thesis statements of loneliness

Loneliness Essay Example

Loneliness is a feeling that many people experience at one point or another. The impact of it on your life can vary greatly depending on the situation. This sample will explore the different types of loneliness, how to deal with them, and some tips for overcoming loneliness in general.

Essay Example On Loneliness

• Thesis Statement – Loneliness Essay
• Introduction – Loneliness Essay
• Main Body – Loneliness Essay
• Conclusion – Loneliness Essay

Thesis Statement – Loneliness Essay Loneliness is a consequence of being robbed of one’s freedom. It can be due to imprisonment, loss of liberty, or being discriminated against. Introduction – Loneliness Essay Loneliness is a social phenomenon that has been the subject of much research since time immemorial. Yet there still does not exist any solid explanation as to why some people are more prone to loneliness than others. This paper will seek to analyze this potentially debilitating condition from different perspectives. It will cover the relationship between loneliness and incarceration or loss of liberty; then it will proceed into discussing how emotions play a role in making us feel lonely; finally, it will look at how these feelings can affect our mental stability and overall well-being. Get Non-Plagiarized Custom Essay on Loneliness in USA Order Now Main Body – Loneliness Essay Loneliness is a universal feeling which has the ability to create its own culture within different societies. In detention facilities, there is a unique kind of loneliness that prevails between prisoners who are often divided into various categories and population groups. This has been described by Mandela as a consequence of being robbed of one’s freedom. The fact that it can be due to imprisonment, loss of liberty, or being discriminated against makes it even clearer why this isolation from other people occurs so frequently among detainees. In addition, when one spends time incarcerated in solitary confinement, they may become more experienced at coping with feelings of loneliness and despondency; however, these feelings do not tend to dissipate completely because living in an artificial environment cannot be compared with living out in the open. There is also a difference between feeling lonely and actually being alone; many individuals who do not feel social pressure, meaning that they are more than happy spending time on their own without any external stimulation, may still find themselves surrounded by people every day. Yet even this does not guarantee that one will escape feelings of isolation or rejection. Loneliness becomes an issue when it is chronic and experienced frequently, if only fleetingly. It can affect our psychological balance as well as our physical health because it usually initiates stress responses within the body which cause high blood pressure and prompt addiction to drugs or alcohol consumption. All these reasons may lead to decreased productivity and ultimately affect one’s ability to develop or maintain social connections. Buy Customized Essay on Loneliness At Cheapest Price Order Now Conclusion – Loneliness Essay Loneliness is a condition that we can’t always avoid, but it is something we should be aware of and try to limit. Thus, while the effects of loneliness on the individual may not be able to stimulate any significant changes in society, at least there will always remain one person more who understands what you are going through. Ultimately, it all comes down to empathy and sharing our own stories so that more people learn how to cope with this potentially dangerous emotional response. Hire USA Experts for Loneliness Essay Order Now

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This essay sample has given you some insights into the psychology of loneliness as well as suggestions for how to combat it in your own life.

Many of us find it hard to start writing an essay on general topics like loneliness. The free essay sample on loneliness is given here by the experts of Students Assignment Help to those who are assigned an essay on loneliness by professors. With the help of this sample, many ideas can easily be gathered by the college graduates to write their coursework essays.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Of Mice and Men — The Theme of Loneliness in Of Mice and Men

Analysis of Characters' Loneliness in of Mice and Men

• Categories: Loneliness Of Mice and Men

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Published: May 5, 2022

Words: 1842 | Pages: 4 | 10 min read

The essay delves into the poignant theme of loneliness depicted in John Steinbeck's novella "Of Mice and Men", notably through the characters of George Milton and Crooks. Loneliness, an emotionally desolate experience, is represented as a complex and potent emotion capable of inducing behavioral outbursts and altering characters' outlooks and behaviors. George, bound by obligation and genuine care for Lennie, experiences a unique solitude, being physically accompanied yet emotionally isolated due to Lennie’s mental condition. Crooks, isolated due to racial discrimination, shelters his vulnerability behind a wall of bitterness and emotional hardness, demonstrating how pervasive loneliness can twist personalities and moral compasses. The essay elucidates how such emotional solitude not only significantly influences the characters’ behaviors and mental states but also spotlights the harsh, discriminative societal backdrop, highlighting the varying, profound impacts loneliness imposes on individuals.

