Loneliness can persist in relationships when individuals have a negatively biased view of their partners’ regard and care for them.
This bias leads to doubt in partners’ responsiveness and undermines relationship quality and behaviors.
Attachment insecurity, which involves fear of rejection and discomfort with closeness, is related to loneliness and also linked to negative perceptions of partner regard.
Lemay, E. P., Jr., Cutri, J., & Teneva, N. (2024). How loneliness undermines close relationships and persists over time: The role of perceived regard and care. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 127(3), 609–637. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000451
Key Points
- Loneliness is associated with a negative bias in perceiving relationship partners’ regard and care in family relationships, friendships, and romantic relationships, even after controlling for partners’ actual regard and care.
- Lonely people underestimate their relationship partners’ regard and care relative to partners’ self-reports, friend informant reports, and objective observer assessments.
- The negative bias in perceiving partners’ regard and care partially explains the effects of loneliness on lower relationship quality, commitment, self-disclosure, and support.
- Negative perceptions of partners’ regard and care predict increased loneliness over time, contributing to the temporal stability of loneliness.
- The effects of loneliness on perceived regard and care are independent of self-esteem and attachment insecurity. Loneliness often explains the effects of self-esteem on interpersonal perceptions.
Rationale
Loneliness has pervasive harmful effects on mental health, cognitive performance, health behaviors, and mortality risk, making it a significant public health concern (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015; Matthews et al., 2019).
According to the evolutionary model of loneliness, lonely people are vigilant to social threats and negatively biased in their social perceptions in order to prioritize short-term self-protection over relationship repair (J. T. Cacioppo & Cacioppo, 2018b).
However, little research has examined how these biases operate in people’s close relationships and whether they explain the negative interpersonal consequences and temporal stability of loneliness.
The current research addresses these gaps by examining accuracy and bias in lonely people’s perceptions of their relationship partners’ regard and care, as well as the downstream consequences of these perceptions for relationship functioning and loneliness over time.
Method
The research includes three studies using diverse methods:
- Study 1: Cross-sectional design with 255 undergraduates reporting on family relationships, friendships, and romantic relationships
- Study 2: Dyadic study of 236 romantic couples with baseline surveys, friend informant reports, and 14 days of experience sampling
- Study 3: Dyadic study of 235 romantic couples with baseline surveys, behavioral observation of support interactions, 14 days of experience sampling at two timepoints, and a 6-month follow-up survey
Procedure
Participants completed surveys assessing loneliness, self-esteem, attachment insecurity, and perceptions of partners’ regard and care.
Participants also nominated relationship partners (family, friends, romantic partners) to provide ratings of their regard and care for participants.
Some participants completed daily surveys about relationship perceptions and behaviors. Some romantic couples engaged in videotaped support interactions later rated by objective coders.
Sample
Study samples included undergraduates and community adults ranging in age from 18-35 on average.
Participants were diverse in gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.
Participants were required to have relationship partners to nominate, so very isolated lonely people were likely excluded.
Measures
- Key measures included:
- UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, 1996)
- Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965)
- Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire (Fraley et al., 2000) to assess attachment anxiety and avoidance
- Perceived regard, perceived communal motivation, and perceived responsiveness measures to assess lonely people’s perceptions of their relationship partners
- Analogous measures completed by relationship partners to assess their actual regard and care for participants
- Relationship quality measures (e.g., satisfaction, commitment, self-disclosure, support provision)
Statistical measures
The studies used multilevel modeling to account for the nesting of repeated assessments (e.g., multiple relationship partners, daily reports) within participants and the nesting of participants within dyads.
Indirect effects of loneliness on relationship quality and behavior via perceived regard and care were tested using the Monte Carlo method with 20,000 simulations.
Results
Across the three studies:
- Loneliness was associated with more negative perceptions of relationship partners’ regard and care, independently of partners’ self-reported regard and care (Studies 1-3), friend informant reports (Study 2), and observer ratings of partners’ support behaviors (Study 3).
- Lonely people underestimated partners’ regard and care relative to partners’ self-reports (Studies 1-3), friend informant reports (Study 2), and observer ratings (Study 3).
- Loneliness indirectly predicted lower relationship quality (satisfaction, commitment) and relationship-promoting behaviors (self-disclosure, support provision) via lower perceived regard and care from partners (Studies 1-3).
- Daily perceived regard and care from partners predicted lower loneliness over time and partially explained the temporal stability of loneliness (Studies 2-3).
