Meaning in Life: A Major Predictive Factor for Loneliness Comparable to Health Status and Social Connectedness

Abstract

Objective: Loneliness is the subjective distress of feeling alone and has a strong impact on wellbeing and health. In addition to well-known predictors like isolation and poor health, a better understanding of the psychological determinants of loneliness would offer effective targets for future complementary interventions.Methods: In this cross-sectional observational study (N = 2,240), we compared the explanatory power of several important risk factors of loneliness with the affective, motivational, and cognitive aspects of the Meaning in Life (MiL) construct. Different nested linear models were compared including socio-demographic, lifestyles, social-connectedness, and self-rated health variables, to assess the overlapping and non-overlapping explanatory power of each of them.Results: Health status and MiL were found to be the most important predictors of loneliness, followed by social connectedness and, with a much lower weight, lifestyles, and socio-demographic factors. Within the MiL factor, the most cognitive component, sense of coherence, had a greater explanatory power than the more affective and motivational ones.Conclusion: Reduced MiL, the capacity of an individual to attach “value and significance” to life, is a crucial predictor to the feeling of loneliness. These results suggest that programs aiming to combat loneliness should go well beyond situational interventions and include more cognitive, value-centered interventions that enable individuals to define and pursue a meaningful vital plan.

Thwarted Belongingness Hindered Successful Aging in Chinese Older Adults: Roles of Positive Mental Health and Meaning in Life

“…Highly consistent with the role of presence of meaning, searching for meaning also works following the protective-protective model. These results confirmed the existential theory that an increased sense of meaning and purpose in life is often linked to greater stress coping capacity ( Frankl, 1984 ; Macià et al, 2021 ) and better outcomes on a range of health and well-being ( Yang et al, 2019 ). Therefore, thwarted belongingness exhibited less adverse effects on positive mental health and the protective effect of positive mental health on successful aging was strengthened for older adults with actively finding and maintaining meaning and purpose.…”

“…An empirical study on 588 older adults showed that higher levels of meaning and goal could buffer the impacts of interpersonal stressful events on depressive symptoms and life satisfaction ( Lee et al, 2022 ). Conversely, reduced meaning in life was found to be a crucial predictor to the feeling of loneliness ( Macià et al, 2021 ). Accordingly, we hypothesized that meaning in life would moderate the relationship between thwarted belongingness, positive mental health, and successful aging in older adults, which will be tested in the current study.…”

Human Brain Resilience: A Call to Action

“…5 They argue that "in times of distress, crisis, or disaster, human resilience depends on the richness and strength of social connections, as well as active engagement in groups and communities." There certainly is a rich literature on the negative impact of the subjective feeling of loneliness on an individual's ability to cope with stressor, insult, and injury, and sustain mental health, [6][7][8][9] and it is tempting to conclude that promoting social bonds and relations would enhance such resilience. However, the experimental evidence for that is still rather meager.…”

How the COVID-19 Pandemic and its Consequences Affect the Presence of and Search for Meaning of Life: A Longitudinal Study

“…Third, individuals with a partner had higher scores on PML and lower scores on SML at baseline than single people, which is also consistent with our initial hypothesis. Loneliness has been shown to be associated with low PML (Macià et al, 2021 ; Stillman et al, 2009 ). Although the conceptualization of loneliness is a subjective experience that involves being apart from others, rather than a lack of companionship (Bekhet et al, 2008 ), the physical isolation due to the lockdown could equate this experience -especially for people who lived alone and/or did not have enough technological skills or resources to communicate with their loved ones-.…”