Why do the lonely stay lonely? Chronically lonely adolescents’ attributions and emotions in situations of social inclusion and exclusion.

Vanhalst, Janne; Soenens, Bart; Luyckx, Koen; Petegem, Stijn Van; Weeks, Molly S.; Asher, Steven R.

doi:10.1037/pspp0000051

Cited by 130 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Negative self-cognitions are found in children that have low peer support; those that have experienced peer victimisation (Sinclair et al 2012), or report to be lonely (Vanhalst et al 2015). Negative self-cognitions colour individuals' appraisal and behaviour in interpersonal situations and negatively influence individuals' memories of these situations (Beck, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adolescent friendships predict later resilient functioning across psychosocial domains in a healthy community cohort

Harmelen¹

2016

Preprint

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Background: Adolescence is a key time period for the emergence of psychosocial and mental healthdifficulties. To promote adolescent adaptive (‘resilient’) psychosocial functioning, appropriate conceptualizationand quantification of such functioning and its predictors is a crucial first step. Here,we quantify resilient functioning as the degree to which an individual functions better or worse thanexpected given their self-reported childhood family experiences, and relate this to adolescent familyand friendship support.Method: We used Principal Component and regression analyses to investigate the relationship betweenchildhood family experiences and psychosocial functioning (PSF: psychiatric symptomatology,personality traits and mental wellbeing) in healthy adolescents (the Neuroscience in Psychiatry Network;N=2389; ages 14-24). Residuals from the relation between childhood family experiences andPSF reflect resilient functioning; the degree to which an individual is functioning better, or worse,than expected given their childhood family experiences. Next, we relate family and friendship supportwith resilient functioning both cross-sectionally and one year later.Results: Friendship and family support were positive predictors of immediate resilient psychosocialfunctioning, with friendship support being the strongest predictor. However, whereas friendshipsupport was a significant positive predictor of later resilient functioning, family support had a negativerelationship with later resilient psychosocial functioning.Conclusions: We show that friendship support, but not family support, is an important positive predictorof both immediate and later resilient psychosocial functioning in adolescence and early adulthood.Interventions that promote the skills needed to acquire and sustain adolescent friendshipsmay be crucial in increasing adolescent resilient psychosocial functioning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adolescent friendships predict later resilient functioning across psychosocial domains in a healthy community cohort

Harmelen¹

2016

Preprint

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“…Information about the duration of loneliness or multiple assessments over a longer period are needed to examine whether the association with state loneliness differs depending on how long trait loneliness has persisted, as the duration of loneliness may affect daily life experiences. For example, Vanhalst et al (2015) found evidence for hypervigilance to social exclusion and hypovigilance to social inclusion only in adolescents who experienced loneliness throughout adolescence, which could indicate that this group may encounter particularly negative social experiences in daily life as well. Further research should measure the duration of trait loneliness in order to examine whether the duration of loneliness affects daily life experiences.…”

Section: Strengths and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trait and State Levels of Loneliness in Early and Late Adolescents: Examining the Differential Reactivity Hypothesis

Roekel

Verhagen

Engels

et al. 2016

Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology

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According to the differential reactivity hypothesis, lonely individuals respond differently to their environment compared to nonlonely individuals, which may sustain their loneliness levels. However, this interesting hypothesis has not yet been explored in daily life: Do lonely individuals feel lonely all the time, or do they feel more or less lonely in specific social contexts? The main aim of the present study was to test the differential reactivity hypothesis in daily life by examining in three samples whether trait levels of loneliness affected the levels of state loneliness in different social contexts. We used baseline questionnaires to measure trait loneliness and the Experience Sampling Method to collect data on state loneliness, in early adolescents (N = 269, M age = 14.49, 59% female) and late adolescents (N = 223, M age = 19.60, 91% female) from the Netherlands and late adolescents from the United States (N = 126, M age = 19.20, 51% female). Results provided evidence for the differential reactivity hypothesis in the total sample, as high lonely adolescents experienced higher levels of state loneliness in situations in which they were alone than low lonely adolescents, but also benefited more from being with intimate company than low lonely adolescents. In sum, the present study provided evidence for the differential reactivity hypothesis and showed that the experience of loneliness in daily life was remarkably similar across age and culture. Our findings provide important insights into the daily experiences of trait lonely people, which may provide starting points for interventions.

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“…In line with this idea, earlier research showed loneliness was related to having a hostile attribution bias (Qualter et al 2013), and to a self-defeating attribution style in which social success is attributed to external factors and social failure to internal factors (Crick and Ladd 1993). In addition, chronic loneliness is related to the tendency to attribute social exclusion to internal and stable factors, and social inclusion to unstable and external factors (Vanhalst et al 2015). Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that lonely adolescents may view the quality of their friendships more negatively than their friends do (Lodder et al 2015), and that they show greater negative affect tin response to negative company (van Roekel et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adolescent Loneliness and Social Skills: Agreement and Discrepancies Between Self-, Meta-, and Peer-Evaluations

Lodder

Goossens

Scholte

et al. 2016

J Youth Adolescence

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Lonely adolescents report that they have poor social skills, but it is unknown whether this is due to an accurate perception of a social skills deficit, or a biased negative perception. This is an important distinction, as actual social skills deficits require different treatments than biased negative perceptions. In this study, we compared self-reported social skills evaluations with peer-reported social skills and meta-evaluations of social skills (i.e., adolescents’ perceptions of how they believe their classmates evaluate them). Based on the social skills view, we expected negative relations between loneliness and these three forms of social skills evaluations. Based on the bias view, we expected lonely adolescents to have more negative self- and meta-evaluations compared to peer-evaluations of social skills. Participants were 1342 adolescents (48.64 % male, M age = 13.95, SD = .54). All classmates rated each other in a round-robin design to obtain peer-evaluations. Self- and meta-evaluations were obtained using self-reports. Data were analyzed using polynomial regression analyses and response surface modeling. The results indicated that, when self-, peer- and meta-evaluations were similar, a greater sense of loneliness was related to poorer social skills. Loneliness was also related to larger discrepancies between self- and peer-evaluations of loneliness, but not related to the direction of these discrepancies. Thus, for some lonely adolescents, loneliness may be related to an actual social skills deficit, whereas for others a biased negative perception of one’s own social skills or a mismatch with the environment may be related to their loneliness. This implies that different mechanisms may underlie loneliness, which has implications for interventions.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10964-016-0461-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Why do the lonely stay lonely? Chronically lonely adolescents’ attributions and emotions in situations of social inclusion and exclusion.

Cited by 130 publications

References 88 publications

Adolescent friendships predict later resilient functioning across psychosocial domains in a healthy community cohort

Adolescent friendships predict later resilient functioning across psychosocial domains in a healthy community cohort

Trait and State Levels of Loneliness in Early and Late Adolescents: Examining the Differential Reactivity Hypothesis

Adolescent Loneliness and Social Skills: Agreement and Discrepancies Between Self-, Meta-, and Peer-Evaluations

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