Table of contents

Introduction, loneliness in of mice and men, george milton, curley’s wife.

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Theme of Loneliness, Isolation, & Alienation in Literature with Examples

Humans are social creatures. Most of us enjoy communication and try to build relationships with others. It’s no wonder that the inability to be a part of society often leads to emotional turmoil.

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World literature has numerous examples of characters who are disconnected from their loved ones or don’t fit into the social norms. Stories featuring themes of isolation and loneliness often describe a quest for happiness or explore the reasons behind these feelings.

In this article by Custom-Writing.org , we will:

• discuss isolation and loneliness in literary works;
• cite many excellent examples;
• provide relevant quotations.

🏝️ Isolation Theme in Literature

• 🏠 Theme of Loneliness
• 👽 Theme of Alienation
• Frankenstein
• The Metamorphosis
• Of Mice and Men
• ✍️ Essay Topics

🔍 References

Isolation is a state of being detached from other people, either physically or emotionally. It may have positive and negative connotations:

• In a positive sense, isolation can be a powerful source of creativity and independence.
• In negative terms , it can cause mental suffering and difficulties with interpersonal relationships.

Theme of Isolation and Loneliness: Difference

As you can see, isolation can be enjoyable in certain situations. That’s how it differs from loneliness : a negative state in which a person feels uncomfortable and emotionally down because of a lack of social interactions . In other words, isolated people are not necessarily lonely.

Isolation Theme Characteristics with Examples

Now, let’s examine isolation as a literary theme. It often appears in stories of different genres and has various shades of meaning. We’ll explain the different uses of this theme and provide examples from literature.

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Forced vs. Voluntary Isolation in Literature

Isolation can be voluntary or happen for external reasons beyond the person’s control. The main difference lies in the agent who imposes isolation on the person:

• If someone decides to be alone and enjoys this state of solitude, it’s voluntary isolation . The poetry of Emily Dickinson is a prominent example.
• Forced isolation often acts as punishment and leads to detrimental emotional consequences. This form of isolation doesn’t depend on the character’s will, such as in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter .

Physical vs. Emotional Isolation in Literature

Aside from forced and voluntary, isolation can be physical or emotional:

• Isolation at the physical level makes the character unable to reach out to other people, such as Robinson Crusoe being stranded on an island.
• Emotional isolation is an inner state of separation from other people. It also involves unwillingness or inability to build quality relationships. A great example is Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye .

These two forms are often interlinked, like in A Rose for Emily . The story’s titular character is isolated from the others both physically and emotionally .

Symbols of Isolation in Literature

In literary works dedicated to emotional isolation, authors often use physical artifacts as symbols. For example, the moors in Wuthering Heights or the room in The Yellow Wallpaper are means of the characters’ physical isolation. They also symbolize a much deeper divide between the protagonists and the people around them.

🏠 Theme of Loneliness in Literature

Loneliness is often used as a theme in stories of people unable to build relationships with others. Their state of mind always comes with sadness and a low self-esteem. Naturally, it causes profound emotional suffering.

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We will examine how the theme of loneliness functions in literature. But first, let’s see how it differs from its positive counterpart: solitude.

Solitude vs. Loneliness: The Difference

Loneliness theme: history & examples.

The modern concept of loneliness is relatively new. It first emerged in the 16 th century and has undergone many transformations since then.

