Prospective associations between loneliness and emotional intelligence

Loneliness has been linked cross-sectionally to emotional skill deficits (e.g., Zysberg, 2012), but missing from the literature is a longitudinal examination of these relationships. The present study fills that gap by examining the prospective relationships between loneliness and emotional functioning in young adolescents in England. One hundred and ninety-six adolescents aged 11-13 years (90 females) took part in the study and completed the youth version of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT-YV) and the peer-related subscale of the Loneliness and Aloneness Scale for Children and Adolescents (LACA) at two time points, which were 10 months apart. Prospective associations were obtained for male and female adolescents separately using cross-lagged statistical techniques. Our results showed prospective links between understanding and managing emotions and loneliness for both females and males. Perceiving and using emotions were prospectively linked to loneliness in males only. Possible explanations and directions for future research are discussed

Undesirable social relations as risk factors for loneliness among 14-year-olds in the UK: Findings from the Millennium Cohort Study

In the current study, data collected from Wave 6 of the Millennium Cohort Study (n = 11,872), a nationally representative sample survey of youth aged 14 years in the UK, are used to examine the prevalence of loneliness among this age-group, investigate the feelings associated with the experience of loneliness among youth, explore the risk factors for loneliness among young people, and learn how they coped with loneliness. Given recent findings that youth are vulnerable to loneliness, the study assesses the prevalence of loneliness among adolescents across some important sociodemographic characteristics, such as nation of residence, gender, and ethnicity. We also identify the kinds of social experiences that accompany loneliness during adolescence, exploring friendship, relations with parents, social support, and bullying. Our key finding is that, in addition to the absence of desired social relationships, which has been typically identified as the ultimate source of loneliness, the presence of undesirable and even harmful social relationships is a major source of loneliness. This study uniquely brings together psychological and sociological perspectives to understand the experience of youth loneliness

Loneliness Across the Life Span

Most people have experienced loneliness and have been able to overcome it to reconnect with other people. In the current review, we provide a life-span perspective on one component of the evolutionary theory of loneliness—a component we refer to as the reaffiliation motive (RAM). The RAM represents the motivation to reconnect with others that is triggered by perceived social isolation. Loneliness is often a transient experience because the RAM leads to reconnection, but sometimes this motivation can fail, leading to prolonged loneliness. We review evidence of how aspects of the RAM change across development and how these aspects can fail for different reasons across the life span. We conclude with a discussion of age-appropriate interventions that may help to alleviate prolonged lonelines

Prevalence and Social Inequality in Youth Loneliness in the UK.

Using data from the English arm of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, we examined the prevalence of loneliness for school-aged adolescents and how it is linked to social inequalities. The HBSC study collects data from 11-, 13-, and 15-year-olds, and is repeated every four years, allowing the exploration of prevalence rates of loneliness pre COVID-19 pandemic for comparison. We also explored whether loneliness was associated with socio-economic status (SES) and linked to academic attainment and health complaints. The total sample was 14,077 from 156 schools in England. Findings revealed a stable prevalence rate of 8.2% for loneliness from 2006 to 2014. We also found, across all survey years, (1) those aged 15 years were significantly lonelier than younger peers, (2) those who reported lower SES were lonelier than their more well-off peers, and (3) higher loneliness was associated with being '"below average" academically and reporting more health complaints. Conclusions: These prevalence data enable researchers, policymakers, and others to make comparisons with prevalence rates during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore whether there have been increases in loneliness among school-aged adolescents. Loneliness was consistently related to social inequalities, suggesting that targeted interventions that include whole systems changes are needed

Loneliness Around the World: Age, Gender, and Cultural Differences in Loneliness

© 2020 The Authors. The BBC Loneliness Experiment provided a unique opportunity to examine differences in the experience of lonelines across cultures, age, and gender, and the interaction between these factors. Using those data, we analysed the frequency of loneliness reported by 46,054 participants aged 16–99 years, living across 237 countries, islands, and territories, representing the full range of individualism-collectivism cultures, as defined by Hofstede (1997). Findings showed that loneliness increased with individualism, decreased with age, and was greater in men than in women. We also found that age, gender, and culture interacted to predict loneliness, although those interactions did not qualify the main effects, and simply accentuated them. We found the most vulnerable to loneliness were younger men living in individualistic cultures.Wellcome Trust [Funder reference: 209625/Z/17/Z]

Introduction to the special section on loneliness across the life span

Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. We provide an overview of the topics included in the special section of the International Journal of Behavioral Development on Loneliness Across the Life Span. We highlight the use of a life span approach to understanding loneliness and the different methodological approaches adopted by researchers. This special issue contributes toward the development of a holistic research agenda addressing loneliness across the life course and away from a focus solely upon specific age groups such as adolescents, young adults, or older adults who have been the focus of most loneliness research until comparatively recently

Investigating hyper-vigilance for social threat of lonely children

The hypothesis that lonely children show hypervigilance for social threat was examined in a series of three studies that employed different methods including advanced eye-tracking technology. Hypervigilance for social threat was operationalized as hostility to ambiguously motivated social exclusion in a variation of the hostile attribution paradigm (Study 1), scores on the Children’s Rejection-Sensitivity Questionnaire (Study 2), and visual attention to socially rejecting stimuli (Study 3). The participants were 185 children (11 years-7 months to 12 years-6 months), 248 children (9 years-4 months to 11 years-8 months) and 140 children (8 years-10 months to 12 years-10 months) in the three studies, respectively. Regression analyses showed that, with depressive symptoms covaried, there were quadratic relations between loneliness and these different measures of hypervigilance to social threat. As hypothesized, only children in the upper range of loneliness demonstrated elevated hostility to ambiguously motivated social exclusion, higher scores on the rejection sensitivity questionnaire, and disengagement difficulties when viewing socially rejecting stimuli. We found that very lonely children are hypersensitive to social threat

Childhood loneliness as a predictor of adolescent depressive symptoms: an 8-year longitudinal study

Childhood loneliness is characterised by children’s perceived dissatisfaction with aspects of their social relationships. This 8-year prospective study investigates whether loneliness in childhood predicts depressive symptoms in adolescence, controlling for early childhood indicators of emotional problems and a sociometric measure of peer social preference. 296 children were tested in the infant years of primary school (T1 5 years of age), in the upper primary school (T2 9 years of age) and in secondary school (T3 13 years of age). At T1, children completed the loneliness assessment and sociometric interview. Their teachers completed externalisation and internalisation rating scales for each child. At T2, children completed a loneliness assessment, a measure of depressive symptoms, and the sociometric interview. At T3, children completed the depressive symptom assessment. An SEM analysis showed that depressive symptoms in early adolescence (age 13) were predicted by reports of depressive symptoms at age 8, which were themselves predicted by internalisation in the infant school (5 years). The interactive effect of loneliness at 5 and 9, indicative of prolonged loneliness in childhood, also predicted depressive symptoms at age 13. Parent and peer-related loneliness at age 5 and 9, peer acceptance variables, and duration of parent loneliness did not predict depression. Our results suggest that enduring peer-related loneliness during childhood constitutes an interpersonal stressor that predisposes children to adolescent depressive symptoms. Possible mediators are discussed