Lonely Today, Lonely Tomorrow: Temporal Dynamics of Loneliness in Everyday Life and its Associations With Psychopathological Symptoms

Abstract

Although theory emphasizes that loneliness fluctuates in everyday life, most previous studies focused on the general and stable tendency of feeling lonely. In the present study, we used daily diary data collected over two 4-week periods ( N1 = 3,309; N2 = 907) to examine different indicators of temporal dynamics of loneliness in everyday life and compare them with temporal dynamics of positive and negative affect. Moreover, we examined associations between temporal dynamics of loneliness and psychopathological symptoms (i.e., stress, anxiety, depression). We found large similarities in the variability, instability, and inertia of loneliness and affect. Moreover, all indicators of temporal dynamics of loneliness were related to psychopathological symptoms. However, these indicators had little added value above the average state and trait level of loneliness in predicting psychopathology. We discuss the potential of assessing the short-term dynamics of loneliness for the early detection of mental health issues.

Loneliness dynamics and physical health symptomology among midlife adults in daily life.

“…Consistent with the extant literature (e.g., Buecker et al, 2024;Jessen et al, 2018;Svensson et al, 2022), people with higher average daily loneliness reported greater and more severe physical health symptoms. Past work examining individual differences in loneliness and physical health symptomology has typically relied on single assessments of trait loneliness (e.g., Svensson et al, 2022).…”

“…To understand developmental or long-term stability (or change), then, researchers must consider short-term dynamics characterizing the phenomena. Pertinent to the current study, although loneliness has been considered a stable trait in research, it fluctuates across time (e.g., Buecker et al, 2024; Zhaoyang et al, 2022). Thus, understanding how loneliness functions in different time scales is a crucial factor to consider in relation to physical health symptoms.…”

“…Most existing research examines loneliness as a stable characteristic or trait, often assessed at one point in time. Yet, loneliness fluctuates in daily life (Buecker et al, 2024; van Roekel et al, 2018). Therefore, it is crucial to examine temporal dynamics in loneliness related to indicators of health to detect those at potential risk for health-related issues.…”

“…Rather, examining average levels of loneliness across multiple days may be more informative and sensitive to a person's daily experiences than a one-time trait measure. In support of this notion, average daily loneliness predicted psychopathological symptoms over and above trait loneliness (Buecker et al, 2024). Little research, however, has examined how average daily loneliness may be related to physical health.…”

“…Although not focused on physical health symptoms, one study (Buecker et al, 2024) found that average intraindividual variability in loneliness (i.e., average of deviations across weeks) was a significant predictor of stress and accounted for a significant portion of the variance in stress beyond average levels loneliness. As Buecker et al (2024) examined the average intraindividual variability of each person, it is unclear how short-term fluctuations in loneliness, rather than average fluctuations, may influence health. Whereas Buecker et al (2024) examined socioemotional outcomes, only one study to our knowledge has examined intraindividual variability in loneliness with respect to physical health—specifically sleep.…”