• The first formal mention of loneliness appeared in George Milton’s Paradise Lost in the 17 th century. There are also many references to loneliness in Shakespeare’s works.
• Later on, after the Industrial Revolution , the theme got more popular. During that time, people started moving to large cities. As a result, they were losing bonds with their families and hometowns. Illustrative examples of that period are Gothic novels and the works of Charles Dickens .
• According to The New Yorker , the 20 th century witnessed a broad spread of loneliness due to the rise of Capitalism. Philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus explored existential loneliness, influencing numerous authors. The absurdist writings of Kafka and Beckett also played an essential role in reflecting the isolation felt by people in Capitalist societies. Sylvia Plath has masterfully explored mental health struggles related to this condition in The Bell Jar (you can learn more about it in our The Bell Jar analysis .)

👽 Theme of Alienation in Literature

Another facet of being alone that is often explored in literature is alienation . Let’s see how this concept differs from those we discussed previously.

Alienation vs. Loneliness: Difference

While loneliness is more about being on your own and lacking connection, alienation means involuntary estrangement and a lack of sympathy from society. In other words, alienated people don’t fit their community, thus lacking a sense of belonging.

Isolation vs. Alienation: The Difference

Theme of alienation vs. identity in literature.

There is a prominent connection between alienation and a loss of identity. It often results from a character’s self-search in a hostile society with alien ideas and values. These characters often differ from the dominant majority, so the community treats them negatively. Such is the case with Mrs. Dalloway from Woolf’s eponymous novel.

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Writers with unique, non-conforming identity are often alienated during their lifetime. Their distinct mindset sets them apart from their social circle. Naturally, it creates discomfort and relationship problems. These experiences are often reflected in their works, such as in James Joyce’s semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man .

Alienation in Modernism

Alienation as a theme is mainly associated with Modernism . It’s not surprising, considering that the 20 th century witnessed fundamental changes in people’s lifestyle. Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution couldn’t help eroding the quality of human bonding and the depth of relationships.

It’s also vital to mention that the two World Wars introduced even greater changes in human relationships. People got more locked up emotionally in order to withstand the war trauma and avoid further turmoil. Consequently, the theme of alienation and comradeship found reflection in the works of Ernest Hemingway , Erich Maria Remarque , Norman Mailer, and Rebecca West, among others.

📚 Books about Loneliness and Isolation: Quotes & Examples

Loneliness and isolation themes are featured prominently in many of the world’s greatest literary works. Here we’ll analyze several well-known examples: Frankenstein, Of Mice and Men, and The Metamorphosis.

Theme of Isolation & Alienation in Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is among the earliest depictions of loneliness in modern literature. It shows the depth of emotional suffering that alienation can impose.

Victor Frankenstein , a talented scientist, creates a monster from the human body parts. The monster becomes the loneliest creature in the world. Seeing that his master hates him and wouldn’t become his friend, he ruined everything Victor held dear. He was driven by revenge, trying to drive him into the same despair.

The novel contains many references to emotional and physical alienation. It also explores the distinction between voluntary and involuntary isolation:

• The monster is involuntarily driven into an emotionally devastating state of alienation.
• Victor imposes voluntary isolation on himself after witnessing the crimes of his creature.

To learn more about the representation of loneliness and isolation in the novel, check out our article on themes in Frankenstein .

Frankenstein Quotes about Isolation

Here are a couple of quotes from Frankenstein directly related to the theme of isolation and loneliness:

How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow…I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend. Frankenstein , Letter 2

In this quote, Walton expresses his loneliness and desire for company. He uses frost and snow as symbols to refer to his isolation. Perhaps a heart-warming relationship could melt the ice surrounding him.

I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Frankenstein , Chapter 3

This quote is related to Victor’s inability to make friends and function as a regular member of society. He also misses his friends and relatives in Ingolstadt, which causes him further discomfort.

I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow mutual pleasure—I was now alone. Frankenstein , Chapter 3

In this quote, Victor shares his fear of loneliness. As a person who used to spend most of his time in social activity among people, Victor feared the solitude that awaited him in Ingolstadt.

Isolation & Alienation in The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis is an enigmatic masterpiece by Franz Kafka, telling a story of a young man Gregor. He is alienated at work and home by his demanding, disrespectful family. He lacks deep, rewarding relationships in his life. As a result, he feels profound loneliness.

