cultural, social and economic disadvantages may lead to earlier deterioration of health among African American women compared to their non-Hispanic, white counterparts. Geronimus specifically chose the term weathering as a metaphor for the effects she perceived that exposure to stress was having on the health of marginalised people. While the weathering hypothesis was initially proposed based on observations of patterns in maternal health, academics have expanded its application as a framework to examine other health disparities as well.

Geronimus’ Research

While conducting research in the Department of Public Health Policy and Administration as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 1992, Geronimus noticed a trend in disparities between the fertility of African American women versus their white counterparts. She noted that while the average white woman experiences her point of highest fertility and lowest risk of pregnancy complications or neonatal mortality between her 20’s and 30’s, this generalisation did not apply to African American women. Instead, among African American women, teen mothers are most likely to have healthy pregnancies and offspring. The data indicated a widening disparity in black-white infant mortality as maternal ages increase. Subsequently, Geronimus proposed the “weathering hypothesis,” which she initially conceived as a potential explanation for the patterns of racial variation in infant mortality with increasing maternal age.

Health Disparities

In the context of the weathering hypothesis, individual health is dynamic and shaped over time by social, economic, and environmental influences. These social determinants dictate what different demographics are exposed to as they develop and age. Racism and discrimination are two specific social determinants that lay the foundation for systemic inequality in access and upward mobility. This entrenchment of social inequities disproportionately impacts minorities and communities of colour, who remain in environments of poverty that have significantly more stressors than those of wealthier, predominantly white communities. These stressors – and the associated burden of coping with them – manifest as physiological responses that have detrimental effects on individual health, often leading to a disproportionately high occurrence of chronic illness and shorter life expectancy in minority communities. Multi-ethnic studies have yielded significant data demonstrating that weathering – accumulated health risk due to social, economic and environmental stressors – is a manifestation of social stratification that systemically influences disparities in health and mortality between dominant and minority communities.

Maternal Health

Maternal mortality is three to four times higher for Black mothers than white mothers in the United States. Infant mortality is also twice as high for infants born to non-Hispanic Black mothers compared to infants born to non-Hispanic white mothers. Additionally, there are racial disparities for negative birth outcomes like low birth weight, which has been found to influence risk of infant mortality and developmental outcomes after birth, and preterm birth. Across all women, older maternal age is associated with higher rates of these negative outcomes during pregnancy, but studies have consistently found that rates rise more rapidly for Black women than white women. The weathering hypothesis proposes that the accumulation of racial stress over Black women’s lives contributes to this observed pattern of racial disparities in maternal health and birth outcomes that increase with maternal age. Research has consistently identified an association between preterm birth and low birth weight in Black women and maternal stress caused by experiences of racism, systemic bias, socioeconomic disadvantage, segregated neighbourhoods, and high rates of violent crime. There is biological evidence of weathering, including the finding that Black women have shorter telomeres, a biological indicator of age, when compared with white women of the same chronological age. Though increased socioeconomic status serves as a protective factor against negative birth outcomes for non-Hispanic white mothers, disproportionate rates of preterm birth and low birth weight for non-Hispanic Black mothers have been found at every education and income level. The weathering hypothesis has also been used to explain this trend because upward socioeconomic mobility is associated with increased exposure to discrimination for women of colour.

There is modest evidence supporting the effects of weathering on mothers from other minority groups, including for high birth weight outcomes among American Indian/Alaska Native women. Research has started to explore whether the weathering hypothesis could also explain racial disparities in the outcomes of assisted reproductive technologies, but so far the findings are inconsistent.

Mental Health

Research shows that mental health disparities among marginalized communities exist. Daily discrimination faced by marginalised groups have been found to be associated with increased depressive symptoms and feelings of loneliness. Low-income communities are more likely to have severe mental illnesses, which is frequently heightened by the inaccessibility to quality healthcare. Researchers found that persisting epigenetic changes lead to increased risk of postpartum depression as a result of adverse life events and cumulative life stress among Black, Latinx, and low-income women. In a study assessing African American men, experiences of racism were linked to a poorer mental health state.

Intersectionality of Systems of Oppression

Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the interconnected nature of different systems of oppression, the layered effects of which can be seen in the healthcare system. Research indicates that lower class status and increased depressive symptoms are associated with higher levels of biological weathering among Black individuals in comparison to white individuals. In a study exploring disparities in mental health, researchers found that Black sexual minority women reported higher frequencies of discrimination and decreased levels of social and psychological well-being than their white sexual minority women counterparts. Black sexual minority women had decreased levels of social well-being and increased levels of depressive symptoms in comparison to Black sexual minority men. African American women are also more likely to contract COVID-19 than African American men and white women. The prevalence of medical racism and sexism (lack of quality healthcare, harmful experimentation, etc.) has led to negative relationships with healthcare systems and increased risk of negative sexual and reproductive health outcomes among African American women. Existing research show how systems of oppression work together to oppress marginalized groups within the healthcare system and, as a result, these groups disproportionately experience negative health effects.

Criticism and Related Theories

Arline Geronimus faced significant pushback for the weathering hypothesis, including from members of the medical community who believed there was a genetic or evolutionary explanation for racial differences in health outcomes. There was some early criticism regarding the quality of her data, though the evidence of weathering and health disparities has grown since. Others pushed back against the weathering hypothesis because its application to racial disparities in maternal health seemed to contradict what advocacy groups had been saying about the negative consequences of teen pregnancy on young mothers. A further criticism of this theory believes that Geronimus and others have not sufficiently demonstrated a link between weathering and racial and gender disparities in life expectancy.

The weathering hypothesis was initially proposed as a sociological explanation for health disparities, but it is closely related to biological theories like the allostatic load model, which proposes that an individual’s exposure to repeated or chronic stress over their lifetime has physiological consequences which can be measured through various biomarkers. Research has tended to discuss allostasis and allostatic load as the molecular mechanism behind the weathering hypothesis, and Geronimus herself went on to study racial differences in allostatic load. Another related theory is the life course approach, which emphasizes focus on cumulative life experiences rather than maternal risk factors as an explanation for birth outcome disparities. Researchers have also been interested in studying the possibility of children inheriting the epigenetic changes which result from their mother’s cumulative life stress, which could relate the weathering hypothesis with transgenerational trauma.

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_hypothesis&gt;; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.