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The Detrimental Effects of Adolescents’ Chronic Loneliness on Motivation and Emotion Regulation in Social Situations

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

In adolescence, when establishing and maintaining satisfying social relationships is a key developmental task, chronic loneliness is related to a host of negative outcomes. This study aimed at examining motivational and regulatory factors related to chronic loneliness. Specifically, this study investigated chronically lonely adolescents’ responses to hypothetical vignettes of social inclusion and exclusion, thereby focusing on (a) adolescents’ willingness and motivation to approach social inclusion and (b) emotion regulation strategies to deal with social exclusion. A total of 730 adolescents (Mage = 15.43 years, 72% female) participated in this four-wave study with annual loneliness assessments and hypothetical vignettes of social inclusion and exclusion at the final wave. After each social inclusion vignette, participants rated their willingness to accept the invitation for social inclusion and five types of motivation to approach the situation. After each social exclusion vignette, participants rated nine cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Compared to individuals following other trajectories, chronically lonely adolescents were less likely to accept invitations for social inclusion and the quality of their motivation for accepting such invitations was lower. Further, they were more likely to employ maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. In sum, this study adds significantly to understanding the motivational and regulatory processes that differentiate chronically lonely adolescents from adolescents following other trajectories.

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Notes

  1. These findings were obtained in the same dataset as the one employed in the current study.

  2. Note that the rumination item was not adopted from the CERQ, because an examination of that subscale indicated that this subscale measured adaptive self-reflection rather than maladaptive rumination. Therefore, we replaced the rumination item by an item from the Leuven Adaptation of the Rumination on Sadness Scale (LARSS; Raes et al. 2008). Detailed information is available upon request from the first author.

  3. The unbalanced gender ratio is mainly due to a predominantly female student body in one of the participating schools. The program of that school focuses on arts (with courses such as fine arts, visual arts, interior design, and architecture) and attracts mainly female students.

  4. Note that a different loneliness measure was used than the measure that was used in the pilot study (i.e., the UCLA loneliness scale). Although both measures stem from different research traditions, in which the UCLA Loneliness scale is a unidimensional loneliness measure whereas the LACA is a multidimensional loneliness measure, previous work repeatedly showed that the UCLA loneliness measure and the peer-related subscale of the LACA are strongly correlated (r = .76 in Goossens et al. 2009; r = .83 in Maes et al. 2017) and that both scales load on the same factor in factor analyses (Goossens et al. 2009; Maes et al. 2017).

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Author Contributions

J.V. conceived and designed the study, collected the data, performed statistical analysis, interpreted the data, and took the lead in writing up the manuscript. K.L. participated in the conception and design of the study, participated in data analyses and interpretation, and critically revised the manuscript. S.V. participated in the conception and design of the study, participated in interpretation of data, and critically revised the manuscript. B.S. participated in the conception and design of the study, participated in the interpretation of data and in writing as well as critically revising the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. KU Leuven, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Janne Vanhalst

  2. Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Brussels, Belgium

    Janne Vanhalst

  3. University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Stijn Van Petegem

  4. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Bart Soenens

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  1. Janne Vanhalst
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  2. Koen Luyckx
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  3. Stijn Van Petegem
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  4. Bart Soenens
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Correspondence to Janne Vanhalst.

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Vanhalst, J., Luyckx, K., Van Petegem, S. et al. The Detrimental Effects of Adolescents’ Chronic Loneliness on Motivation and Emotion Regulation in Social Situations. J Youth Adolescence 47, 162–176 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0686-4

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