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The role of perceived social support for loneliness in the Chinese elderly: hope and core self-evaluations as mediators

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Abstract

To explore the effects of hope and core self-evaluation on perceived social support in elderly loneliness. We hypothesized that increased hope and core self-evaluation mediate the relationship between perceived social support and elderly loneliness. Older adults (n = 202) mean aged 65.5 years were investigated using the Perceived Social Support Questionnaire, Loneliness Scale, Adult Hope Scale, and Core Self-Evaluation Scale. The result showed the perceived family support dimension in Social Support, the will and agency dimensions in Hope, and core self-evaluations significantly and negatively predicted loneliness. Hope and core self-evaluations played a chain mediating role between perceived social support and loneliness. The significant mediating effects ranged from: perceived social support to core self-evaluation to loneliness, and perceived social support to hope to core self-evaluation to loneliness. We suggested that perceived social support can affect loneliness directly, as well as indirectly through the chain mediating effect of core self-evaluation and hope to core self-evaluations.

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The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Funding

This research was supported by the research fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China No.32160202.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, 730070, China

    Ronghua Zhang, Yue Gao & Pei Xie

Authors
  1. Ronghua Zhang
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  2. Yue Gao
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  3. Pei Xie
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Contributions

Conceptualization, ZHANG Ronghua and XIE Pei; Methodology, ZHANG Ronghua, GAO Yue; Formal Analysis, GAO Yue; Investigation, GAO Yue; Data Curation, ZHANG Ronghua; Writing – Original Draft Preparation, ZHANG Ronghua and GAO Yue.; Writing – Review & Editing, XIE Pei; Supervision, XIE Pei; Project Administration, ZHANG Ronghua; Funding Acquisition, XIE Pei.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pei Xie.

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Informed consent and ethical approval

Before the experiment, all participants gave informed written consent in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki), and the study protocol was approved by the Ethics Board of Northwest Normal University (ERB No. 2020060, dated on 03/06/2020). 

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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Zhang, R., Gao, Y. & Xie, P. The role of perceived social support for loneliness in the Chinese elderly: hope and core self-evaluations as mediators. Curr Psychol 42, 29172–29178 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03967-2

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