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People Thinking about People: The Vicious Cycle of Being a Social Outcast in One’s Own Mind John T. Cacioppo and Louise C. Hawkley University of Chicago Running head: A Social Outcast in One’s Own Mind This research was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Mind-Body Integration Network) and the National Institute of Aging Grant No. PO1 AG18911 (Social isolation, loneliness, health, and the aging process). Address correspondence to John T. Cacioppo, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 5848 S. University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 (Cacioppo@uchicago.edu). People Thinking about People: The Vicious Cycle of Being a Social Outcast in One’s Own Mind The increasing number of people living alone is changing the face of post-industrial societies. The average household size over the past two decades in the United States declined by about 10% to 2.5 (Hobbs Stoops, 2002). By 1990, more than one in five family households with children under 18 was headed by a single parent, and within a single decade, the proportion of single parent households rose from 21% to 29% of all households in America (Hobbs Stoops, 2002). Family households were not the only residential unit to become more socially isolated. There are also now more than 27 million people living alone in the United States, 36% of whom are over the age of 65 (Hobbs Stoops, 2002). According to the middle projections by the Census Bureau (1996), the number of people living alone by 2010 will reach almost 29,000,000 – more than a 30% increase since 1980, with a disproportionate share of these being individuals over 65 years of age. Despite these changes in the structure of society, little attention has been given to the effects of social isolation on people’s perceived social isolation, social cognition, interpersonal relationships, and health. Our goal in this paper is to begin to address this deficit. Specifically, we outline a model in which social isola