Like intimate loneliness, social loneliness is found in women as well as men, although there is some evidence that this dimension may tend to play a slightly greater role in influencing loneliness in women than in men (Hawkley et al., 2005). The best (negative) predictor of relational loneliness in middle-aged and older adults is the frequency of contact with significant friends and family, even https://hookupdate.net/nl/bbwdesire-overzicht/ after statistically controlling for the other two dimensions of loneliness (Hawkley et al., 2005). Nevertheless, it is not the quantity of friends, but the quality of significant friends/confidants that counts (Hawkley et al., 2008). This point is crucial when diagnosing loneliness.

Collective Loneliness

The third dimension is collective loneliness, an aspect that Weiss (1973) did not identify in his qualitative studies. Collective loneliness refers to a person’s valued social identities or “active network” (e.g., group, school, team, or national identity) wherein an individual can connect to similar others at a distance in the collective space. As such, this dimension ) described as the outermost social layer, which can include among 150 and 1500 people (the “active network”) who can provide with information through weak ties (Granovetter, 1973), as well as low-cost support (Dunbar, 2014). The best (negative) predictor of collective loneliness found in middle-age and older adults was the number of voluntary groups to which individuals belonged: the more voluntary associations to which individuals belonged, the lower their collective loneliness, again even after statistically controlling for the two other dimensions. Read More The relational space is delimitated by the multi-modal (visual, auditory, and tactile) space that permits face-to-face communications and interactions