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A large part of loneliness is linked to personality rather than external life circumstances, shows the most comprehensive study of its kind to date.
“A surprisingly large part of loneliness depends on the person themselves, rather than directly on their external living conditions,” explained René Mõttus, a co-author of the study and a Professor of Personality Psychology at the University of Tartu and the University of Edinburgh.
The multinational study, “Loneliness and Personality,” soon-to-be-published in the Journal of Personality, concluded that while there are many reasons people feel lonely, “we can summarize 50% of those reasons with what we call personality traits.”
The study looked at the five major personality traits, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, and found that loneliness is more linked to neuroticism (and less linked to extraversion) than previously understood.
A neurotic person has the general tendency to experience negative emotions, or “feeling blue”, as the study describes. Many people are perfectly happy without much social contact, Mõttus explained. There are also those who have many social connections, but still feel lonely. “And it wouldn’t help some people even if you brought them a hundred friends by airplane…” said Mõttus.
Personality’s strong link to our internal state extends beyond just loneliness. Mõttus’s research group has also studied life satisfaction, finding that personality can account for up to 80% of a person’s well-being.
In that context, other external factors have small effects, too – just surprisingly small ones. For example, a separate, soon-to-be-published study found that relationship status, whether a person is single or with a partner, accounts for only about two percent of their life satisfaction.
Only two percent! Wonderful news for all single people.
The method: how this study differs
The study was the largest of its kind, thanks to one of the world’s largest biobanks, the Estonian Biobank, founded in 2000. It included personality, genetic, demographic, familial relatedness, and longitudinal data.
In this loneliness study, the data of 22,254 people were analysed: 20,893 Estonian-speaking and 762 Russian-speaking participants from the Estonian Biobank, and 599 English-speaking participants from a different sample, mostly United Kingdom residents. The respondents had to assess their level of loneliness on a scale of 1-6. Additionally, their partners, friends, or family members also had to reflect on how lonely they perceived the person to be.
Previously, researchers have worried about the bias people have when assessing their own loneliness levels using survey items. Sometimes, the concern was that respondents might want to make their situation look better, or they wouldn’t be able to assess it well. That’s why in this study, second opinions were included. The truth shines through in what is common to two opinions.
That allowed the researchers to include more direct questions, as Paddy Maher, Mõttus’s collaborator at Goldsmiths, University of London, and lead author of the “Loneliness and Personality” study, said. “If it’s someone else that’s rating your loneliness, then there’s no reason for them to be shy about how lonely [you are],” Maher explained.
Interestingly, they found a difference between the British and Estonian respondents. In Estonia, being agreeable does not affect your loneliness. “Whereas in the English-speaking sample, the more agreeable you are… the less lonely you are,” Maher explained.
Who is the loneliest of us all?
The topic of loneliness and the idea of a “Loneliness pandemic” gained a lot of attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. But studies show that COVID did not contribute as much to a rise in loneliness as people expected. This aligns with the Maher and Mõttus research result: if loneliness is largely a stable, internal trait, then even a major external event like the pandemic wouldn’t change it as much as one might think.
In fact, loneliness is often misunderstood or misperceived.
“Despite the sort of narrative that it’s men that are lonely, and especially old men who are lonely, it’s actually the exact opposite,” Maher adds. In their research, they have found that young women are actually the loneliest, especially under 30.
In that light, the debate over the “male loneliness epidemic” seems misguided. “Maybe men are more disconnected, but women are more lonely,” Maher argues, emphasizing the point that these are two different things.
Disconnection vs loneliness
Maher suggests that the definition of loneliness should be updated. In his view, we speak too much about the emotion of loneliness and not enough about disconnection, the state of being objectively separate or lacking social connections.
Loneliness, Maher explained, may not be a rational response to being objectively disconnected.
“There are people who are extremely disconnected and are not lonely, and people who are very lonely but not disconnected,” he said. “They’ve got really good friendships around them, and they still feel loneliness.”
After this study, he feels even more strongly that we should be talking about disconnection rather than loneliness.
Samuel James Henry, a researcher in Mõttus’s group at the University of Tartu, agrees. He sees a parallel in his own work on mental health, which also focuses on a spectrum of traits rather than a simple “yes or no” diagnosis.
He stresses that the study’s findings should be seen as empowering, not deterministic. “I don’t think this study is an indictment of introverts,” he said. “The remedy to loneliness is not… go to a bar and talk to strangers. It’s more focused on this central subjective feeling of loneliness”.
This article is written by Marian Männi editor Anete Kruusmägi. This article was funded by the European Regional Development Fund through Estonian Research Council.
If this story made you think about the links between loneliness, personality, and well-being, you can find more articles about psychology and personality studies on our website. Check out a story how digital skills can mitigate feelings of loneliness and depression among the elderly.
