Connections

Reach out and touch.

by John Cacioppo, Ph.D.

It's Time for a Science of Social Connection

Federal funding for research on interpersonal relationships and marriage has always been scant, and politicians have ridiculed and targeted those who have secured federal funding. Things may finally be changing as industry begins to step-in to fill this gap. Read More

Institutions of Higher Education Could Be Better

We are at a momentous period in human history. We need to accelerate the rate of basic research advancement if humankind is to deal successfully with looming challenges and unforeseen problems. To accomplish this, we need to help scientists and universities develop new institutional frameworks and to promote cultural changes to permit work beyond the current disciplinary silos and intellectual straight-jackets imposed by the traditional divisions and contingencies in research universities. Read More

Build Your Social Resilience

Begin accumulating social wealth today by practicing the ABCDEs of listening and tending to your social resilience. Read More

Gravity, Groups, and God

Before the enlightenment of the 18th century, many scholars believed that thought was instantaneous and that action was governed by an indivisible mind separate from the body. Read More

Dimensions of Human Connection: People, Pets, and Prayers

Sociality is at the heart of human existence, a fact that has been acknowledged as far back as Aristotle. Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs were among the first in the twentieth century to develop theoretical perspectives on the topic, but only in the last half-century has sociality been subject to vigorous theoretical and empirical study. Read More

Epidemic of Loneliness

It is what we say we value more than anything else. In surveys to determine the factors that contribute most to human happiness, respondents consistently rate connection to friends and family—love, intimacy, social affiliation—above wealth or fame, even above physical health. Read More

Selfish Genes, Social Brains

The notion that "what is good for me is good for society" has been a mainstay in economics for the past four decades, but humans are not motivated solely by self interests. We survive and prosper as a species through collective concerns and actions.
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The Good, The Bad, and The Society

This past year, Chicagoans have heard the uplifting rhetoric of now-President Obama at Grant Park in November and the surrealistic explanations of now-impeached Governor Blagojevich for his alleged attempts to sell gubernatorial appointments. Read More

Easing Your Way Out of Loneliness

What can be done to escape the grips of loneliness? In Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, we suggest four simple steps, captured in the acronym EASE, for dealing with chronic loneliness. Read More

What Is Our Fundamental Nature?

What is our fundamental human nature? Humans create and depend on emergent organizations beyond the individual- structures ranging from dyads and families to institutions and cultures. These emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural and hormonal mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped these organisms survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too reproduced. Read More