Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK.
Department of Psychology I, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany.
Br J Psychol. 2024 Nov;115(4):641-664. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12713. Epub 2024 May 29.
Subjective feelings of loneliness emerge due to unsatisfactory social relationships, representing a major risk for mental and physical well-being. Despite its social nature, evidence on how loneliness affects social behaviours and expectations is lacking. Using Bayesian analyses and economic games, we show in three different studies that lonelier individuals trusted their partners to a greater extent despite less favourable trustworthiness expectations, showing a greater discrepancy between their trusting behaviours and their expectations of others' trustworthiness. Such discrepancy was reversed in extravert individuals who also reported to be less lonely. These results provide evidence on two opposing effects of loneliness as a motivator for social connections and promoter of social withdrawal, and demonstrate the moderating role of personality traits. This work contributes to a better understanding of how loneliness impacts social behaviour and social expectations, with important downstream clinical implications for varying health conditions associated with heightened feelings of loneliness.
孤独感源于不满意的社交关系，是心理和身体健康的主要风险因素。尽管孤独具有社会性，但关于孤独如何影响社交行为和期望的证据还很缺乏。我们通过贝叶斯分析和经济博弈，在三项不同的研究中发现，尽管对他人的可信度预期较差，但更孤独的个体在更大程度上信任他们的伙伴，表现出他们的信任行为与其对他人可信度的预期之间更大的差异。这种差异在性格外向的个体中得到了逆转，他们也报告说自己不那么孤独。这些结果提供了孤独作为社交联系的动机和促进社交退缩的两种相反作用的证据，并证明了人格特质的调节作用。这项工作有助于更好地理解孤独感如何影响社交行为和社会期望，对于与孤独感增强相关的各种健康状况具有重要的临床意义。
