The Stability and Change of Loneliness Across the Life Span: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies

Abstract

Individuals experience loneliness when they perceive a deficiency in the quality or quantity of their social relationships. In the present meta-analysis, we compiled data from 75 longitudinal studies conducted in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America (N = 83, 679) to examine the rank-order and mean-level development of loneliness across the life span. Data were analyzed using two- and three-level meta-analyses and generalized additive mixed models. The results indicate that the rank order of loneliness is as stable as the rank order of personality traits and follows an inverted U-shaped trajectory across the life span. Regarding mean-level development, loneliness was found to decrease throughout childhood and to remain essentially stable from adolescence to oldest old age. Thus, in contrast to other personality characteristics, changes in loneliness are not generally related to age. Implications for theory are discussed.

Keywords: differential development; loneliness; mean-level development; personality development; rank-order stability.

Figure 1.

Flowchart of the literature search. Note. The figure is available under a CC-BY license at https://osf.io/hysc3/. k denotes number of studies. LS = loneliness.

Figure 2.

Results of the preliminary cross-sectional analysis for (Panel a) age groups and (Panel b) with age as a continuous predictor as estimated by weighted GAMM. Note. The figure is available under a CC-BY license at https://osf.io/hysc3/. In Panel a, the small gray dots represent each study’s POMP score at the first measurement occasion, the black dots represent the unweighted age-specific average POMP of loneliness. The dots in Panel b represent each study’s POMP at the first measurement occasion, the size of the dots indicates their weight in the GAMM analysis (weights were based on sample size). GAMM = generalized additive mixed modeling; POMP = percentage of the maximum possible score.

Figure 3.

Rank-order stability of loneliness in different age groups over a period of 1 year (Panel a) and 5 years (Panel b), respectively, along with 95% confidence intervals (straight vertical lines). Note. The figure is available under a CC-BY license at https://osf.io/hysc3/. The size of the dots represents the number of effect sizes underlying the effect, with larger dots indicating more effect sizes. Panels c and d depict the results with age as a continuous predictor. The dots in Panels c and d correspond to estimates from the primary studies (i.e., raw data). The size of the dots corresponds to the respective study’s inverse variance weight. The black line indicates the smooth function as estimated by generalized additive mixed modeling; the shaded area represents the 95% confidence interval. The dashed horizontal line in all panels depicts average rank-order stability over 1 (Panels a and c) and 5 (Panels b and d) years for personality traits as reported by Roberts and DelVecchio (2000).

Figure 4.

Mean-level development of loneliness in different age groups over a period of 1 year (Panel a) and 5 years (Panel b), respectively, along with 95% confidence intervals (straight vertical lines). Note. The figure is available under a CC-BY license at https://osf.io/hysc3/. The size of the dots represents the number of effect sizes underlying the effect with larger dots indicating more effect sizes. Panels c and d display the results with age as a continuous predictor, centered at (Panel c) 1- and (Panel d) 5-year intervals. The dots in Panels c and d represent the estimates from the primary studies (raw data). The size of the dots corresponds to the respective study’s inverse variance weight. The black line indicates the smooth function as estimated by generalized additive mixed modeling; the shaded area represents the 95% confidence interval. The dashed horizontal line denotes mean-level stability (i.e., no change).