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Many lonely people would rather deal with a robot than interact with an actual human, according to research co-led by Newcastle University
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- Title
- Many lonely people would prefer a robot over human interaction
- Word count
- 417 words
Anecdotally, it is true. I find myself using self-checkout a lot more than I thought I would. Never thought I'd see the day because when they started popping up, I felt reprehension about them. But now, I choose them over a human cashier probably 9 times out of 10 - this phrasing they use is spot on for me: "conserving emotional resources."
I do also have social anxiety and other mental health issues that are not limited to loneliness, but yeah I can only nod along to also this (emphasis mine): "Dr. Yan added, "Loneliness can reduce an individual's confidence in talking to others. While human interaction is essential to society, in certain situations, technology can feel like a less emotionally taxing and a more manageable and appealing path for people who suffer from loneliness.""
I have to wonder whether this is somehow related to the "depression is a mood-thermostat issue" hypothesis.
The gist is that available research mostly agrees that a depressed person usually feels better after they exercise, socialize or listen to happy music, but depression makes it extremely difficult to push themselves to actually do those things - on the contrary, they usually seek out the opposite (solitude, rest, unhappy music), which makes them worse. "Mood-thermostat" is an abstract concept used because the process seems similar to when a person is ill and gets a fever: a fever is very unpleasant and they don't want to have it, but their body set its internal thermostat to 39° C and firmly tells them "no, I want to have a fever, you need to warm up, get another 3 blankets".
Being a chronically ill person I do know and understand the reduced desire to interact with people when my condition gets worse, but at the same time it does sound kind of like "I am lonely and feel bad, therefore I don't have the energy to interact with other people, which will make me feel lonelier and worse".
I have a chronic condition (POTS) where I genuinely feel worse after socializing or exercising (exercise intolerance sucks) and better after extended solitude and rest. My primary care provider repeatedly and insistently telling me I just needed to socialize and exercise more (my condition checks all the boxes of depression screening questionaires) delayed my actual diagnosis by years, and might have sent me down a permanent rabbit hole of inappropriate and ineffective treatment if I hadn't been a strong advocate for myself.
I understand many people are helped by treatments targeting depression, but the overdiagnosis of the condition, that prevents people with overlapping symptoms from figuring out what they actually have, is a personal pet peeve.
If my post came across as "it's definitely depression", it's only by accident. I interpreted smoontjes' comment as purely a mental health problem and responded not even necessarily to their specific issues but also to the quote in the second paragraph. My point is that the mechanism "feel lonely, do actions that seem like they would exacerbate loneliness" seems similar to behavior within depression despite the fact that it's not depression, which I think is interesting.
I have chronic fatigue syndrome, so I'm familiar with doctors making unfounded assumptions about my mental health as well. Quite infuriating when it happens, and with a lot of potential of causing harm. I remember that POTS (maybe in chronic fatigue syndrome specifically) was considered to be psychosomatic, so fainting was categorized as psychogenic syncopes for like 20 years, until in the mid 90s someone used ultrasound probes to measure blood flow into the brain and found out that no, it's not psychogenic, it's the brain not getting enough blood. Infuriating.
Similar experience - autoimmune disease initially misdiagnosed as depression and perimenopause.
It turns out that depression can be a symptom of inflammatory processes that directly or indirectly affect the brain (see also multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson's, influenza, COVID-19, likely POTS and CFIDS...), not necessarily a discrete disease. Even chronic stress has a physiological component that influences inflammation - it's not simply a matter of "psychological" (e.g. bad brain programming) factors.
People bedridden with the 'flu aren't generally told to just get up and exercise, because they'll relapse and get sicker. It's infuriating that people who have illnesses that involve the same biochemical mechanisms as influenza sickness behavior are repeatedly told that exercise is curative. I was questionably fortunate to have visibly swollen joints, worse after exercise, that made a more detailed investigation and diagnosis possible with the right lab tests. I feel a great deal of sympathy for people who don't have visible, obvious signs of illness that prompt being taken seriously by the medical profession.
For me, TNF-α inhibitor treatment is magic depression medicine as well as arthritis treatment. It's like someone turned on the lights after years of darkness and a dozen failed antidepressants. Exercise and socializing aren't debilitating anymore. I sincerely hope that something like this becomes available and routine for others.
Scott Alexander's "mood thermostat" theory kind of dances past the biochemistry underlying the homeostatic set points he hypothesizes. Immune system dysfunctions as a source of some of the brain chemistry set point changes could fill in that gap.
