Loneliness reflects a threat to people’s need to belong in close relationships, and is associated with lower self-esteem and emotional distress. The current 2-week daily diary study examined memory and prospection, or future oriented thinking, as potential mediators of these psychological responses to loneliness. Results suggest that daily loneliness biased people’s memories of inclusion that occurred yesterday and predictions of inclusion that will occur tomorrow and in the general future. People remembered more exclusion in the past and expected more exclusion in the future on days they felt lonely, independently of whether they actually were or would be excluded. Relative to memories, predictions of future exclusion appeared to be more biased by current loneliness and less accurate. In turn, biases involving predictions of future exclusion mediated effects of loneliness on daily self-esteem and positive affect, but not negative affect, suggesting that experiences of loneliness are associated with lower psychological well-being (i.e., lower self-esteem and reduced positive affect) partly because people tend to project those experiences into the future. Biases involving memories of past inclusion did not mediate the effects of daily loneliness on these outcomes. Both memories and forecasts of inclusion mediated the effects of trait loneliness on self-esteem and positive affect but not negative affect, suggesting that chronically lonely people may experience lower self-esteem and fewer positive emotions, in part, because of their tendencies to predict and remember social exclusion. Implications of these findings for understanding psychological responses to belongingness threats are discussed.

中文翻译：

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预测过去和未来的孤独感：对自尊和情感的影响

孤独反映出人们需要亲密关系的威胁，并且与较低的自尊和情绪困扰有关。当前的为期2周的每日日记研究检查了记忆和前瞻性或面向未来的思维，作为这些对孤独感的心理反应的潜在中介者。结果表明，每天的孤独感使人们对昨天发生的包容性记忆以及明天和整个将来会出现的包容性记忆产生偏见。人们在过去记得更多的排斥，并在将来感到孤独的日子里期望更多的排斥，而不管他们是否被排斥。相对于记忆，对未来排斥的预测似乎更倾向于当前的孤独感，而准确性较低。反过来，偏见涉及对未来孤独感对每日自尊的影响的预测和积极影响，而非负面影响，这表明孤独的经历与较低的心理健康（即较低的自尊和减少的正面影响）相关因为人们倾向于将这些经验投射到未来。涉及过去包容性记忆的偏向没有调解每日孤独感对这些结果的影响。包容的记忆和预测都介导了特质孤独对自尊和积极情感的影响，但没有消极情感的影响，这表明长期孤独的人可能会经历较低的自尊和更少的积极情绪，部分原因是因为他们倾向于预测和记住社会排斥。