Loneliness effects on personality
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Abstract
Individuals feel lonely when they perceive a discrepancy between their desired and their actually experienced quantity and quality of social relationships. Prior research has demonstrated the importance of loneliness for various health-related aspects. In the present article, we extend the existing literature on loneliness by investigating its role for predicting personality traits and their development from late adolescence to early midlife. Using data from a representative German sample ( N = 12,402) sampling individuals from three different birth cohorts, we found loneliness to predict the levels of all Big Five traits except openness five years later. The effects of loneliness on the development of neuroticism and extraversion reached statistical significance but were only marginal in terms of effect size. Furthermore, we found that a self-regulatory focus geared to the prevention of negative events mediated the effects of loneliness on later levels of the Big Five.
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The single-item loneliness measure is reliable and converges very well with studies using multiple items.
“A direct single-item measure is used frequently in loneliness research and has been shown to be both reliable (Zhong et al. 2016) and to converge very well with studies using multiple items (Mund and Neyer 2019).”
From Patterns of Romantic Relationship Experiences and Psychosocial Adjustment From Adolescence to Young Adulthood (2021) · cites this paper as Mund and Neyer 2019
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Loneliness as experienced by adolescents and young adults: an explorative qualitative study
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- Authors
- Mund, M., & Neyer, F. J.
- Affiliations
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Mund, Marcus
- Venue
- International Journal of Behavioral Development
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2018-10-03
- Volume
- 43
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 136-146
- ISSN
- 0165-0254 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-0651
- OpenAlex
- W2894887993
- Cited by
- 45
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 6
- FWCI
- 4.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Journal of Behavioral Development (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Keywords
- loneliness, personality development, Big Five personality traits, neuroticism, extraversion, self-regulatory focus, prevention focus, interpersonal relationships, birth cohort
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