The Science of Loneliness - Anti-Valentines Theme

This one goes out to all the lonely hearts out there! To continue with our theme of Anti-Valentines, Quizmaster Tanner analyzed four studies on loneliness, but one of his takeaways is false! Do you think you can spot the lie among the four facts without being left out in the cold? Guess along with hosts Sups and Andi to find out!

Pub Quiz Question Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soa3gO7tL-c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBt8fN7mJNg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EEW-9NDM5k 

Transcript

Sups 0:01

On my own, Mr. Lonely Woke up in the middle of the night to see Michael was by my side and I'm so lonely, I'm so lonely.

Andi 0:17

Hello and welcome to this episode of I Should Have Known, the trivia game show that can't be trusted. Each week, one of our Quizmasters will present you with four facts about a topic, but one of those facts is a lie. And we're doing anti Valentine's here at I Should Have Known. We are celebrating all things not love and Valentine's. And today your Quizmaster is Tanner.

Tanner 0:39

Hello.

Andi 0:40

And Tanner is going to do a real uplifting episode. presenting us with four facts about the science of loneliness So grab somebody and listen together. I hope. I don't know.

Tanner 0:51

can.

Sups 0:52

Or grab yourself. Yeah.

Andi 0:55

Yeah. Sure. So, A little lonely hearts out here. This one's for you. So join me, Andy, and our other host Supes in figuring out which fact is a lie.

Tanner 1:04

wait So the four facts each one is taken from a study.

Sups 1:08

Oh.

Andi 1:09

Oh, Okay,

Tanner 1:10

so let's start with our pub quiz question. One of our favorite parts of pub quiz is the music round. So, name these three lonely songs.

Andi 1:20

Oh my god, this is a musical episode?

Tanner 1:22

No, no, no. Just a musical pub quiz question. Are you

Sups 1:25

ready? Alright. Sure. Yeah.

Tanner 1:27

Number one

Sups 1:39

Green Day.

Tanner 1:40

Okay, what's on

Andi 1:42

It's

Tanner 1:43

Next one.

Sups 1:52

Oh, I know this. Oh.

Andi 1:58

um,

Sups 2:00

so know

Andi 2:00

Backstreet Boys. And the song is Tell me the meaning of being lonely.

Tanner 2:08

Show me. the

Sups 2:09

me,

Andi 2:10

of being lonely.

Tanner 2:11

show me the meaning of being lonely. Yeah. Nice. And this one, Supes was already singing.

Andi 2:22

Nice.

Sups 2:23

Lonely by Akon. Yes.

Tanner 2:26

Yes. exactly.

Andi 2:27

fact or two. Yeah, yeah. So, you started

Tanner 2:30

Try to Keep those in your head while we go through these

Sups 2:32

through these stats.

Tanner 2:33

Yeah. All right. fact number one. Loneliness can be improved by listening to music.

Andi 2:40

Oh, okay. Well, I guess we're all a lot less

Tanner 2:44

less lonely

Sups 2:45

And somebody actually had to do a study to prove this? So she's

Andi 2:49

Hehehehe. Sups is like, this one's real. Next. Thank you,

Sups 2:53

Yeah. yeah, I think music, like, uplifts your mood,

Andi 2:58

Yeah, I mean, sure. Obviously, I think definitely makes you feel better. I don't know. I feel like loneliness is like a long term, pervasive emotion. you know, you can be a little lonely in a moment, but like, loneliness is like more chronic. So is music enough to fix that?

Sups 3:15

it a specific kind of

Andi 3:18

music? Oh, well, let's let Tanner tell Oh, look at that, science geniuses!

Sups 3:27

So

Tanner 3:28

of music? social isolation, or just the perception of it. So it's not the fact that you don't have a bunch of friends. It's that you feel alone. So roughly 20 percent of the general population, suffers from chronic loneliness at any given time.

Andi 3:49

Oh, that's terrible. 1 in 5? 1

Tanner 3:52

One in five people, yeah. So, it's more, extreme than just being alone or being

Andi 3:57

Mm hmm.

