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Lonely Alone or Lonely Together? A Cultural-Psychological Examination of Individualism–Collectivism and Loneliness in Five European Countries

Average levels of loneliness have been suggested to differ between collectivistic and individualistic countries. However, we know little about how individual-level collectivism (i.e., perceiving the self or one’s social environment as collectivistic) is related to loneliness. As individualism and co...

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Autores principales: Heu, Luzia C., van Zomeren, Martijn, Hansen, Nina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6449799/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30264659
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167218796793
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author Heu, Luzia C.
van Zomeren, Martijn
Hansen, Nina
author_facet Heu, Luzia C.
van Zomeren, Martijn
Hansen, Nina
author_sort Heu, Luzia C.
collection PubMed
description Average levels of loneliness have been suggested to differ between collectivistic and individualistic countries. However, we know little about how individual-level collectivism (i.e., perceiving the self or one’s social environment as collectivistic) is related to loneliness. As individualism and collectivism imply different ideals about how individuals should be embedded in social relationships, they may imply distinct risks for loneliness. Specifically, less demanding ideals in individualism should imply the risk of lower actual social embeddedness; more demanding ideals in collectivism should imply the risk of higher perceived discrepancies from such ideals. Two cross-sectional survey studies in five European countries (Study 1: Austria, N = 239; Study 2: Italy, Portugal, Sweden, The Netherlands, total N = 860) revealed that higher collectivism was related to lower loneliness. Individualism indeed implied lower social embeddedness, but collectivism did not imply higher discrepancies from ideal embeddedness. We discuss implications for reducing loneliness in different cultural contexts.
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spelling pubmed-64497992019-04-29 Lonely Alone or Lonely Together? A Cultural-Psychological Examination of Individualism–Collectivism and Loneliness in Five European Countries Heu, Luzia C. van Zomeren, Martijn Hansen, Nina Pers Soc Psychol Bull Articles Average levels of loneliness have been suggested to differ between collectivistic and individualistic countries. However, we know little about how individual-level collectivism (i.e., perceiving the self or one’s social environment as collectivistic) is related to loneliness. As individualism and collectivism imply different ideals about how individuals should be embedded in social relationships, they may imply distinct risks for loneliness. Specifically, less demanding ideals in individualism should imply the risk of lower actual social embeddedness; more demanding ideals in collectivism should imply the risk of higher perceived discrepancies from such ideals. Two cross-sectional survey studies in five European countries (Study 1: Austria, N = 239; Study 2: Italy, Portugal, Sweden, The Netherlands, total N = 860) revealed that higher collectivism was related to lower loneliness. Individualism indeed implied lower social embeddedness, but collectivism did not imply higher discrepancies from ideal embeddedness. We discuss implications for reducing loneliness in different cultural contexts. SAGE Publications 2018-09-28 2019-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6449799/ /pubmed/30264659 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167218796793 Text en © 2018 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Articles
Heu, Luzia C.
van Zomeren, Martijn
Hansen, Nina
Lonely Alone or Lonely Together? A Cultural-Psychological Examination of Individualism–Collectivism and Loneliness in Five European Countries
title Lonely Alone or Lonely Together? A Cultural-Psychological Examination of Individualism–Collectivism and Loneliness in Five European Countries
title_full Lonely Alone or Lonely Together? A Cultural-Psychological Examination of Individualism–Collectivism and Loneliness in Five European Countries
title_fullStr Lonely Alone or Lonely Together? A Cultural-Psychological Examination of Individualism–Collectivism and Loneliness in Five European Countries
title_full_unstemmed Lonely Alone or Lonely Together? A Cultural-Psychological Examination of Individualism–Collectivism and Loneliness in Five European Countries
title_short Lonely Alone or Lonely Together? A Cultural-Psychological Examination of Individualism–Collectivism and Loneliness in Five European Countries
title_sort lonely alone or lonely together? a cultural-psychological examination of individualism–collectivism and loneliness in five european countries
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6449799/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30264659
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167218796793
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