The experience of loneliness: The role of fears of compassion and social safeness
Journal article
Authors | Best, Talitha, Herring, Lee, Clarke, Chantelle, Kirby, James and Gilbert, Paul |
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Abstract | There are multiple factors associated with an increasing rate of loneliness. One common thread may be social disconnection and a reduced ability to feel safe in social settings for fear of giving to and receiving help from others. This study used an online survey to explore loneliness and its relationship with related psychological constructs of social connectedness, social safeness, subjective happiness, and fears of compassion in 177 adults (Female = 126), aged 18–70 years. The results showed that those with high loneliness reported significantly higher fears of expressing compassion for others and self, and receiving compassion from others, as well as lower reported social safeness, subjective happiness and social connection compared to those with reported low loneliness. Those with moderate levels of loneliness were not significantly different from the high loneliness group on fears of compassion towards others or measures of positive affect. The findings show that social safeness, and fears of receiving compassion from others or self are highly related to those with high levels of loneliness. |
Keywords | General Psychology; social safeness; loneliness; compassion; Psychosocial functioning; Fears of compassion; social connection; adults; mood |
Year | 2021 |
Journal | Personality and Individual Differences |
Journal citation | 183, p. 111161 |
Publisher | Elsevier BV |
ISSN | 0191-8869 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111161 |
Web address (URL) | http://hdl.handle.net/10545/625974 |
https://www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ | |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | |
hdl:10545/625974 | |
Publication dates | 31 Jul 2021 |
Publication process dates | |
Deposited | 06 Sep 2021, 15:58 |
Accepted | 23 Jul 2021 |
Rights | © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International | |
Contributors | University of Queensland and University of Derby |
File | File Access Level Open |
File | File Access Level Open |
File | File Access Level Open |
https://repository.derby.ac.uk/item/92qyy/the-experience-of-loneliness-the-role-of-fears-of-compassion-and-social-safeness
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