Department of Personality Psychology and Psychological Assessment, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Department of Educational Measurement, Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2020 Aug;119(2):497-516. doi: 10.1037/pspp0000262. Epub 2019 Sep 26.
Individuals feel lonely when they perceive a discrepancy between their aspired and their actually experienced amount of closeness and intimacy in social relationships. In the present study, we disentangled developmental constancy factors, time-varying factors such as person-environment transactions, and stochastic mechanisms as sources of interindividual differences in loneliness by applying STARTS models in nationally representative samples from Germany (n = 13,397), Switzerland (n = 6,599), Australia (n = 30,496), and The Netherlands (n = 12,810). Across the 4 studies, we found trait-like sources reflecting developmental constancy factors and the influence of time-varying factors to account for 19-43% and 23-30% of interindividual differences in loneliness, respectively. Depending on the type of measurement instrument, state-like stochastic mechanisms accounted for 30% to 55% of interindividual differences, whereby multi-item measures were less affected by stochastic mechanisms. We found gradual sex differences but considerable differences between age groups regarding the amount of interindividual differences in loneliness accounted for by the three sources. Taken together, the results demonstrate that interindividual differences in loneliness are to a large degree trait-like. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for theory and measurement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
当个体感知到社交关系中渴望的亲密程度与实际经历的亲密程度之间存在差异时，他们会感到孤独。在本研究中，我们通过在德国（n=13397）、瑞士（n=6599）、澳大利亚（n=30496）和荷兰（n=12810）的全国代表性样本中应用 STARTS 模型，将发展恒常性因素、随时间变化的因素（如人与环境的相互作用）和随机机制分离开来，这些因素是个体间孤独差异的来源。在这 4 项研究中，我们发现反映发展恒常性因素的特质性来源和随时间变化的因素的影响分别解释了孤独的个体间差异的 19%-43%和 23%-30%。根据测量工具的类型，状态样随机机制占个体间差异的 30%-55%，其中多项目测量受随机机制的影响较小。我们发现，在孤独的个体间差异方面，存在逐渐的性别差异，但在不同年龄组之间存在相当大的差异。总的来说，这些结果表明，个体间的孤独差异在很大程度上是特质性的。基于这些发现，我们讨论了对理论和测量的影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。
