ABSTRACT

Loneliness can negatively impact peoples’ lives. However, it is unclear whether loneliness influences, and is influenced by, people’s social experience. Consistent with socio-cognitive models of loneliness, we hypothesised that loneliness predicts experienced social behaviour and vice versa. We tested these hypotheses in a sample of N = 245 college students (31.4% male) who participated in a two-year longitudinal survey. A subsample (n = 87, 24.1% male) also participated in a 14-day diary survey. This enabled us to test both long- and short-term associations between loneliness and social behaviour. Moreover, we investigated between-person (i.e. prolonged) and within-person (i.e. temporary) effects between loneliness and reports of social behaviour. Multilevel modelling showed that loneliness predicted individuals’ reports of own and others’ positive social behaviour, and reports of others’ positive social behaviour predicted loneliness at the between-person level (while most of the effects at the within-person level were nonsignificant) in both the short and long term. The results suggest that people with higher levels of prolonged (but not temporary) loneliness tend to report less positive social behaviour, and people who experience others’ behaviour less positively are more likely lonely. This study highlights the relation between prolonged loneliness and social behaviour.

摘要

孤独会对人们的生活产生负面影响。然而，孤独感是否会影响人们的社会经验并受其影响尚不清楚。与孤独的社会认知模型一致，我们假设孤独预示着经历过的社会行为，反之亦然。我们在N  = 245 名大学生（男性占 31.4%）的样本中测试了这些假设，这些学生参与了一项为期两年的纵向调查。一个子样本 ( n = 87, 24.1% 男性）也参与了为期 14 天的日记调查。这使我们能够测试孤独与社会行为之间的长期和短期关联。此外，我们调查了孤独与社会行为报告之间的人与人之间（即长期）和人内（即暂时）影响。多层次模型表明，孤独预测了个人对自己和他人积极社会行为的报告，而其他人积极社会行为的报告预测了人际层面的孤独感（而人际层面的大部分影响并不显着）。短期和长期。结果表明，长期（但不是暂时的）孤独感较高的人倾向于报告不太积极的社会行为，对他人行为不太积极的人更可能感到孤独。这项研究强调了长期孤独与社会行为之间的关系。