In this undated file photo, a young person is pictured by themselves using a mobile phone.
Courtesy Pxhere
People are choosing to spend less time than ever in the presence of other people, whether in social events, one-on-one meetups or eating out. The latest cover story in The Atlantic explores some of the psychological and social implications of that trend. And a recent study out of Oregon State University goes deep into how solitude is defined and experienced — and the range of benefits that different kinds of solitude seem to offer. If you go out to eat alone but are around other people, that’s one kind of solitude. Another would be going out alone on a nature trail where you don’t see another soul. Whether you have your phone on you or not is another factor that influences the kind of solitude you experience. Morgan Quinn Ross is an assistant professor of liberal arts at OSU and recently published a paper about this spectrum. He joins us to tell us more.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. People are choosing to spend less time than ever in the presence of other people, whether in social events, one-on-one meetups or eating out. The Surgeon General has sounded the alarm about what he calls the epidemic of loneliness and isolation. At the same time, there’s a popular idea that some version of solitude can be beneficial for us as social beings, that it can basically recharge our social batteries.
That is what Morgan Quinn Ross set out to study recently. He’s an assistant professor of liberal arts at Oregon State University and he joins us now to talk about what he found. Welcome to the show.
Morgan Quinn Ross: Happy to be here.
Miller: Before we get into the details of this study, I thought we could just start with some definitions of terms. How does solitude differ or overlap with loneliness?
Ross: Solitude is what I consider, and scholars now consider, to be more of an objective state and more about the potential for communication in your environment. Historically, that’s been physical people that could talk to you. But in our current media environment, that could be a Zoom call, that could be a phone call, that could even be having your phone nearby that could ring at any moment.
And when we think about loneliness on the other hand, thinking of that more as a subjective perception, it’s feeling like the quantity or quality of your social relationships are lacking. So in the objective state of solitude, when you’re socially alone, it’s common for people to feel lonely because they’re maybe not close to their friends and family. But it’s, I think, important to realize that there is a distinction there, and you can also feel happy during solitude and get benefits from it.
Miller: What do you mean by the term “solitude spectrum?”
Ross: I think rather than just saying that sometimes we’re experiencing solitude and sometimes we’re not, trying to think of more of these in-between states. So on one hand, we can think of simply not interacting with other people as being maybe a baseline for solitude, kind of a necessary ingredient of it. On the other hand, we can then think of different layers that we can add to that, that could increase even that base level of solitude. The main ones in this study that we thought about were the accessibility of others, so not just whether we’re interacting with them, but whether people could reach out to us, for example, on our phones ...
Miller: Like if you have a phone on you, or if you do but there’s no cell service, then other people are digitally inaccessible.
Ross: Right, more about that accessibility. You could have the phone, but if you’re off network, then you would have less accessibility than if you were in network WiFi or data.
And then the other flavor that we looked at would be media engagement and thinking about media as another form of communication. So reading a book, you’re not talking to the author directly, but indirectly you’re still engaging with another person’s thoughts. So thinking about just no interaction with others on one end of that spectrum and then kind of the full solitude of also not engaging with media or being accessible to other people.
Miller: What about being in a coffee shop at your own table but not talking to people? There are people around you, there are baristas, there are other folks drinking their beverages, on their laptops, but you’re not talking to them. Does that qualify for you in any way as a version of solitude?
Ross: Definitely. And I think that that’s one thing that really excites me about thinking of solitude more as the lack of communication than the lack of physical co-presence. And that’s because traditionally, we would say that that isn’t solitude. There’s people around you that could talk to you at any moment. But in reality, I would at least hope that those strangers are not going to be bothering me when I’m sitting alone at my table at the coffee shop.
Even taking it further, we could think of a kind of a group meditation session where it’s really normative to not talk to other people who are physically nearby. So in a way, you can think of that as being potentially even more solitude than when you’re physically alone, but you’re using communication technology to connect with the rest of the world.
Miller: How do you justify that? If I’m on a meditation retreat with other people – friends or strangers – all doing the same thing in a room, we may not be talking, but that seems like a very clear version of human togetherness, even if we’re not talking to each other. That just strikes me as very different from what I think of as solitude.
Ross: Yeah, and I think that you tap into a couple of things here. There’s always going to be a tension between the way that we in the ivory tower try and conceptualize and operationalize our variables, and then how people kind of in the “real world” think about these things, experience these things.
I think that for me, having a shared definition to be able to study it helps. And in this case, I would view that still being an experience of solitude, but maybe where that social nature comes in that you refer to is more about what happens after. It’s a shared experience of solitude that can then lead into having social interactions and discussing that experience. And that really, more broadly thinking of solitude, is what is great about solitude. It offers space for ourselves to self-reflect and recharge for subsequent social interaction.
Miller: What did you actually do in this study?
Ross: We tried to look at how much people experience these different types of solitude in their daily lives. And we asked how they thought about these experiences in terms of their potential benefits and potential costs. I could go very deep into the findings, but I think I’ll let you guide through particular ones.
Miller: I’m most curious about what was most surprising to you in the findings.
Ross: I’ll pick two. One is that we had this expectation that the deeper people got into solitude, that although it might alienate one from one’s social ties, it would at least be more restorative or more recharging of one’s social battery. What we found instead was that people thought that it indeed alienated them from others, but it also didn’t recharge them as much as these more base levels of solitude.
Miller: That is a little bit counterintuitive. So the thinking is that if you go on a hike by yourself, say, that after those four hours, you might have more energy to then have any kinds of social interactions, you might be thirsty for it and more ready for it, more able to to engage socially. You’re saying that that’s not the case.
