There have been many discussions in INFO204 lectures related to measuring the relative connectedness of individuals in a social network. Most of these have been in an employment context; e.g., the increased importance of a person who connects two different workgroups together, or the fragmentation of a group due to the presence of two powerful, polarizing individuals. However, medical studies argue that there are even more important reasons to be a well-connected node in the local social scene - or, more interestingly - to think that you are one.

In past research, correlations between social isolation and increased risk of death in heart patients have been documented, as well as between social isolation and Alzheimer’s. Now, a new study has found that elderly people who feel socially isolated have twice the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease of their less-lonely peers. The four-year experiment focused on 823 individuals with an average age of 80.7, comparing their self-reported “loneliness scores” with test results used to diagnose dementia and Alzheimer’s. Even when the actual social connections and interpersonal interaction of the individuals were accounted for, those who reported feeling lonely and isolated were still much more likely to develop the disease, regardless of how well-connected they actually were. It will be interesting to see how well these new findings apply to other areas. Perhaps, like a social-network placebo effect, it’s more important to believe you have lots of connections than to actually have them?