The Social Reality of Feeling Lonely

Abstract

Loneliness has been defined as a dissatisfaction with one's social relationships. It is not clear, however, if loneliness is associated with having fewer close friends or fewer friends in general. Furthermore, this loneliness may be expressed either as a lack of relationships or as a lack of closeness in relationships. Finally, the lack of intimacy may be perceived only by the lonely person and may not reflect how the relationship appears to the partner. A total of 22 female and 20 male freshmen filled out a loneliness scale and social network questionnaire. Friends of the female subjects were also asked to fill out the social network questionnaire. Lonely persons listed as many best friends as nonlonely persons and were equally likely to have this choice reciprocated. Lonely subjects, however, did perceive a significantly lower level of intimacy in these relationship than did nonlonely subjects, and their "best friends" validated this perception. Lonely subjects did not differ in the number of friends in general that they listed, but their "friends" were significantly less likely to return this friendship choice.

Optimism, Pessimism, and Friendship

“…It may at first seem unusual that a variable such as loneliness was not related to number of friends. Nevertheless, this finding is consistent with prior research (Williams & Solano, 1983), which has found that lonely individuals do not have fewer friends than others; rather, they perceive their friendships as lacking intimacy.…”

The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

“…However, lonely people spend less time with friends and family-those who are most likely to fulfill their needs to belong-than nonlonely people (Jones, 1981). Furthermore, loneliness is much more strongly related to one's sense of social isolation than to objective indexes of one's social network, such as one's sheer number of friends (Williams & Solano, 1983). In one study, the correlation between self-reported loneliness and the degree to which people felt included and accepted by others was found to be -.71 (Spivey, 1990).…”

Optimistic, Approach‐oriented, and Avoidance Strategies in Social Situations: Three Studies on Loneliness and Peer Relationships

“…In these relationships, young people seek a shared understanding, trust, acceptance, relaxation, and joy (Berndt and Perry, 1990;Savin-Williams and Berndt, 1990). In turn, a lack of close and meaningful social relationships has been shown to be reflected in feelings of loneliness (Stokes, 1985;Wheeler, Reis and Nezlek, 1983;Williams and Solano, 1983) and, subsequently, low subjective well-being and non-adjustment (Berndt and Perry, 1990;Moore and Schultz, 1983). Not surprisingly, an increasing amount of studies have been carried out recently in this research field.…”