The International Journal of Indian Psychology

ISSN 2348-5396 (Online) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (Print)

Volume 8, Issue 4, Oct- Dec, 2020
DIP: 18.01.095/20200804, DOI: 10.25215/0804.095
http://www.ijip.in
Research Paper

Social-emotional loneliness and life satisfaction

Shaikh Soheel Jaleel1*

ABSTRACT
The intent of this study was to examine the effects of social and emotional loneliness on life
satisfaction. Gender differences in loneliness is examined, too. A sample of 396 (172 male, 224
female) university students were selected from Azad College. The short version of Social and
Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S); the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS);
and Demographic Information Form. Results of the independent t-test revealed that gender has
an effect on loneliness levels of the students and male students reported significantly greater
emotional loneliness than female students. In addition, the results of stepwise regression,
indicated that social and emotional loneliness were significant negative predictors of the life
satisfaction, however emotional loneliness was stronger predictor, rather than social loneliness.

Keywords: Social-Emotional Loneliness, Life Satisfaction

L oneliness is a basic fact of life and thus experienced to differing extents by everyone
at some stage in their life. Loneliness has been defined as the unpleasant experience
that occurs when a person's network of social relationships is significantly deficient in
either quality or quantity' (Perlman & Peplau, 1984). In particular, the discrepancy that exists
between the interpersonal relationships one wishes to have, and those that one perceives they
currently have, makes the individual to experience loneliness. Loneliness is also a
multidimensional phenomenon, varying in intensity, and across causes and circumstances. For
example, the loneliness of a child who has lost their mother is experienced differently to the
loneliness of a child who has no playmates (Heinrich & Gullone, 2006). In order to discover
this multidimensional nature of loneliness, Weiss (1973), distinguished between "emotional
loneliness" that is an absence of close or intimate relationships, whereas "social loneliness"
that is a lack of social networks.

Despite loneliness is experienced by both males and females, some demographic variables
such as gender, has been shown to be related to individual differences in severity of loneliness.
Nonetheless, gender differences that have reported in adult loneliness are not consistent
together. Some studies have shown males tended to be lonelier than females (e.g., Tümkaya,
Aybek & Çelik ,2008; Wiseman, Guttfreundb, & Luriec, 1995; Schultz, & Moore,1986).
Whereas several studies show females are lonelier than males (e.g., Borys, & Perlman,1985;
Bugay, 2007; Page, & Cole, 1991), or no significant difference (e.g., Tornstam, 1992)

1
Lecturer, Department of Psychology Mualana Azad College, Town Hall, Aurangabad, India
*Responding Author
Received: November 05, 2020; Revision Received: November 29, 2020; Accepted: December 22, 2020
© 2020, Jaleel S.; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 Social-emotional loneliness and life satisfaction

On the other hand, loneliness is one important indicator and vulnerability factor for life
satisfaction. The life satisfaction depends on one’s cognitive and subjective evaluation. In
other words, the life satisfaction is one’s global evaluation of some aspects of the quality of
his/her life such as family, school, friend etc according to his/her criteria (Diener, Emmons,
Larsen & Griffin, 1985).

Numerous studies, In the literature, have proved that lonely people report lower rates of life-
satisfaction (e.g., Swami et al., 2007; Neto, 1993; Goodwin, Cook, & Yung, 2001; Kim,
1997; Moore & Schultz, 1983), but little research focuses on the distinction between emotional
and social loneliness. This article provides insight into these overlooked dimensions of
loneliness and their relationships with life satisfaction in order to find out (1) whether the
loneliness and life satisfaction vary in accordance with gender of students; (2) whether there
would be a significant relationship between students' loneliness and life satisfaction; (3)
which one of the loneliness dimensions (social loneliness or emotional loneliness) is the
stronger predictor of the life satisfaction.
METHODOLOGY
Data were obtained from 396 (172 male, 224 female) college students that selected through
multi-stages cluster random sampling; from Maulana Azad College Arts & Science
Aurangabad (medicine, engineering and human sciences), Iran.
Measures
1. Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults- short form (SELSA-S): The
SELSA-S developed by DiTomasso, Brannen and Best (2004) and adapted to Persian
by Jowkar and Salimi (2009). The SELSA-S is a 15-item multidimensional measure of
loneliness and comprises three subscales: "Romantic", "Family" and "social"
loneliness. "Emotional loneliness" comes out of adding of romantic and family
loneliness scores. The reliability of the measure examined by internal consistency
Chronbach alpha method. Alpha coefficient for romantic, family and social loneliness
were .92, .77 and .83, respectively. Validity of the measure investigated by factor
analysis method.
2. The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS): The SWLS (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, &
Griffin, 1985) is a 5-item scale that measures global life satisfaction. The reliability of
the measure examined by internal consistency Chronbach alpha method. Alpha
coefficient for life satisfaction was .82. Validity of the measures investigated by factor
analysis method.
3. Demographic Information Form: A Demographic information form was used to
obtain detailed information such as age, gender, grade, et cetera.
RESULTS
Concerning the first aim of the study, independent t-test was used in order to whether the
scores for loneliness and life satisfaction would vary according to student’s gender (Table 1).
Table 1. Comparison of girls and boys participants in study variables
Variable male female t Sig.
M SD M SD
Loneliness 39.89 9.81 35.35 9.94 4.52 .000
Social loneliness 11.08 3.15 10.53 3.72 1.55 N.S
Emotional Loneliness 27.52 7.77 23.60 8.27 4.79 .000
Life Satisfaction 14.92 4.02 15.45 3.97 1.30 N.S

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 754
 Social-emotional loneliness and life satisfaction

As shown in Table 1, male loneliness score (M= 39.89, SD= 9.81) is significantly higher than
female students (M=35.35, SD=9.94) (t= 4.52, p<0.001). Further analysis showed that this
distinction is only in the emotional loneliness and males reported significantly greater
emotional loneliness (M= 27.52, SD= 7.77) than females(M=23.60, SD= 8.27) (t= 1.30,
p<0.001).

