Loneliness

Loneliness has been of considerable concern, especially since the COVID epidemic. These two studies may be helpful to those who work with clients who report being lonely. First, Lemay, Jr., Cutri & Teneva (2024) published “How Loneliness Undermines Close Relationships and Persists Over Time: The role of perceived regard and care” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  Here’s the edited abstract:

Although loneliness has been associated with negative perceptions of social life in past research, little is known about the implications of loneliness for interpersonal perception within close relationships. The current research includes three studies (total N = 1,197) suggesting that loneliness is associated with a negative bias in perceiving relationship partners’ regard and care and that this bias partially accounts for the effects of loneliness on lower relationship quality and problematic interpersonal behaviors. Loneliness was associated with perceiving family members (Study 1), friends (Studies 1 and 2), and romantic partners (Studies 1–3) as less admiring and caring, and these effects were independent of a variety of accuracy benchmarks, including partners’ self-reports (Studies 1–3), reports from informants (Study 2), and objective observers’ assessments of partners’ responsive behavior (Study 3). Loneliness also predicted changes in perceptions of partners’ regard over time (Study 3) and indirectly predicted lower relationship satisfaction, commitment, self-disclosure, and support provision through negative perceptions of relationship partners’ regard and care (Studies 1–3). Studies 2 and 3 replicated these results in terms of day-to-day experiences (total daily observations = 16,064). The negative perceptions of partners’ regard and care associated with loneliness predicted subsequent loneliness (Studies 2–3). Loneliness effects were statistically independent of self-esteem and attachment insecurity in all studies. Taken together, these findings suggest that, due to negative biases in perceiving relationship partners’ regard and care, loneliness may compromise the quality of close relationships, motivate interpersonally problematic behaviors, and become persistent. Implications are discussed. 

I like this study for several reasons including its use of the three kinds of close relationship. I think it’s significant that attachment insecurity and low self-esteem don’t explain the findings. The negative biases clearly have negative impacts on well-being. The next study looks at personality traits. Freilich, McGue, South, Roisman & Krueger (2023) published “Connecting Loneliness with Pathological Personality Traits: Evidence for genetic and environmental mediation from a study of older twins” in Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment.  Here’s the abstract:

Loneliness has broad public health importance, especially in older adulthood, and there is some evidence suggesting it is associated with several personality disorders (PDs). The etiology of these PD-loneliness associations, however, has rarely been studied, especially in the context of the maladaptive traits of the DSM-5 alternative model of personality disorder (AMPD). To address these limitations, we estimated phenotypic, genetic, and unique environmental associations between loneliness and maladaptive personality traits in a sample of older adults from the Minnesota Twin Registry (n = 1,356, Mage = 70.4). Loneliness was moderately to strongly associated with each of the AMPD domains of negative affect, detachment, antagonism, disinhibition, and psychoticism (r = .22–.58), with evidence of both genetic (rg = .45–.75) and unique environmental (re = .10–.48) influences explaining the associations to varying degrees. We argue that loneliness may be an underappreciated concomitant of personality pathology, with PD traits perhaps underlying its development. Indeed, these findings suggest that loneliness may be a manifestation of the genetic and environmental forces that also lead to pathological personality variation. 

I’ve written before about the AMPD and see research on it as helpful to practitioners. This is a large sample of older adults and suggests that it may be important to target loneliness when dealing with seniors who exhibit personality pathology. Obviously we need more research, but I found both articles helpful.