loneliness

loneliness, distressing experience that occurs when a person’s social relationships are perceived by that person to be less in quantity, and especially in quality, than desired. The experience of loneliness is highly subjective; an individual can be alone without feeling lonely and can feel lonely even when with other people. Psychologists generally consider loneliness to be a stable trait, meaning that individuals have different set-points for feeling loneliness, and they fluctuate around these set-points depending on the circumstances in their lives. Individuals’ levels of loneliness typically remain more or less constant during adulthood until 75 to 80 years of age, when they increase somewhat. Prolonged loneliness is associated with depression, poor social support, neuroticism, and introversion. Studies have shown that loneliness puts people at risk for physical disease and that it may contribute to a shortened life span. In 2023 U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published an advisory about loneliness, referring to it as an “epidemic.”

Theories of loneliness

Although loneliness has always been part of human existence, it has a relatively short history as a subject of psychological investigation. As developed by the psychiatrist John Bowlby during the second half of the 20th century, attachment theory emphasizes the importance of a strong emotional bond between the infant and the caregiver; it stands as a forerunner to contemporary theories of loneliness. From that perspective, loneliness occurs when children with insecure attachment patterns behave in ways that result in their being rejected by their peers. Those rejections hinder their development of social skills and increase their distrust of other people, thereby fostering ongoing loneliness.

Attachment theory was the foundation for an influential psychological theory of loneliness developed by the sociologist Robert S. Weiss. Weiss identified six social needs that, if unmet, contribute to feelings of loneliness. Those needs are attachment, social integration, nurturance, reassurance of worth, sense of reliable alliance, and guidance in stressful situations. As would be predicted by attachment theory, Weiss maintained that friendships complement but do not substitute for a close, intimate relationship with a partner in staving off loneliness.

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Another theoretical perspective, the behavioral approach, holds that loneliness is characterized by personality traits that are associated with, and possibly contribute to, harmful patterns of interpersonal interaction. For instance, loneliness is correlated with social anxiety, social inhibition (shyness), sadness, hostility, distrust, and low self-esteem, characteristics that hamper one’s ability to interact in skillful and rewarding ways. Indeed, lonely individuals have been shown to have difficulty forming and maintaining meaningful relationships. They are also less likely to share information about themselves with their peers, and that helps to explain why they report a lack of intimacy with close friends.

The cognitive approach to loneliness is based on the fact that loneliness is characterized by distinct differences in perceptions and attributions. Lonely individuals tend to have a pessimistic general outlook: they are more negative than are individuals who are not lonely about the people, events, and circumstances in their lives, and they tend to blame themselves for not being able to achieve satisfactory social relationships. In addition, the cognitive approach largely takes account of the attachment and behavioral perspectives by explaining how (a) failure to meet the need for attachment, social integration, nurturance, and other social needs results in perceived relationship discrepancies that are experienced as loneliness, and (b) loneliness is perpetuated by way of a self-fulfilling prophecy in which poor social skills result in unsatisfactory personal relationships that in turn result in negative self-attributions that lead to further social isolation and relationship dissatisfaction.

Correlates and consequences of loneliness

For both practical and ethical reasons, loneliness is difficult to manipulate in an experimental setting. That has posed a challenge to researchers attempting to distinguish between the causes and consequences of loneliness. One experiment used hypnotic suggestion to overcome that obstacle: highly hypnotizable individuals were asked to recall a time when they felt lonely and then, after they returned from that hypnotic state, to recall a time when they felt highly socially connected. While in those states of social disconnection and connection, participants completed a set of psychosocial measures. When participants were induced to feel lonely, they scored higher in measures of shyness, negative mood, anger, anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation and lower on measures of social skills, optimism, positive mood, social support, and self-esteem. Conversely, when individuals were induced to feel that their intimate, relational, and collective social needs were being met, their dispositions were generally more positive and engaged.

Lonely individuals’ negative social expectations tend to elicit behaviors from others that match those expectations. That reinforces lonely individuals’ expectations and increases the likelihood that they will behave in ways that push away the people who could satisfy their social needs. That has been demonstrated in experimental studies in which perceived social threats (e.g., competition, betrayal) cause lonely individuals to respond more quickly and intensely with distrust, hostility, and intolerance.

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The negative self-protective lens through which lonely individuals view their social world also influences how they interpret and cope with stressful circumstances. Lonely individuals are more likely to disengage or withdraw from stressors, whereas individuals who are not lonely are more likely to actively cope (e.g., problem solve) and seek tangible and emotional support from others. Withdrawing from stressful circumstances is reasonable in certain instances, but when applied generally to everyday hassles, it can lead to an accumulation of stress that becomes increasingly taxing and oppressive. Increased stress may be at least partially responsible for the risk of mental and physical disease in lonely individuals. For instance, loneliness has been associated with elevated levels of stress hormones, poor immune functioning, and health-jeopardizing changes in cardiovascular functioning.

Individual differences in loneliness are typically measured by using questionnaires developed for that purpose. The most frequently used instrument is the UCLA Loneliness Scale, first developed at the University of California, Los Angeles, by Daniel Russell and his colleagues. Responses to the 20 items on that scale provide an overall measure of loneliness along a continuum from low to high levels of loneliness. Other loneliness scales have been designed to measure different dimensions of loneliness (e.g., social and emotional loneliness).