The second aim of the study was to investigate the association between loneliness and life
satisfaction. For this reason, Pearson correlation coefficient was computed (Table 2). As
shown in Table 2, There is a considerable negative correlation between loneliness and life
satisfaction (r=-0.44, p <0.001). Furthermore, the correlation between emotional loneliness
and life satisfaction (r=-0.38, p <0.001) is stronger than the correlation between social
loneliness and life satisfaction (r= -0.27, p <0.001).

Table 2. Correlation matrix of social emotional loneliness and life satisfaction

Variable 1 2 3 4
1. Loneliness 1
2. Social loneliness 0.58** 1
3. Emotional Loneliness 0.93** 0.25** 1
4. Life Satisfaction -0.44** -0.27** -0.38** 1
*p<0.05, **p<0.001

For the third research question, a stepwise regression analysis was used to determine the more
predictive variable for life satisfaction (Table 3). The stepwise results revealed that social
loneliness and emotional loneliness have a considerable contribution in predicting the life
satisfaction, but emotional loneliness is the stronger negative predictor of the life
satisfaction.

Table 3. Stepwise regression analysis results in predicting the life satisfaction

Steps Prediction Variable R R2 B B t Sig.
1 Emotional Loneliness 0.37 0.13 -0.17 -0.37 7.89 .000
2 Emotional Loneliness 0.40 016 -0.15 -0.31 6.60 .000
Social Loneliness -0.20 -0.17 3.70 .000

DISCUSSION
In this study, loneliness levels of the students were determined by using SELSA-S and Male
students’ loneliness (M=39.89) was higher than females(M=35.35). This specific finding of
the study is consistent with some previous findings (e.g., Tümkaya et al., 2008; Wiseman et
al., 1995; Moore & Schultz, 1983).

A strong possible explanation is that females talk about feelings males and share their feelings
with the friends more openly than males, so they experience the lower level of loneliness.
Enochs and Roland (2006; cited in Tümkaya et al., 2008) have emphasized that males
keep their feelings under control, and they do not cry in comparison with females. In
addition, developing close relationships require self-disclosure. Regarding to Dindia and
Allen (1992) women disclosed themselves slightly more than men; So that they have
experience loneliness less. Another possible explanation is that the social support networks,
such as family or peer are likely to be stronger for females than males in Indian culture.

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 755
 Social-emotional loneliness and life satisfaction

Further analyses showed that this gender difference is only observed in emotional loneliness;
hence males and females only have significant difference in emotional loneliness. According
to weiss (1973) Emotional loneliness results from the lack of a close, intimate attachment to
another person; whereas social loneliness results from the lack of a network of social
relationships in which the person is part of a group of friends who share common
interests and activities. It seemes that, nowadays in big cities, there is no difference in quantity
and expance of social relationship of males and females. So, the social loneliness level in
males and females is not significantly different. On the other hand, in females, the quality of
social relationships is better and intimacy in relationships is deeper than males; So the
emotional loneliness of females is lower than males. As already mentioned, developing
close and intimate relationships require self-disclosure and self-disclosure is easier for
females, so females have less emotional loneliness than males.
The analyses have not pointed out a meaningful difference between the life satisfaction
and the gender. According to Tümkaya et al., (2008) in our century, both males and females
carry equal responsibilities regarding the life and they, both, struggle with the similar daily
life concerns such as finishing the school, being successful at exams, finding a job, having a
good career and establishing good job relationships.
Another purpose of the study was relationship between loneliness and life satisfaction
that was examined by some researchers who have stressed that there is a significant
negative association between life satisfaction and loneliness( e.g., Goodwin et al., 2001;
Kim, 1997; Schumaker, Shea & Marnat,1993; Moore & Schultz, 1983). Similarly, the
results of this study revealed that life satisfaction negatively correlated with loneliness.
The life satisfaction depends on one’s cognitive and subjective evaluation of life. Additionally
a person’s thoughts about themselves and others, influence the likelihood of their forming
satisfying relationships, because these cognitions impact on how they interact, as well as how
they interpret interpersonal situations (Murphy & Kupshik, 1992; cited in Heinrich, &
Gullone, 2006). According to the Previous studies lonely individuals have generally negative
view of themselves and the world(Perlman & Peplau, 1981); So that these negative subjective
evaluations of these people from life lead to life dissatisfaction.
The results of the present study showed also that emotional loneliness is stronger negative
predictor of life satisfaction rather than social loneliness. As would expect Social
friendships are almost the source of close friendships; however social friendships are much
easier to achieve than close friendships. Hence the absence of close relationships (i.e.,
emotional loneliness) is more painful than the absence of social friendships(i.e., social
loneliness). Therefore, emotional loneliness is a stronger negative predictor for life
satisfaction.
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Acknowledgement
The author appreciates all those who participated in the study and helped to facilitate the
research process.

Conflict of Interest
The author declared no conflict of interest.

How to cite this article: Soheel . (2020). Social-emotional loneliness and life satisfaction.
International Journal of Indian Psychology, 8(4), 753-757. DIP:18.01.095/20200804,
DOI:10.25215/0804.095

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 757