- The effects of loneliness were independent of self-esteem (Studies 1-3) and attachment insecurity (Studies 1 & 3) and often explained their effects on perceived regard and care.
Insight
This research provides strong evidence that lonely people have negatively biased perceptions of their relationship partners’ regard and care.
Lonely people doubt their partners’ acceptance and responsiveness to a greater degree than is warranted based on their partners’ reports and behaviors.
In turn, these unwarranted doubts about their partners’ regard and care undermine lonely people’s relationship satisfaction, commitment, and willingness to be vulnerable and responsive to their partners.
This may explain some of the interpersonal difficulties associated with loneliness, such as lower popularity, less self-disclosure, and less support provision.
Moreover, the negative perceptions of partners’ regard and care predict increased loneliness over time, suggesting a vicious cycle whereby loneliness fosters negative social cognition that further reinforces loneliness.
Taken together, these studies highlight the key role of negatively biased social cognition in understanding the relational causes and consequences of loneliness.
Strengths
Methodological strengths of this research include:
- Testing hypotheses across diverse relationship types (family, friends, romantic partners)
- Using multiple benchmarks (partner reports, friend informants, objective observers) to distinguish accurate and biased perception
- Assessing the constructs of interest at a trait level (baseline surveys) and in daily life (experience sampling) to enhance ecological validity
- Examining behavioral (videotaped interactions) and longitudinal (6-month follow-up) outcomes
- Replicating key findings across three studies with large sample sizes
Limitations
This research was constrained by some methodological limitations:
- Correlational designs preclude causal inference; experimental manipulation of loneliness is needed to establish causality
- Inclusion criteria requiring participants to have close relationship partners likely restricted the range of loneliness, attenuating effect sizes
- Use of undergraduate and community couples samples limits generalizability to older adults and unpartnered individuals
- Most studies were limited to a 6-month longitudinal timeframe; research spanning years is needed to examine long-term effects of loneliness on relationships
- Exclusive reliance on self-report measures of intrapersonal constructs (loneliness, self-esteem) allows for the possibility of monomethod bias inflating associations
Implications
Interventions targeting lonely people’s social cognition, particularly their appraisals of close relationship partners’ regard and care, may be effective for improving their relationships and reducing the severity and duration of loneliness.
Cognitive behavioral techniques that encourage lonely people to evaluate the accuracy of their perceptions and consider alternative explanations for partners’ behaviors may help correct negative biases.
Attachment-based therapies focused on developing a sense of security and trust with close others may also benefit lonely people.
When treating individuals with low self-esteem or insecure attachment styles, clinicians should assess and target loneliness as it may be a key underlying mechanism driving negative relational expectations and behaviors.
References
Primary reference
Lemay, E. P., Jr., Cutri, J., & Teneva, N. (2024). How loneliness undermines close relationships and persists over time: The role of perceived regard and care. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 127(3), 609–637. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000451
Other references
Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2018b). Loneliness in the modern age: An evolutionary theory of loneliness (ETL). In J. M. Olson (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 58, pp. 127–197). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2018.03.003
Fraley, R. C., Waller, N. G., & Brennan, K. A. (2000). An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 350–365. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.350
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614568352
Matthews, T., Danese, A., Caspi, A., Fisher, H. L., Goldman-Mellor, S., Kepa, A., Moffitt, T. E., Odgers, C. L., & Arseneault, L. (2019). Lonely young adults in modern Britain: Findings from an epidemiological cohort study. Psychological Medicine, 49(2), 268–277. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291718000788
Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400876136
Russell, D. W. (1996). UCLA loneliness scale (Version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(1), 20–40. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa6601_2
Keep Learning
- How might the evolutionary origins of loneliness explain its effects on social cognition in modern relationships? What are the costs and benefits of lonely people’s vigilance to social threats?
- Why do you think loneliness predicts negative perceptions of close relationship partners even in the absence of objective evidence of their negative regard or unresponsiveness? What cognitive biases or motivational factors might explain this discrepancy?
- How could the finding that negative perceptions of partners’ regard and care contribute to the stability of loneliness over time inform the design of interventions to reduce loneliness? What strategies could help break this cycle?
- Given that this research focused on lonely people who have at least some close relationships, how do you think the relational perceptions and behaviors of extremely isolated lonely people might differ? What methodological approaches could researchers use to study very lonely, disconnected individuals?
- Imagine a friend confided in you that they felt lonely and unloved by others, but you had observed that others do care for them. How might you apply insights from this research to validate your friend’s feelings while gently challenging their negative perceptions? What concrete suggestions could you offer your friend for enhancing their relationships?