Tanner 3:58

But this study They made people feel lonely.

Andi 4:02

Is that Ethical?

Tanner 4:03

Ethical? Yeah. They

Andi 4:04

a consent

Tanner 4:04

form They did, Yeah. So they're like, imagine your father passed away.

Andi 4:08

Oh my god.

Tanner 4:09

Right? So this gets them in a lonely mindset. And then they had them listen to music. and they could be Comforting music or just distracting music. And they charted their mood and their loneliness before and after the music. and Whether it was comforting music or distracting music, they all felt better. They all felt less lonely

Andi 4:31

Well, that's cause their dads didn't actually die

Sups 4:33

Like, I don't

Andi 4:34

Like, I don't know that, that doesn't sound like a very good study. I'm not gonna lie. Right? Like, oh, pretend you're lonely. Imagine being lonely and like, now listen to this music. Do you feel better? It's like, well, yeah, because I wasn't actually lonely. Right.

Sups 4:49

I mean, forget loneliness for a second. if you have any thoughts in your head and suddenly you listen to any kind of music for that two or three minutes, your mind is automatically diverted towards that song, right? You aren't thinking of that thought which you were thinking. So I think this study, like scientists didn't actually have to spend money. We could have concluded otherwise.

Tanner 5:11

Otherwise. Especially

Andi 5:12

that's what you do in the office. I

Sups 5:17

Don't tell me it was some Harvard, Princeton,

Tanner 5:19

scientist. Mmm,

Andi 5:20

There were more aspects to it, you

Tanner 5:25

There were more aspects to it. You know, like they had, a, imagine you lost your eyesight.

Andi 5:29

Oh,'cause you got divorced in medieval Europe. Yes.

Tanner 5:32

This is their hypothetical that's not about loneliness, but about like feeling sad And then another one that was just like, Just a neutral mood. right? You know, so there's lonely, there's sad, and then there's like neutral. And for all of these, they felt less lonely after the music.

Sups 5:47

OK. And they were tracking like neurological brain

Tanner 5:51

No. it was just a, self-reporting

Andi 5:54

study. Oh man, this is a terrible study. Who wrote this? I really hope.

Sups 5:57

sorry, scientist, you could do better.

Andi 6:00

Yeah. I really hope Tanner wrote this. So that's just like his lie, because like that's, study is bad. but the fact itself I mean, it seems very intuitive, so like, it's probably true. Right? I think we all kind of know that you can improve your mood with music or you can at least you can change your mood with music

Sups 6:18

Can I counter

Andi 6:19

that Oh, oh

Sups 6:20

If let's say you're sad and you're listening to sad songs, you don't suddenly become uplifting. I mean, sometimes when I'm not in a very good mood and I have this playlist of like not happy songs, right? Because I want to be in that

Andi 6:35

I want to

Sups 6:38

so it's more like a

Andi 6:39

in that mood. It's more like a

Sups 6:45

By that logic. Sure. Okay.

Andi 6:47

logic, sure. Ok. Ok. number

Tanner 6:52

Fact number Loneliness is

Andi 6:57

How? No, that's a contradiction. You're alone

Sups 7:00

If I was lonely and I passed loneliness to you, now the two of us are lonely

Tanner 7:05

together. Doesn't whole point?

Andi 7:07

point? Doesn't that make you not lonely?

Tanner 7:09

you're lonely

Sups 7:10

together. Oh, wow.

Tanner 7:12

the study looked at This group of people in this town in the U. S. and they tracked their mood and loneliness and basically all the health parameters they could, and their friend network, and they've done this since, like, the 40s. They've tracked these same people, and they found that if a direct connection in their social network was lonely, they had a 52 percent chance of then becoming lonely.

Andi 7:39

That's just bizarre. seems like a contradiction, right? Like you're talking about people who have a friend network. Why

Sups 7:44

But I mean, you can still be, I mean, I understand where he's coming from. You can still be lonely if you have 20 friends,

Andi 7:51

Yeah. For me, we're starting to get into an area where like, loneliness is not like a medical

Tanner 7:57

right, You're diagnosed with loneliness.

