Loneliness and Experimental Social Psychology

     Experimental work in the field of social psychology has led to a
better understanding of the dynamics of loneliness. Much of this work
has had a direct bearing upon the problem of love-shyness. And it is
worth looking at in this regard.
     A set of experiments by Schachter (1959) demonstrated that, given
the opportunity, people confronting a stress-inducing experience will
usually tend to seek out the informal social support of other people--
even strangers if necessary. Experimental subjects who thought they
were going to experience a series of painful electric shocks, and subjects
who anticipated experiencing only very mild electrical stimuli were given
a choice between (1) waiting alone, and (2) waiting with other subjects
for a brief period while final preparations were made for the experiment.
In essence, Schachter found that the greater the anticipated pain, the
greater the tendency was for subjects to choose to wait amid the com-
panionship of other people. He interpreted this pattern as reflecting
heightened needs for reassurance, distraction, information, and social
comparison, among subjects experiencing greater stress.
     Sarnoff and Zimbardo (1961) largely replicated Schachter's results;
but they also demonstrated the fact that people do not always seek social
affiliation or emotional support in the face of severe stress or anticipated
pain. These researchers distinguished between fear of an inherently dan-
gerous, painful external object, and anxiety, the latter of which is negative
emotional arousal that has no clear source or which stems from objectively
harmless objects or social situations.
     In addition to replicating Schachter's fear arousal conditions (antic-
ipation of electric shock), their study also included an anxiety arousal
condition in which male college students were led to anticipate having
to suck on a variety of nipples, baby bottles and pacifiers--as in a con-
trived, embarrassing situation of the type which used to be televised as
"entertainment" on such television shows as CANDID CAMERA and
PEOPLE ARE FUNNY.
     As expected, there was far greater variation among the experi-
mental subjects in emotional arousal in the anxiety condition than there
had been in the fear condition. More importantly, high levels of emo-
tional arousal in the anxiety condition led to a marked preference among
the subjects for waiting alone rather than with other subjects. Almost all
subjects in the fear condition chose to wait for their anticipated ordeal
amid the companionship of other people.
      Sarnoff and Zimbardo suggest that if people are emotionally aroused
for reasons that are largely idiosyncratic to their own unique personality
or (possibly) not socially acceptable, they will tend to fear many kinds
of informal social contact. And even potentially beneficial emotional
support will only serve to increase their anxiety.
      Because the anxious person tends to be aware of the element of
inappropriateness in his feelings, he is loath to communicate his anxieties
to other people. To avoid being ridiculed or censured, he conceals anx-
iety aroused by stimuli which he guesses do not have a similar effect
upon others and which, he feels, ought not to upset him. Thus when
anxiety is aroused a person should tend to seek isolation from others. On
the other hand, when fear is aroused and he is unable to flee from the
threatening object, he welcomes the opportunity to affiliate with other
people.
      The love-shy man (deep down) is clearly embarrassed about his
inability to "connect" with any woman. Since women do not constitute
an objectively dangerous sort of stimuli, the painful inability to approach
and to initiate conversations with them represents an anxiety, NOT a
fear. In American society it is considered socially unacceptable for men
(far more than is the case for women) to harbor anxieties. Indeed, it is
considered even more socially unacceptable for men to permit their lives
to be virtually governed by their anxieties.
      The lives of the love-shy are, in point of fact, quite governed by
their anxieties. And I believe that this represents a formidable reason
as to why virtually none of the 300 severely love-shy men studied for
this book had any strong desires to informally affiliate with members of
his own gender. Many of the love-shy men specifically told me that once
they managed to get themselves a girl they would definitely want to have
some male friends. But as long as they were without their heart's desire--
because of these socially unacceptable anxieties which they were allowing
to control their lives--they felt very uncomfortable whenever they were
amid the informal companionship of fellow males whom they might
have otherwise very much enjoyed having as friends.
      This represents another reason why I believe that love-shy males
of all ages (including prepubescents) must first be therapeutically helped
to informally affiliate with women/girls. I believe that this must be done
BEFORE they will be in any way amenable to therapy aimed at the
cultivation of same-sexed friendships. As long as (1)love-shy males
desperately crave female companionship, and (2) as long as they are
governed by these socially unacceptable anxieties which cause them to avoid
opportunities for friendly, sociable self-assertion vis-a-vis women, they
can be expected to go to considerable lengths to avoid sociable interaction
with fellow males.
