Running head: LONELINESS 1

Loneliness across Adulthood

Rina Nishii

Loras College
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Loneliness across Adulthood

No matter how long people spend their time together and how many words they

exchange, no one can understand each other in a true sense. Surely, some may express dissenting

views. However, confusion or relational issues will normally occur even among close family

members, friends, and lovers due to the failure to grasp their partner’s intentions. According to

theory of mind, people can interpret physically recognizable behaviors and estimate other’

mental state but cannot comprehend true feelings of others (Malle, 2019), although it might be

possible if nervous system in one brain are connectable with another brain to directly exchange

nerve information. When such a human limitation combines with lack of comfortable or

expected social interactions, people would fall into a state of loneliness. Will Weights, a

healthcare tech entrepreneur, states that loneliness is not being alone defined as a choice but a

state of extremely vulnerable to social isolation that rans people to an early death through

increasing risks of diabetes, depression, and other health problems as well as 15 cigarettes

smoking every day, based on a meta-analysis 70 peer-review journal articles (2017).

Unfortunately, people will have experienced higher risk of loneliness throughout adulthood, even

if they engage in social activities.

Levels of Loneliness across Adulthood

Professors of Psychiatry and Neurosciences and a director of the UC San Diego Center

for Healthy Aging found that levels of loneliness changes across adulthood, but it reaches

particularly higher during three age periods: late-20s, mid-50s and late 80s based on the data of

UCLA Loneliness Scale and self-reported measure of social isolation from 340 participants aged

27 to 101(Lee et al., 2018). There were no sex differences in loneliness prevalence, severity and

age relationship. Moreover, a cross-sectional study examined the distribution of age differences
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in loneliness with the UCLA Loneliness Scale from nationally representative 16,132 German

subjects (Luhmann & Hawkley, 2016). The researcher concluded that loneliness levels are

distributed unevenly across the life span – higher among young adults and the oldest old.

Another loneliness study analyzing the data of more than 5000 participants aged 40-80 identified

that the lonely levels for women tended to keep rising but those for men followed a U-shaped

curve with the peaks at 40 and 80 (von Soest, Luhmann, Hansen, & Gerstorf, 2018). Overall,

recent studies about loneliness among adults from diverse cultural, historical, and socioeconomic

backgrounds predicts occurrence of variation in loneliness levels across adult life span and one’s

acute painful feelings of social isolation during each adult age periods. In this regard, social and

physiological factors will more or less contribute to these unique conditions.

Social Relationship

The primary factor of fluctuation in loneliness levels from early to late adulthood will be

largely related to the development of social relationship and support. In an empirical study with a

sample of 636 ethnically-diverse adults at the age of 18 to 25, researchers investigated the effects

of social support on loneliness levels of stressed participants by using the Perceived Stress

Control, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and UCLA Loneliness Scale to

measure perceived stress levels, sources of social support, and severity of loneliness, respectively

(Lee & Goldstein, 2016). The results showed the statistically significant negative correlation

between social support from a friend or a romantic partner and one’s loneliness levels. Therefore,

those who develop positive interpersonal relationships both in their private lives and at work will

be less likely to suffer extreme fear of social isolation because of higher likelihood of better

supports from friends or their partners. From this perspective, a possible reason for the

anticipated elevation of loneliness levels among young adults, specifically 20s to early 30s, is
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that drastic changes in living circumstances due to employment or graduation from university

would make them difficult meet their supportive friends or lovers. In this case, these young

adults will not able to utilize social support from friends that are expected to work as a buffer

against impacts of stress on loneliness (Lee & Goldstein, 2016), daily emotional strain caused by

unfamiliar living cycles or environments might ultimately elicits feelings of extreme social

isolation from the young adults.

Such social withdrawal in young adulthood would increase risks for lower happiness and

higher loneliness levels in midlife. When researchers examined how social interactions between

age 20 and age 30 would affect midlife social experiences and psychological outcomes in a

longitudinal study with 133 adult participants, the higher quantity and quality of social activities

in early adulthood were significantly predictive of better social integration, friendship quality,

and psychological outcomes– greater wellbeing and lower loneliness levels– at age 50

(Carmichael, Reis, & Duberstein, 2015). Perhaps, the development of social relationship would

occur from early to middle adulthood and become strong elements that can prevent middle adults

from being caught in socially isolated feelings. In addition, relationships with family member as

well as others will greatly affect mental state of middle-aged people. For example, some

researchers mention that loneliness is a form of psychological distress that may aggravate the

psychological and physical health of cancer survivors and their supportive partners or caregiver