That's interesting, do you have any further reading on that to share?
Here's a post on the topic with some more reasoning and sources. There isn't a lot - I was deliberate when I called it a hypothesis, we don't really know yet. Note that the author is Scott Alexander who is somewhat controversial among some people around here, mainly due to his opinions on political or social issues, but this topic seems relatively safe as it's within his field - he's a psychiatrist.
Youre dating your computer? It makes me very sad that you can’t handle real emotions.
It’s a quote from the scene I linked
Socializing is very much like a muscle that atrophies without use
I understand that lonely people prefer the non-human option such as self checkout vs speaking to a cashier- but I strongly believe that it continues to reinforce social avoidance and loneliness.
If you are worried about being “socially taxed,” experiencing the short period of discomfort isn’t a bad thing. Pushing yourself outside your comfort zone helps rewrite your brain’s reaction, because you start to realize “Oh, that felt a little scary at first but in reality that wasn’t that bad.” Cashiers are the perfect low stakes opportunity to use for this.
More exposer = interactions become easier and maybe even enjoyable.
I say this from experience. At 18, I accidentally found myself in a job where sales were expected. I was extremely awkward and riddled with social anxiety. How the heck was I supposed to convince someone to buy something, when I couldn’t even hold a conversation with someone I knew? Over time with practice not only did I start to feel less scared- I actually got good at talking to people, and became one of the strongest salespeople in my department because I had to work so hard to develop that ability. Those skills have given me a lot of benefits throughout my life, and I use them often now as a nurse.
If you are lonely and anxious, I recommend trying to take every low stakes opportunity to practice communication if you can. It will add up and be worth it, so you can be prepared for high stakes social situations when they come up.
This is totally it.
There's a baseline script for all interactions and once you figure out what it is, get good at it and learn to dress it up a little, you'll learn to entertain yourself and others.
Sometimes it's a sale, sometimes it's a new friend. Before long, you'll become this person and will be better off for it.
Forget the robots. People belong with people and would benefit from discovering how that can be realized with each person's unique set of unique interpersonal skills.
We're rapidly changing what it means to be human and the future seems to point to more isolation through curated experiences, backed by technology.
People seem to be gravitating towards controlled experiences that cater to them and don't expect much from them. They'd rather swipe that talk to a person to form a connection, click rather than speak. People are seeking the online experience in real life more and more and I can't help but find it depressing.
Who am I to say what humans are supposed to be like, but I don't think our fundamental nature as social beings will change as quickly as our habits, leading to issues for the people who choose to largely disconnect from IRL social interactions.
People might want that, but I doubt that's what they need.
I'd rather use a robot sometimes, but it's not due to loneliness, it's just due to having more control over the experience.
Would I rather have something making minimum wage, with poor working conditions, that is being forced to act happy or a robot? A robot.
Would I rather have someone well paid, actually happy (as much as you can be when working), and good at their job or a robot? The person.
I'm on a first name basis with a few of the business I frequently visit and very much enjoy the interactions. I would never want them replaced with a robot.
It's the same with self serve drinks at a lot of places - don't make me ask a front counter for a drink if the service and/or staffing is bad. Just let me do it myself.
I dunno. As a person who prefers the automated system nine times out of ten, it’s because computers are a lot more predictable and forgiving than humans. What’s the point in stressing myself out to clear the groceries off the conveyer belt quickly, realizing I didn’t write down the number to a bulk food item and having to run back, deciding an item is too expensive, etc. with a judgy, fleshy, minimum wage paid human being when the alternative is right there (and often with a shorter line).
This is more of a comment to folks saying that lonely people “should” be speaking to cashiers preferentially, but the optics of practicing your atrophied social interactions with someone who is in a disadvantaged position (cashiers can’t say no) feels rather gross, to me. I get that the suggestion is coming from a good place, but it seems like service workers are already thrown under the bus a lot?
I mean, most cashiers get treated as robots anyways. I think that any sort of kindness or acknowledgement of their humanity is well-received.
Fwiw, I try to be as pleasant as possible whenever I interact with a service worker! I also notice myself tipping more if they're clearly having a bad day, too, and I'll ignore e.g. incorrect food orders or unknowledgable staff where most folks I know would blow up on them.
Er, I was reading into your comment that you're thinking I don't treat cashiers kindly, however, I very much attempt to. If you were trying to say something else, then apologies for my misunderstanding.