Andi 7:58

But like, depression is. Correct. So at what point do we say like, these people are just depressed? They're not actually lonely. That's just, loneliness is a symptom of their depression.

Sups 8:09

loneliness is one of the many causes of depression, right?

Andi 8:13

this would be the other way. When you have depression, a lot of times your stupid brain tells you stupid lies, like how no one likes you, and you're the only person like you in the world, and like Then you feel lonely, but you aren't actually lonely.

Tanner 8:29

you the world, and

Andi 8:35

'cause your

Tanner 8:35

then you feel lonely, But you aren't actually lonely.

Andi 8:46

So I guess like then in that situation, I would say yes, because we know for a fact that like a lot of mental health issues are contagious to some degree. We're very empathetic creatures. So you know, a yeah, as you talk to your lonely, depressed friend who's like, The world sucks and no one really cares about us. And then you're like, yeah, man,

Tanner 9:04

sucks

Andi 9:05

I don't know, I guess I could see that. But it still feels like a contradiction, the words that came out of your mouth.

Sups 9:09

I don't I'm on the fence about this.

Andi 9:12

Yeah. Right. But I mean, okay. Do we believe a study said this? Probably, maybe.

Sups 9:18

Yeah.

Andi 9:19

Okay, Dr. Tanner, give us some more.

Tanner 9:21

Okay. Fact number three. Loneliness literally makes us cold.

Sups 9:27

cold as in not winter cold, but as a cold person.

Tanner 9:30

literally, if you are lonely, your temperature drops.

Andi 9:33

Whaaaaat? See, this is an easy study, if this is real. At least, I know the design of this study, that's easy peasy. Because you just measure people's temperatures. Right,

Tanner 9:44

a couple studies looked at this where you can either make someone remember a lonely time

Andi 9:49

Why do they do this? This is not an effective thing. Or

Tanner 9:53

you can basically fake loneliness. So they made them play a game of, like, catch, and one group was included, and they were throwing the ball a bunch of times, and the other group was left out, and they just had to watch people playing And so, the people who They thought of the lonely memory and the ostracized groups, they had them guess the room temperature, and then in a separate study, they tested their, Finger

Andi 10:16

Yeah, I was gonna say, they didn't actually just take their temperatures. Who is paying for these studies? It's a scam on a scam,

Tanner 10:23

Yeah, it took two studies to

Andi 10:24

Why wouldn't you just take their temperature? It's a very, very easy and simple thing to do. It costs like nothing.

Sups 10:30

Yeah. I want to put this out in the world. especially to all our listeners If your life goal is to become a scientist studying loneliness, please do so. Because from what we have heard, scientists who have done studies on loneliness looks like they haven't done a very good job. So we need better scientists, better psychologists, better psychiatrists,

Tanner 10:49

Yes. That's

Sups 10:50

is very low.

Andi 10:51

Designing an experiment isn't that hard. Right. Why did you do it so badly? You literally couldn't afford a thermometer. No one had a thermometer on them to be like, let's just have them guess the room temperature. That'll tell us if they're cold or not. Like, What

Sups 11:07

I'm very unimpressed with the studies and the scientists.

Andi 11:10

I know, And we're not in like stem, we're not even sciencey people. And we're sitting here being like, guys, this is bad.

Sups 11:16

we have opinions.

Andi 11:17

Yes.

Sups 11:18

are you sure only one of them is a lie and not all four of

Tanner 11:20

them?

Andi 11:22

That's the twist.

Tanner 11:23

There's

Andi 11:24

lonely fact.

Tanner 11:25

I'm

Andi 11:26

lie. Um,, Sure. I don't really have a lot of context for whether this would be true or not.

Sups 11:32

Can this be the opposite?

Andi 11:34

get warmer? I don't know. I have no idea why that would be. Either way, my only thing here is, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I think if Tanner were to design a fake study, he would have designed a better

Sups 11:48

Mmm.

