The role of comparisons in judgments of loneliness

Loneliness—perceived social isolation—is defined as a discrepancy between existing social relationships and desired quality of relationships. Whereas most research has focused on existing relationships, we consider the standards against which people compare them. Participants who made downward social or temporal comparisons that depicted their contact with others as better (compared to other people’s contact or compared to the past) reported less loneliness than participants who made upward comparisons that depicted their contact with others as worse (Study 1–3). Extending these causal results, in a survey of British adults, upward social comparisons predicted current loneliness, even when controlling for loneliness at a previous point in time (Study 4). Finally, content analyses of interviews with American adults who lived alone showed that social and temporal comparisons about contact with others were both prevalent and linked to expressed loneliness (Study 5). These findings contribute to understanding the social cognition of loneliness, extend the effects of comparisons about social connection to the important public health problem of loneliness, and provide a novel tool for acutely manipulating loneliness

Breaking the news

It\u27s not the internet that\u27s killing newspapers. It\u27s the equity-chasing investors and their friends at the FCC who have put outsize profits before a free press, writes Eric Klinenberg

Conveniently Located Disaster: Socio‐Spatial Inequality in Hurricane Sandy and Its Implications for the Urban Sociology of Climate Change

Hurricane Sandy was a major event with major implications for how sociologists think about the relationship between climate change and crisis in urban areas. The storm’s impact on New York provides a valuable case for considering how to study the impacts of climate change on large, densely settled cities with vulnerable hard infrastructure and highly complex social conditions that produce differentiated experiences across many different communities. This working paper considers data at several levels of analysis with the aim of assessing neighborhood inequalities in the impacts of such extreme weather. Drawn from the authors’ ongoing research project on unequal vulnerability to climate change in New York after Sandy, the paper presents findings from data in three thematic areas: impacts on transportation and other vital systems; the performance of select public services, including subsidized housing and the police; and local, grassroots responses to the disaster. Across all of these factors we focus on neighborhood-level variations in storm impact and recovery. We also highlight differences between official reports on the storm’s impact and response and the accounts of community groups, activist organizations, and individuals. In doing so, we invite discussion about the most effective approaches and conceptual frameworks for the urgently important project of connecting a sociology of climate change to the study of the social experience of extreme events in major cities

Grassroots Relief: Informal and Community-Based Response to Extreme Weather Events from Occupy Sandy to the Cajun Navy

This study examines the role that local grassroots efforts play in disaster response and recovery. Drawing on findings from an ongoing research project on the experience of Hurricane Sandy in New York City since 2012 as well as new data from more recent hurricanes and other events, we show how volunteers, community-based organizations, and activist groups often play an important role in both immediate response and longer-term recovery efforts. Many communities hit hard by Sandy and other disasters were significantly aided by locally organized and \u27informal\u27 responses, often from groups that initially had nothing to do with emergency preparedness (community centers, neighborhood associations, and activist affiliated with Occupy Wall Street), yet often in ways that compliment or even fill in for state actors. We consider the lessons that the successes of these grassroots interventions offer for how we think about community resiliency going forward. This is, to use the ASA’s language, a draft/working paper, and will be added to and refined in the coming months. Nonetheless, findings presented here demonstrate how informal efforts, preexisting social infrastructure, and everyday innovation made a difference in some places. The working paper argues not only that local and informal responses are an important aspect of the sociology of disasters themselves, but that they provide guides to building more physically and socially resilient communities for what is likely to be the increasingly common collision between extreme weather and large coastal cities

The Role of Comparisons in Judgments of Loneliness.

Loneliness-perceived social isolation-is defined as a discrepancy between existing social relationships and desired quality of relationships. Whereas most research has focused on existing relationships, we consider the standards against which people compare them. Participants who made downward social or temporal comparisons that depicted their contact with others as better (compared to other people's contact or compared to the past) reported less loneliness than participants who made upward comparisons that depicted their contact with others as worse (Study 1-3). Extending these causal results, in a survey of British adults, upward social comparisons predicted current loneliness, even when controlling for loneliness at a previous point in time (Study 4). Finally, content analyses of interviews with American adults who lived alone showed that social and temporal comparisons about contact with others were both prevalent and linked to expressed loneliness (Study 5). These findings contribute to understanding the social cognition of loneliness, extend the effects of comparisons about social connection to the important public health problem of loneliness, and provide a novel tool for acutely manipulating loneliness