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Wednesday, December 02, 2009 WASHINGTON: It only takes one individual in a group to begin to feel lonely for the feeling to spread to others, a US study said Tuesday.After tracking over 5,100 people and their social contacts over 10 years, researchers found that loneliness can be contagious and that lonely, disconnected people tend to move to the fringes of social networks."On the periphery, people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left," said University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo, the study's lead author.Before lonely people sever relationships, they transmit loneliness to their friends who then also become lonely, according to the federally-funded study published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology."These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater," explained Cacioppo, who...