Andi 11:48

That was such a poorly designed study,

Sups 11:50

And that's why it's not a lie.

Andi 11:52

Yeah. Like the fact itself, you could easily lie about it. You could easily have been like people say that someone is, cold and aloof you know, like, unsociable, oh, what if they literally are cold, like, that's, very clear, like, that's how you would design this lie. But then, why is your fake? research so bad. honestly, it's so stupid to me that they would use the method of, like, tell me what you think the room temperature is, and then they're gonna scientifically say that, like, that's a good way of measuring someone's body temperature. That, like, I don't think Tanner's dumb enough to do that. That has to be some real, study somewhere.

Sups 12:25

Yeah. At this point, I feel like if you want to test whether you're lonely or not, don't go by these scientific studies. Just take like a BuzzFeed quiz,

Tanner 12:33

of the

Andi 12:34

They seem about as, as scientific, no, you know, in order to just replicate the loneliness, all you have to do is just think about being lonely and then wow, you're lonely. All right, T, you have one more for us.

Tanner 12:48

more. Alright. Fact number four, the loneliest people are married without children.

Andi 12:53

Oh no.

Sups 12:54

Oh

Andi 12:55

Let me do this. Let

Sups 12:59

Let's, let me do this. Let me pose this question to the two married people we have

Andi 13:03

Who have no

Sups 13:07

So, question to you Tanner. Don't look at your wife and tell me. Are you lonely?

Tanner 13:11

No.

Sups 13:12

Andy? lonely? Yeah.

Andi 13:15

Honestly, I'm suffocated by this man.

Tanner 13:18

you

Sups 13:19

why don't you have children then?

Andi 13:22

Why would

Tanner 13:22

what?

Andi 13:23

a, that's a that's a separate discussion, Soops. Okay? Dr. Soops wants to know, Why don't you have children? See, and that's why I'm saying, that's why I think it's bullshit. As a, as a married with no children person, I feel like, it just seems silly to me.

Sups 13:41

I'm curious to hear about what scientists did here.

Andi 13:44

Yeah. Tell us about This study. Okay. These are surveys. I assume this

Tanner 13:48

survey,

Sups 13:49

actually,

Tanner 13:49

the data was collected in 2020.

Sups 13:52

Okay. Oh, so pandemic.

Tanner 13:53

It was during the pandemic.

Andi 13:56

There's no way that single people in the pandemic weren't lonelier than married people. Come on. There's just, there's no way.

Tanner 14:02

They asked people daily how they felt about loneliness and whether they're thriving and how fulfilled they felt in life and it happened that married people without children were more likely to feel lonely in comparison to unmarried people with children, unmarried people without children, and married people with children.

Sups 14:24

Dang it.

Tanner 14:25

So these four groups, you know, the ones with the highest rate of loneliness was married without kids.

Sups 14:30

And where was the study done? Do you know?

Andi 14:33

mean, I can maybe see this being true if it were like people who want to have children and are like having trouble having children, maybe they would feel very lonely, but like people who are consciously not trying to get pregnant and are

Sups 14:45

married. Right, yeah. Again, that's a different thing, right? If There are people who consciously decide, right. That we don't want children. So I tried to say like everyone, you're putting in the same category

Andi 14:55

Right. But I'm, I'm saying that that's like maybe what is making the survey responses have like an elevated

Sups 15:02

Makes sense. Yeah. But also we have to keep in mind, this is 2020. Anything that happened in 2020, we have to take, you know, we have to keep like,

Andi 15:11

normal.

Sups 15:12

it wasn't normal, right? Uh, so maybe there are like a lot of other things that were going on their mind.

Andi 15:18

Yeah, I mean, maybe, it's just, especially when you, you have the pandemic as like context, it seems especially difficult for me to believe that people who were single during the pandemic in lockdown, honestly, the loneliest of people, because you literally you could not get within six feet of another human being. I don't understand how they would possibly be less lonely than people who at least Had one other person. That seems very strange. I guess these were a lot of very unhappy marriages.