      Another experimental study with clear implications for our under-
standing of love-shy males was conducted by Freedman and Doob (1968)
at Stanford University. Using a clever experimental maneuver, they made
some of their subjects feel "different" from those around them, whereas
other experimental subjects were made to feel "pretty much like others
of their own age and sex." Hence, subjects who were told (after taking
a battery of personality tests) that they were very unlike others of their
age and sex tended to elect working alone on a contrived experimental task.
This was especially true if none of the other experimental subjects in
the room knew that they (the deviant subjects) were actually "deviant".
More succinctly, most of the experimental subjects run by Freedman
and Doob chose to work in a group with other people. The only subjects
who chose not to work in a group with other people were either (1) those
who had been made to feel "deviant" as a result of being shown fake
personality test results that made them appear to be highly "deviant",
and (2) those whose real or actual personality test profiles indicated that
they were indeed (in reality) quite different from others of their age and
sex.
      Love-shy men are, of course, quite demonstrably "deviant". How,
indeed, could a totally virginal, heterosexual man in his thirties or forties
be anything but "deviant"! Most of the 300 love-shy men studied for
this book were even more "deviant" than that, inasmuch as most of
them had never even kissed (or been kissed) by a girl or woman! Many
of them had never even dated. In this sense, severely love-shy men
must be considered quite directly analogous to Freedman and Doob's
"unknown deviant" laboratory condition. Thus, you cannot spot a 40-
year old male virgin on the street just by looking at him. You cannot
spot a severely love-shy 19-year old male who has never been kissed,
just by looking Over a group of 19-year old individuals.
      These "deviant" (involuntarily nonconformist) men tend to be quite
embarrassed about their non-behavior, about the fact that their "non-
behavior" is at drastic variance with their value systems, and about the
way their interpersonal anxiety vis-a-vis women has dominated and
ruled over their lives. Thus, we might reasonably guess that most of
them don't especially care to be "found out" or "exposed"--as could
quite easily happen within the context of any all-male peer group.
     And, of course, many love-shy men further feel that the all-male
peer group will misperceive them as "homosexuals". After all, how can
19-50 year old men who are totally without any form of heterosexual
experience (and who are not priests) be anything but homosexual! That
is the way popular lay-reasoning works. Most people are not even aware
of the fact that about 40 percent of all homosexual men marry; about 35
percent of them have children. And about 80 percent of them pass
through a period of quite rampant heterosexual promiscuity before they
finally come to terms with and accept their true homosexual identity.
Again, homosexuality is a totally different "animal" from heterosexual
love-shyness. Doubtless, there are some homosexual love-shys. But they
are most assuredly in the minority, just as heterosexual love-shys rep-
resent a small minority (1.5 percent) of all heterosexual men.
      In sum, people who feel "different" from others of their age and
sex are highly unlikely to want to affiliate with friendship groups com-
posed of same-sexed peers. Their desire to hide their deviancy until it
is rectified will make them prefer aloneness to being in the company of
others who might become hostile and disapproving. Of course, alone-
ness is not the same as true loneliness. Again, many of the love-shys
studied for this book did not appear to suffer very frequently from true
loneliness. Most of them preferred to be alone; and most of them tended
to seek out solitude from those of their own gender. Unlike a truly lonely
person, being "alone" did not usually make the love-shys feel depressed.
When they did feel depressed (or angry) it was because they lacked an
intimate female companion, NOT because they did not have any friends.
      Moreover, there appears to be some indication that even the
depression that is caused by being without an opposite sexed intimate
tends to dissipate somewhat with advancing age. The older love-shys
appeared to be demonstrably less depressed than the younger love-shys--
despite the fact that their loneliness scores were higher than those of
the younger love-shys. The older love-shys seemed to react to their plight
primarily with feelings of anger, cynicism and fatalism. They appeared
to be pretty well resigned to their plight, but nevertheless were very
angry about it. The younger men appeared to be less cynical and less
angry, but more prone to frequent bouts of painful depression-again,
related exclusively to being without a girl friend, never to being without
male friends.
      Because anxiety does not entail any objectively dangerous stimuli,
and because it is not warrented from a purely rational standpoint (society
stipulates that men are "supposed to be" more rational than women),
love-shy men are basically "cowards" who cannot and will not help
themselves by "taking the bull by the horns". They have "allowed" their
emotions to overrule their rational intellects. Their anxiety state with
respect to informal heterosexual involvement further makes them want
to be alone in order to avoid the disapprobation of their own gender.