(Segrin, Burje, & Badger, 2016). As age increases, risks for cancer are inevitable for people in

late adulthood people. Now, who would be likely to take care for them? – maybe, their daughters

or sons in middle age. Segrin et al. (2016) argue that loneliness is a common problem in cancer

patients, but as their disease progresses to advanced and then terminal stages, levels of loneliness

increases even in caregivers. The psychological distress of supportive partners reduces their
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abilities to provide social support to survivors during illness. Hence, caregiver-patient

relationship between family members deems to put people aged 40-50s and 80s at greater risks

of social isolation if it fails to give enough social support.

Other key factors that would cause a fluctuation in loneliness levels of people in late

adulthood are sibling relationships and lack of social activity. In a study about the association

among sibling warmth, loneliness, and well-being in later life, Stocker and his co-researchers

(2019) collected self-report data on the UCLA Loneliness Scale and ASRQ-VS, a measurement

of sibling intimacy levels, from 806 older adults and detected that older adults would feel

lonelier as the levels of sibling closeness and intimacy decreased. This evidence of a negative

association between loneliness and sibling relationships clearly tells that older people might

experience intense felling of loneliness if their brothers or sisters that get along well dies.

Furthermore, Lee and his research team (2018) estimates that an increase in loneliness during

late adulthood will be due to their functional limitations, single lives, and lower-income.

Physically becoming a weak, experiencing end of social interactions due to separation by death,

and earning low income, older people will face more difficulties in going outside to meet with

their friends or engage in social activities without someone’s help.

As illustrated above, changes in individual loneliness levels will more or less depend on

how each person has built and maintained social relationships with others and to what extent

they could receive social supports throughout adulthood lifespan. Next, physiological

perspectives will give scientific evidence to why people feel lonely despite their everyday

commitment to social activities in school, at work, at home.

Physiological Influences
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Brain and neural reactions to social circumstances will cause people to experience

loneliness. Although this negative emotion is often considered as a symptom of mental illnesses,

John Cacioppo, a founder of the social neuroscience field, argues that lonely brain is structurally

and biochemically different from non-lonely brain since lonely brain show suppressed neural

response to positive stimuli, like social contact with friends or family (DiSalvo, 2014). In other

words, once brain becomes a lonely state for some reasons, people are less likely to receive

rewards from social interactions even if they are talking with friends or working with collogues.

Besides, neuroscientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) identified that social

isolation affects the activation of dopaminergic and serotonergic neurons, which are key to our

emotional well-being, through finding a part of the brain that appears to be associated with these

“feelings of loneliness” – the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) in the back of the brain (Matthews et

al., 2016). They described that dopaminergic neuros in DRN of mice raised in a group laboratory

setting were inactive, but those of mice in an isolated environment were very sensitive to social

contact. The neural activities of mice that were once set apart from and then reunited with the

group environment increased rapidly. As a result, these isolated mice become much more

sociable than non-isolated once. Based on this experimental study, dopaminergic neurons in

DNR will respond to acute social isolation and then motivate individuals to interact with others.

Matthews et al. (2016) also reported that serotonergic neurons will be involved in social isolation

response because alternated serotonergic neurons, which are observed after chronic social

isolation, block particular channels and treat depressive behaviors of isolated mice. Based on

these study findings, it is expected that change in loneliness levels across adulthood might be

result of change in activation levels of dopaminergic and serotonergic neurons with age in

response to a lack of social interaction.

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Discussion

Even though it is still unclear of where loneliness comes from and how it disappears, an

increase or decrease in the levels with a certain pattern across adulthood will be closely related

with social relationships and neural reactivity in the brain toward socially isolated situations. In

this paper, I cited possible reasons for the change in one’s loneliness levels based on American

people in their 20s to 80s. Therefore, countries with longer healthy life expectancy, typified by

Singapore and Japan (World Health Organization, 2018), may have a different fluctuation in

social isolation levels and rationales. Although I did not mention cultural influences, a unique

culture in Italy that people enjoy socializing while drinking coffee in a bar may prevent adults

from falling into socially isolated states. In this case, cultural differences between each country

would result in distinct changes in feeling of loneliness. Otherwise, physiological conditions

would become a primary factor of his negative emotions.

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