Ross: I’m saying that that is not the case when you compare it to these lighter experiences of solitude. I think it’s certainly the case that people feel a degree of restoration when they go on that hike. At the same time, when you look at these lighter experiences, maybe just scrolling on your phone, it’s a relatively easier experience, as opposed to kind of checking out into the woods. And people perceived that that lighter experience was going to be more restorative. Both might be restorative, but comparatively they preferred that.
Miller: How does self-perception or intention play into this? If somebody is more inclined to spend time by themselves, are they by definition more likely to benefit from that time? Or is it not that simple?
Ross: It’s never that simple, but relatively speaking, it is. When we look at our results, we do see that across the board, regardless of what type of solitude we look at, people who think solitude is more restorative and people who think that it’s less costly for one’s social relationships, they display a better relationship between solitude and well-being. So for those people, solitude isn’t hurting their well-being.
I think it speaks to, more broadly, this positive attitude towards solitude that we do show as beneficial, and specifically thinking about solitude as being something that people seek out for solitude’s sake, for its own benefits, as opposed to maybe more of an avoidance of social interaction, and thinking of that motivation towards solitude is probably being more maladaptive.
Miller: Maybe this is an unhelpful metaphor, but it’s striking me – I’m thinking right now about the term “incels.” It makes me wonder about sort of involuntarily solitary people, or people who are alone right now who don’t want to be. And it seems like you’re saying that that’s the most destructive or least likely to be helpful version of being alone.
Ross: Right. And there’s a large body of work on solitude that does suggest that when solitude is chosen as opposed to unchosen, it’s going to have more beneficial impacts. And in our modern media environment, because connection is at least hypothetically always one touch away, we could think of that hopefully being a good thing writ large. It means that the solitude we experience is by choice, and therefore hopefully more beneficial. But we’ve all had the experience of trying to text someone who’s not texting back, so on and so forth. And in a way it could mean that that unchosen solitude, given the capacity for technology to connect us, could be even more harmful.
Miller: A lot of different cultures and religions have long traditions where people go off on their own to gain insight, wisdom or visions, before coming back to their respective communities. I’m curious how you think about those traditions, in so many different cultures around the world, in the context of this new research?
Ross: One of the things that attracts me to studying solitude is that it’s not a subject that scholars might call WEIRD – Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. It’s something that’s experienced in countries, cultures and religions around the world. In terms of how that informs the work that I do, one thing that I try and keep in mind is my own positionality, and the theories and methods that I’m using tend to come from a bit more of an individualistic perspective. I lived my whole life here in the states. And one thing that’s highlighted in some recent work that I’ve done comparing some of these relationships in the United States and China, is thinking about solitude as this kind of individual way for someone to recharge their energy and then come back to society, is very focused on the individual. And it could be more situated within the network or community that that person is in. So the theories I tend to use are situated in that context. And at least in that study, we found more support within the American context. So definitely future work to be done, but informs thinking very much.
Miller: What has stood out to you in public responses to this study? I can imagine someone looking at the headline here or the press release and saying “oh, this researcher is telling me not to go on a hike, but instead I should go to a coffee shop or look on my phone a little bit.” I know that’s not what you’re saying. It’s a lot more complicated than that. But it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the cursory takeaway that somebody got from this. I’m curious what kinds of responses you’ve seen?
Ross: I’ve definitely gotten some of those responses. And as an avid wilderness appreciator, I can definitely take those responses to heart. I think for me, the response that I have to that we somewhat touched on in terms of more of this comparative angle. These are different levels of restoration, and it’s not that it’s not restorative, it’s just maybe less restorative than these other experiences. But also, the difficulty of being able to study those experiences of people being off grid, because by definition they are off grid. I’m currently developing a study that we do try and get more at how people are experiencing these things in daily life, and not just asking about their overall experience. But the challenge is that when people are disconnecting from their phones, it is tricky to reach them via their phones to gauge their perceptions of that experience. So there’s that trade-off there that I am currently working through.
But I would hope that the takeaway from the study is less “I should not go on a hike and I should instead scroll on my phone,” and is more having more awareness about the potential benefits of solitude, and thinking more about those moments of solitude and the possibility of integrating those benefits into our lives.
Miller: What do you see as the hidden moments of solitude that we are maybe all experiencing but not thinking of as moments of solitude?
Ross: I think things as simple as being in the shower, maybe just a moment before going into work, while commuting. Some of these things that we might not think of solitude because they’re not an hour spent alone in the woods. I think that really kind of grounding oneself in those moments to be able to then go out and be prepared for social interaction can be beneficial.
Another big theme of our work here has been people not thinking that they really experience solitude, and we try and spell it out best we can with our definition and examples. But overwhelmingly, people report not experiencing it to the degree that we think that they might be experiencing it. So I think those moments come to mind.
Miller: Has doing this work affected the way you think about your own choices of how you spend your time?
Ross: I think it has to. I’m definitely someone that values solitude as well as social interaction, and I’ve definitely been intentional in terms of how I’m trying to balance the benefits of both of those throughout my life.
I think the ongoing mystery for me though, when it comes to this fundamental hypothesis of solitude recharging the battery for social interaction, is that at least in this study, we didn’t see that solitude was more beneficial for wellbeing for people who engaged in more social interaction or intensive social interaction. I’m still unsure exactly how we’re putting those pieces together in our lives. And I think that that would really inform my own practices more.
I think part of that is just in our media environment, it’s not just face to face. communication and solitude. It’s also all of these mediated types of communication in-between that are contributing to our solitude, our well-being, our loneliness, in different ways. There’s more work to be done to fully understand how that fits into our lives.
Miller: Morgan Quinn Ross, thanks very much.
Ross: My pleasure.
Miller: Morgan Quinn Ross is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University.
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