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In turn, the poor sleep can adversely affect our health, say researchers from the University of Chicago.
"It's not just a product of very lonely individuals having poor sleep. The relationship between loneliness and restless sleep appears to operate across the range of perceived connectedness," said lead author Lianne Kurina, Ph.D.
In the study, Kurina and her co-authors compared the degree of loneliness reported by a close-knit population of adults in rural South Dakota with measurements of their sleep cycles.
None of the individuals were socially isolated, yet their perceptions of loneliness varied.
Higher loneliness scores were linked to significantly higher levels of fragmented sleep. The total amount of sleep and the degree of daytime sleepiness were not impacted.
"Loneliness has been associated with adverse effects on health," Kurina said. "We wanted to explore one potential pathway for this, the theory that sleep - a key behavior to staying healthy - could be compromised by feelings of loneliness.
"What we found was that loneliness does not appear to change the total amount of sleep in individuals, but awakens them more times during the night."
The study is published in the journal Sleep.
Researchers report that study findings were similar to an earlier investigation that compared the loneliness reported by college students with their measured quality of sleep.
The lonelier the students felt, the more their sleep was broken up during the night.
The commonalities among the studies show that loneliness and social isolation are two distinct concepts, Kurina said.
Loneliness reflects perceived social isolation or feelings of being an outcast. This perception is created by the often-painful discrepancy between a person's desired and actual social relationships.
"Whether you're a young student at a major university or an older adult living in a rural community, we may all be dependent on feeling secure in our social environment in order to sleep soundly," Kurina said.
"The results from these studies could further our understanding of how social and psychological factors 'get under the skin' and affect health."
Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine
Although I don't trust these researchers to know what they are talking about, I know that the amount and depth of social interaction in my life affects my ability to fall asleep.
I was a socially active kid and slept fairly well during those years. When I started spending more time studying, writing, and working on my art, my sleep got worse.
Much later, I was assigned to supervise about ten12 year olds who were working together on a project. Their communication level was SO much higher than the adults I was used to working around! And I slept better during that time, too.
I have concluded that for me, there is a definite correlation between level of social interaction and ability to sleep well. Interesting to see this research come to similar conclusions. But they missed a part: How do people who consider themselves "lonely" interact socially compared with people who consider they have lots of friends?
Psychology has a tendency to look too much on how a person says they feel and too little on how a person actually operates in life.