Loneliness and cortisol: Momentary, day-to-day, and trait associations

Abstract

Summary In attempts to understand the social determinants of health, strong associations have been found between measures of loneliness, physiological stress processes, and physical and mental health outcomes. Feelings of loneliness are hypothesized to have implications for physiological stress processes, including activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. In a community sample of young adults, multilevel modeling was used to examine whether trait and state feelings of loneliness were related to changes in levels of the stress-sensitive hormone cortisol, and whether the associations between loneliness and cortisol were mediated or moderated by the presence of concurrent depression or high levels of chronic life stress. Results indicated that trait loneliness was associated with a flattening of the diurnal cortisol rhythm. In addition, both daily and momentary state variations in loneliness were related to cortisol. Prior-day feelings of loneliness were associated with an increased cortisol awakening response the next morning and momentary experiences of loneliness during the day were associated with momentary increases in cortisol among youth who also had high chronic interpersonal stress. Results were significant after covarying current depression, both chronic and momentary reports of stress, and medical and lifestyle covariates. This study expanded on prior work by investigating and revealing three different time-courses of association between loneliness and HPA axis activity in young adults: trait, daily and momentary.

Investigating Hypervigilance for Social Threat of Lonely Children

“…Amongst adolescents, loneliness is related to reports of interpersonal stress and fears of being rejected by peers (Doane & Adam, 2010). Lonely adults and children also make more selfderogatory attributions compared to non-lonely people, seeing themselves as less likable than their peers (Snodgrass, 1987;Qualter & Munn, 2002).…”

“…And, although peer rejection has been shown to be associated with loneliness during childhood (Asher, Parkhurst, Hymel, & Williams, 1990; Boivin, Hymel and Bukowski, 1995), there is some indication that perceived peer rejection rather than actual rejection plays a crucial role in these associations, with a large proportion of lonely children being well liked by their peers (Qualter & Munn, 2002. Given this, it is surprising that there has been no concerted focus on the (HSTH) cognitions related to loneliness the childhood.Additional support for HSTH comes from research showing that lonely adults also feel more threatened in social encounters and worry more about being disliked by others (Cacioppo, Ernst, et al, 2000;Duck, Pond & Leatham, 1994;Jones et al, 1983;Jones et al, 1981).Amongst adolescents, loneliness is related to reports of interpersonal stress and fears of being rejected by peers (Doane & Adam, 2010). Lonely adults and children also make more selfderogatory attributions compared to non-lonely people, seeing themselves as less likable than their peers (Snodgrass, 1987;Qualter & Munn, 2002).…”

Genome-Wide Association Study of Loneliness Demonstrates a Role for Common Variation

“…Studies designed to identify the mechanisms underlying the association between loneliness and mortality have found that loneliness is associated with increased hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) activity (Adam et al, 2006;Cacioppo et al, 2006;Doane and Adam, 2010;Glaser et al, 1985;Kiecolt-Glaser et al, 1984;Steptoe et al, 2004), altered gene expression indicative of decreased inflammatory control and increased glucocorticoid insensitivity (Cole et al, 2007(Cole et al, , 2011, increased inflammation, elevated vascular resistance, and blood pressure (Hackett et al, 2012;Hawkley et al, 2006Hawkley et al, , 2010bJaremka et al, 2013), higher rates of metabolic syndrome (Whisman, 2010), diminished immunity (Dixon et al, 2006;Glaser et al, 2005;Kiecolt-Glaser et al, 1984;Pressman et al, 2005;StraitsTröster et al, 1994), increased risk for age-related cognitive decline and dementia (Wilson et al, 2007), and increased sleep fragmentation (Cacioppo et al, 2002;Hawkley et al, 2010a;Jacobs et al, 2006;Kurina et al, 2011). Cross-lagged panel analyses have also shown that loneliness has also been associated with changes in psychological states that can contribute to morbidity and mortality, including increased depressive symptomatology (Booth, 2000;Cacioppo et al, 2006Cacioppo et al, , 2010VanderWeele et al, 2011), lower subjective wellbeing (Kong and You, 2013;VanderWeele et al, 2012), heightened vigilance for social threats (Cacioppo et al, 2015b), and decreased executive functioning (Baumeister and DeWall, 2005;Cacioppo et al, 2000;…”

Exploring day-to-day dynamics of daily stressor appraisals, physical symptoms and the cortisol awakening response

“…In a 28-day study of daily experience and cortisol, low cortisol levels in the morning were related to anxiety, exhaustion, sleepiness at awakening and poor health the day before; while high levels of cortisol in the evening were related to stress and poor health (Dahlgren et al, 2009). Doane and Adam (2010) demonstrated the importance of day-to-day designs by showing that prior-day feelings of loneliness, worry or stress produced disruptions to the CAR the following morning, but not when the CAR variables were averaged across the study days. In addition, loneliness and stress had divergent effects on the CAR (prior-day loneliness predicted increases in the CAR the following morning, and prior-day stress predicted decreases in waking cortisol levels the following morning), highlighting the differential effects of different forms of emotional strain.…”