Gratitude and Loneliness: Enhancing Health and Well-Being in Older Adults

Abstract

We experimentally investigated gratitude’s impact on loneliness and health in older adults. Participants were assigned to a daily gratitude writing exercise (treatment group) or a control group. Self-reported loneliness and health (i.e., subjective well-being, subjective health, health symptoms) were measured daily over a 3-week period. In support of our hypotheses, within-person variability in gratitude predicted differences in loneliness and health. Furthermore, those in the treatment group showed stronger cumulative effects of gratitude on loneliness and health symptoms when aggregated across the 20-day study. Additionally, a series of conditional, multilevel indirect effect models found that loneliness acted as a mechanism for gratitude’s differential impact on subjective well-being and health symptoms across conditions. Taken together, this study provides initial evidence that a simple gratitude exercise can strengthen associations among daily gratitude and loneliness and, consequently, improve health, for older adults.

Association between social capital and loneliness among older adults: a cross-sectional study in Anhui Province, China

“…However, a single item by asking participants how often they feel lonely, which potential responses included often, sometimes, and never, etc., also had been validated a good predictive validity in many studies [10,11,31]. Moreover, the use of a single question to assess loneliness has been proved to have relevant edges such as succinctness, easily understood, and well accepted by subjects [30]. Besides, in the process of data analysis, many studies dichotomized the status of loneliness into two groups (lonely, not lonely) by combining often and sometimes as the presence of loneliness, while rarely or never as the absence of loneliness [10,11,31,37].…”

“…Loneliness, the main outcome variable, was assessed by a single question in line with previous studies [10,11,30]. Participants were asked the question "Do you have the feeling of loneliness?"…”

Robotic Pet Use Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults

“…However, older adults who perceive their social connectedness more positively have better mental and physical health outcomes ( Cornwell and Waite, 2009 ). Given that is often impractical to address limited social networks, interventions may aim to address perceived loneliness to improve older adults’ wellness and psychological well-being ( Bartlett and Arpin, 2019 ; Krause-Parello et al, 2019 ; Schoenmakers et al, 2012 ).…”

Association between social capital and loneliness among older adults: A cross-sectional study in Anhui Province, China

“…However, a single item by asking participants how often they feel lonely, which potential responses included often, sometimes, and never, etc., also had been validated a good predictive validity in many studies [10,11,30]. Moreover, the use of a single question to assess loneliness has been proved to have relevant edges such as succinctness, easily understood, and well accepted by subjects [29]. Besides, in the process of data analysis, many studies dichotomized the status of loneliness into two groups (lonely, not lonely) by combining often and sometimes as the presence of loneliness, while rarely or never as the absence of loneliness [10,11,30,37].…”

“…Loneliness, the main outcome variable, was assessed by a single question in line with previous studies [10,11,29]. Participants were asked the question "Do you have the feeling of loneliness?"…”