The DOI matches its Crossref record; 54 of the 54 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Solitude: An Exploration of Benefits of Being Alone
Abstract
Christopher R. Long and James R. Averill, Solitude: An Exploration of Benefits of Being Alone, pp. 21–44. Historically, philosophers, artists, and spiritual leaders have extolled the benefits of solitude; currently, advice on how to achieve solitude is the subject of many popular books and articles. Seldom, however, has solitude been studied by psychologists, who have focused instead on the negative experiences associated with being alone, particularly loneliness. Solitude, in contrast to loneliness, is often a positive state—one that may be sought rather than avoided. In this article, we examine some of the benefits that have been attributed to solitude—namely, freedom, creativity, intimacy, and spirituality. In subsequent sections, we consider the environmental settings and personality characteristics conducive to solitude, how time spent alone is experienced differently across the life span, and the potential dangers related to the attractiveness of solitude. We conclude with a brief discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of solitude.
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Cites
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Cited by
Maes, M., Nelemans, S. A., Danneel, S., Fernández-Castilla, B., Van den Noortgate, W., Goossens, L., & Vanhalst, J. (2019) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0000719 · Cited by 207
Loneliness across time and space
Luhmann, M., Buecker, S., & Rüsberg, M. (2022) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-022-00124-1 · Cited by 197
Lay, J. C., Pauly, T., Graf, P., Mahmood, A., & Hoppmann, C. A. (2018) · The Journals of Gerontology Series B · doi:10.1093/geronb/gby044 · Cited by 90
Zhang, J., Jin, J., & Liang, Y. (2024) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su16020707 · Cited by 31
Metadata
- Authors
- Long, C. R., & Averill, J. R.
- Venue
- Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2003-03
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 21-44
- ISSN
- 0021-8308 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-5914
- OpenAlex
- W2086767322
- Cited by
- 416
- References
- 54
- FWCI
- 1.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