I was suggesting that your presence as a socially conscious person is a gift to service workers - so long as you don't call them "fleshy" to their face, that one might not go over so smoothly :)
Hah, yes, I do try to keep that vocabulary out of the interaction!
There’s definitely a sense of hurry with a cashier, like if you have to be as quick as possible to not waste their time or hold up the people waiting behind you. There’s also a 1:1 queue, so every extra second you take to clear your groceries or spend talking with the cashier certainly delays or maybe annoys people in the queue.
But self checkout doesn’t have that same time pressure because the queue is 1:many. You can take however long you like because you’re not the bottleneck.
Ironically I feel more pressure at a self-check*. Gotta do it right or I'm holding up the entire line. I may also be the person who gets annoyed at people who don't know how to use the self check.
I mostly have pivoted back to cashiers though because I value humans having jobs and small social interactions seem less stressful post COVID (I found I missed them a bit), because many stores have added hoops to jump through or restrictions for self checkout, because I do actually hate the big conveyor self-checks, and I like my stuff getting bagged when needed** because grocery bags suck to separate.
*Except at Aldi, there the pressure is at the regular checkout but I find their self-checks loud and unpleasant
*Except at Aldi, where it's simultaneously a game of Tetris to pack everything and a game of chicken where i don't know if I bought/brought enough bags until I'm done.
Maybe it's a chance to brighten the cashier's day or keep them busy during the doldrums of the day.
Everybody has their own tale, but to me, complicating small, trivial things is where we get into trouble.
I live in an area with a tonne of people suffering from mental health issues and drug addictions. I wouldn't say most of the interactions these folks have are boring, and I don't feel bold enough to say that my presence would brighten anyone's day 😅 although I suppose I do find it nice that people would think so.
I think this is directed at the idea of my complicating the trivial task of checking out groceries? And I agree! We should just operate grocery stores on the honour system :3
Haha, sort of directed, sort of just my soapbox speech about how I see the world. Isn't that all social ever is?
That's quite the honour system. I like it!
As an autistic person: Robots don't emotionally hurt me just because I didn't follow the socially acceptable script that I never got handed and then shutdown for any further communication or label me weird and uncanny.
Pretty much. I'd rather use a self-checkout machine, order via a screen, pick up parcels from a parcel locker, etc. (or even all the way to getting fast food or groceries delivered by a robot, but I don't have that option) rather than end up in an annoying, awkward, hurtful, or otherwise negative situation with another human, which I'll probably keep thinking about for weeks or months (or, in the worst case, for even longer). Not only due to autism or anxiety, but also simply because I get misgendered on the regular simply due to the fact that my local language mandates that people gender me when talking to me.
But, even with this thing aside, using such things genuinely helps me a lot. A cashier at the supermarket is going to "judge" me for buying, say, 12 energy drinks and 12 bags of chips, or their shop's entire stock of tofu. A cashier at fast food store can get my order wrong due to human error or not hearing the right thing - and that's not great when you have food intolerances or other dietary needs. A waiter or other employee might speak so fast I don't understand what they're trying to tell me. And so on.
Which is to say, much as I hate some things about modern technology, its enshittification, and its implications, I genuinely appreciate some of it.
Somewhat related: according to this study, AI interviews are preferred by people applying to call center jobs in the Philippines:
Voice AI in Firms: A Natural Field Experiment on Automated Job Interviews
Where did they do the study?
The paper includes example job postings and transcripts.
That is maybe encouraging. I had previously seen AI interviews just as screening tools in the employer vs job applicant arms race mess, where their opaqueness and bugginess is widely disliked by the interviewees. That it's possible to get it set up as a main tool in hiring (not just a culling step) in a way beneficial to both the applicants (increased hire rate) and employers (increased retention rate) is hopeful.
Honestly that makes a ton of sense.
If you are feeling starved and are craving food, you dont go drink a diet soda.
I understand the reflexive idea of if a person is lonely just add more social interactions but really think about it for a second, would you get anything substantial out of it?
If you feel bad because you dont have loved ones or close friends to talk to, and then you go to the grocery store and opt out of the self checkout and some cashier goes "Are you a member of our rewards program?" Thats not going to do anything for you.
I dont know, maybe extroverted people really do feel some kind of benefit from that. But to me it makes perfect sense to not want to engage in hollow conversation when you are already feeling socially deficient.
I'd rather interact with a machine, or chat bot, or email, or other messaging than actually having to speak to anyone, or heaven forbid be in close proximity. It annoys me when business have things that can 'only' be done via telephone, simply because that's the way they want it. To increase friction or retention, usually I find.