Tanner 15:49

lot marriages. maybe they did. These

Andi 15:53

was. Yeah, I mean, maybe, maybe they did. These are like very unhappy marriages. that's a very difficult pill for me to swallow. But, sure. At least that study that you invented, it's actually a decent, like, know, it's just a survey of people's feelings and perceptions, like, okay, we can be pretty

Sups 16:11

Okay with

Andi 16:11

with like that's that is how they said they feel that's a decently designed study tan. Good job

Sups 16:18

And hence, that is the lie. But seriously, though,

Andi 16:22

seriously, though, I don't know but we are not making our official Lonely hearts guess on loneliness. We're gonna need you to repeat your four facts and then we will decide

Tanner 16:34

Okay, Fact number one, loneliness can be improved by listening to music. Fact number two, Loneliness is contagious. Fact number three, Loneliness literally makes us cold. fact number four, the loneliest people are married without children. One of those is false. Hahaha

Andi 17:04

all of them sound like lies. I

Sups 17:07

think it's between. Two, the contagious one and the third one.

Andi 17:12

Oh, the third one was the

Sups 17:15

Right. don't think body temperature has with

Andi 17:20

don't know. Maybe. I guess we, you know, we say idioms about like feeling warm feelings, like when

Sups 17:26

Ah, warm

Andi 17:27

So maybe, I don't know, that's what's going on. I don't know how literal those are. I think it's number four.

Sups 17:34

You think it's number

Andi 17:35

Yes. I just find that super hard to believe and I am like, I don't know, I'm, I'm thriving. So, I know a lot of people who are married with no kids and I'm like, I mean, I don't know their personal in, you know, the inner workings of their lives, but like, It's the best. You have a partner and a human with you, but then, uh, you don't have to take care of anyone else, just yourself.

Sups 18:00

else.

Andi 18:00

and I also find it a little icky because it seems to play on like the whole concept that like your life isn't fulfilling if you don't have children. so I don't know. I think that one's a lie.

Sups 18:11

I'm with you, but I think I lean more towards two and three more towards number two, because this whole contagious, I understand, but this then the whole premise of contagiousness goes out of the

Andi 18:26

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a contradiction. You know, how can you spread

Sups 18:30

Loneliness. Yes.

Andi 18:32

if you're alone?

Sups 18:33

Yes. And then you are like team lonely and team and lonely are not words that you can put next to each

Andi 18:40

right That's an oxymoron. Yeah, I feel you with that, I mean, it sounds so

Sups 18:44

all sound sketchy. That's why I asked you, like, are you sure it's only one of them? okay, I'm gonna pick number two.

Andi 18:54

Okay. And I'm doing number

Tanner 18:56

All right, Number two and number four. the lie is number four. it's Actually, the

Andi 19:03

Yeah. See, I told you

Tanner 19:04

So in this, survey, the unmarried. were substantially more likely to feel lonely. between 30 and 40 percent. I mean,

Andi 19:11

No

Tanner 19:11

on! Obviously. In contrast, People who were married were only about 20 percent Lonely.

Andi 19:18

what about

Tanner 19:18

about Didn't make a difference in the data. basically. It was more of like, are you married or are you not married?

Sups 19:25

And you have to do a survey to get

Andi 19:26

know. I know, right? Yeah, it should be pretty, especially during a

Sups 19:30

Pandemic. Pandemic. Come on. Pandemic, single people. I could tell you, and I was

Andi 19:34

would do a survey. And I'd

Sups 19:35

feel lonely.

Andi 19:37

Who wouldn't? Wow.

Sups 19:39

Bye. Bye. I should have known.

Andi 19:40

Yeah, I should've known. Thanks for listening to this episode of I Should've Known. we have one more anti Valentine's Day episode next week. I'll be your quiz master, and I'm going to be telling you about stories of bad dates. Should be fun. And as always, thermometer? In your butt.