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Loneliness around the world: Age, gender, and cultural differences in loneliness
Open accessAbstract
The BBC Loneliness Experiment provided a unique opportunity to examine differences in the experience of lonelines across cultures, age, and gender, and the interaction between these factors. Using those data, we analysed the frequency of loneliness reported by 46,054 participants aged 16-99 years, living across 237 countries, islands, and territories, representing the full range of individualism-collectivism cultures, as defined by Hofstede (1997). Findings showed that loneliness increased with individualism, decreased with age, and was greater in men than in women. We also found that age, gender, and culture interacted to predict loneliness, although those interactions did not qualify the main effects, and simply accentuated them. We found the most vulnerable to loneliness were younger men living in individualistic cultures
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“Despite most studies on loneliness among the oldest-old in Western or high-income countries, much less is known about loneliness among the oldest-old in India, a country where collectivism, the family system, and more restrictive (i.e., more, tighter, or more demanding) norms about social relationships are emphasized, differences in correlates of loneliness may be expected [2,12,21,33].”
From Factors associated with loneliness in a national study among persons 80 years and older in India in 2017-2018 (2025) · cites this paper as [2]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Barreto, M., Victor, C., Hammond, C., Eccles, A., Richins, M. T., & Qualter, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Exeter (GB)
- Brunel University of London (GB)
- British Broadcasting Corporation (United Kingdom) (GB)
- University of Manchester (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Barreto, Manuela
- Qualter, Pamela
- Venue
- Personality and Individual Differences
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-02
- Volume
- 169
- Pages
- 110066
- ISSN
- 0191-8869 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7768187
- OpenAlex
- W3017163010
- Cited by
- 828
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 138 · 2025: 173 · 2024: 171 · 2023: 142 · 2022: 108 · 2021: 80
- FWCI
- 47.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Personality and Individual Differences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Brunel University Research Archive (BURA) (Brunel University London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust (209625/Z/17/Z)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Keywords
- loneliness, age differences, gender differences, cultural differences, individualism-collectivism, cross-cultural comparison, interaction effects, young men
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