Gregor’s family isolates him both as a human and an insect, refusing to recognize his personhood. Gregor’s stay in confinement is also a reflection of his broader alienation from society, resulting from his self-perception as a parasite.  To learn more about it, feel free to read our article on themes in The Metamorphosis .

The Metamorphosis: Isolation Quotes

Let’s analyze several quotes from The Metamorphosis to see how Kafka approached the theme of isolation.

The upset of doing business is much worse than the actual business in the home office, and, besides, I’ve got the torture of traveling, worrying about changing trains, eating miserable food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate. The Metamorphosis , Part 1

In this fragment, Gregor’s lifestyle is described with a couple of strokes. It shows that he lived an empty, superficial life without meaningful relationships.

Well, leaving out the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call for help? In spite of all his miseries, he could not repress a smile at this thought. The Metamorphosis , Part 1

This quote shows how Gregor feels isolated even before anyone else can see him as an insect. He knows that being different will inevitably affect his life and his relationships with his family. So, he prefers to confine himself to voluntary isolation instead of seeking help.

He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’s. The Metamorphosis , Part 3

This final paragraph of Kafka’s story reveals the human nature of Gregor. It also shows the depth of his suffering in isolation after turning into a vermin. He reconciles with his metamorphosis and agrees to disappear from this world. Eventually, he vanishes from his family’s troubled memories.

Theme of Loneliness in Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men is a touching novella by John Steinbeck examining the intricacies of laborers’ relationships on a ranch. It’s a snapshot of class and race relations that delves into the depths of human loneliness. Steinbeck shows how this feeling makes people mean, reckless, and cold.

Many characters in this story suffer from being alienated from the community:

• Crooks is ostracized because of his race, living in a separate shabby house as a misfit.
• George also suffers from forced alienation because he takes care of the mentally disabled Lennie.
• Curley’s wife is another character suffering from loneliness. This feeling drives her to despair. She seeks the warmth of human relationships in the hands of Lennie, which causes her accidental death.

Isolation Quotes: Of Mice and Men

Now, let’s analyze a couple of quotes from Of Mice and Men to see how the author approached the theme of loneliness.

Guys like us who work on ranches are the loneliest guys in the world, they ain’t got no family, they don’t belong no place. Of Mice and Men , Section 1

In this quote, Steinbeck describes several dimensions of isolation suffered by his characters:

• They are physically isolated , working on large farms where they may not meet a single person for weeks.
• They have no chances for social communication and relationship building, thus remaining emotionally isolated without a life partner.
• They can’t develop a sense of belonging to the place where they work; it’s another person’s property.

Candy looked for help from face to face. Of Mice and Men , Section 3

Candy’s loneliness on the ranch becomes highly pronounced during his conflict with Carlson. The reason is that he is an old man afraid of being “disposed of.” The episode is an in-depth look into a society that doesn’t cherish human relationships, focusing only on a person’s practical utility. 

I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely. Of Mice and Men , Chapter 5

This quote expresses the depth of Curley’s wife’s loneliness. She doesn’t have anyone with whom she would be able to talk, aside from her husband. Curley is also not an appropriate companion, as he treats his wife rudely and carelessly. As a result of her loneliness, she falls into deeper frustration.

✍️ Essay on Loneliness and Isolation: Topics & Ideas

If you’ve got a task to write an essay about loneliness and isolation, it’s vital to pick the right topic. You can explore how these feelings are covered in literature or focus on their real-life manifestations. Here are some excellent topic suggestions for your inspiration:

• Cross-national comparisons of people’s experience of loneliness and isolation.
• Social isolation , loneliness, and all-cause mortality among the elderly.
• Public health consequences of extended social isolation .
• Impact of social isolation on young people’s mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Connections between social isolation and depression.
• Interventions for reducing social isolation and loneliness among older people.
• Loneliness and social isolation among rural area residents.
• The effect of social distancing rules on perceived loneliness.
• How does social isolation affect older people’s functional status?
• Video calls as a measure for reducing social isolation.
• Isolation, loneliness, and otherness in Frankenstein .
• The unique combination of addiction and isolation in Frankenstein .
• Exploration of solitude in Hernan Diaz’ In the Distance .
•  Artificial isolation and voluntary seclusion in Against Nature .
• Different layers of isolation in George Eliot’s Silas Marner .
• Celebration of self-imposed solitude in Emily Dickinson’s works.
• Buddhist aesthetics of solitude in Stephen Batchelor’s The Art of Solitude .
• Loneliness of childhood in Charles Dickens’s works.
• Moby-Dick : Loneliness in the struggle.
• Medieval literature about loneliness and social isolation.

Now you know everything about the themes of isolation, loneliness, and alienation in fiction and can correctly identify and interpret them. What is your favorite literary work focusing on any of these themes? Tell us in the comments!

❓ Themes of Loneliness and Isolation FAQs

Isolation is a popular theme in poetry. The speakers in such poems often reflect on their separation from others or being away from their loved ones. Metaphorically, isolation may mean hiding unshared emotions. The magnitude of the feeling can vary from light blues to depression.

In his masterpiece Of Mice and Men , John Steinbeck presents loneliness in many tragic ways. The most alienated characters in the book are Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife. Most of them were eventually destroyed by the negative consequences of their loneliness.

The Catcher in the Rye uses many symbols as manifestations of Holden’s loneliness. One prominent example is an image of his dead brother Allie. He’s the person Holden wants to bond with but can’t because he is gone. Holden also perceives other people as phony or corny, thus separating himself from his peers.

Beloved is a work about the deeply entrenched trauma of slavery that finds its manifestation in later generations. Characters of Beloved prefer self-isolation and alienation from others to avoid emotional pain.

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , all people must conform to society’s rules to be accepted. Those who don’t fit in that established order and feel their individuality are erased from society.

• What Is Solitude?: Psychology Today
• Loneliness in Literature: Springer Link
• What Literature and Language Tell Us about the History of Loneliness: Scroll.in
• On Isolation and Literature: The Millions
• 10 Books About Loneliness: Publishers Weekly
• Alienation: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Isolation and Revenge: Where Victor Frankenstein Went Wrong: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• On Isolation: Gale
• Top 10 Books About Loneliness: The Guardian
• Emily Dickinson and the Creative “Solitude of Space:” Psyche
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Everyone probably knows the feeling of isolation, when the entire world seems to be behind a glass wall: one can see people on the other side, interact and talk to them, live a more or less normal life—but feel alone and forgotten somewhere deep inside. In a world where communication is the new god, where extroverted behaviors are deemed healthy and normal, and where everything calls a person to belong to a certain group, being and feeling alone often seems wrong. There is nothing bad in needing solitude; from time to time, all of us need to spend some time on our own. However, solitude is rather a voluntary choice; when this condition becomes chronic and undesired, when a person feels the impossibility of establishing contact with others, this is already something many people around the world fear strongly: this is loneliness.

What exactly is loneliness? A more narrow definition suggests that loneliness is the condition when a person is not surrounded by other people, spends most of his or her time alone, and maintains little-to-no social contact. However, anyone who had at least once experienced the condition of loneliness knows that it is possible to be surrounded by friends or family, stay in the thick of things, and still feel isolated. In fact, the statistics shows about 60% of people who feel lonely are married, which is a good illustration of the thesis that loneliness does not depend on the environment, that the amount and variety of social connections and\or relationships do not necessarily save us from it. (Psychology Today).

A better understanding of loneliness can be achieved from the analysis of the needs and desires standing behind it—or, to be precise, the impossibility to satisfy these needs. According to Baumeister and Leary, every person has a basic need to belong to a certain group; this need is as significant and natural as the need to eat, to sleep, or to feel safe. However, simply belonging on its own does not satisfy the need: it is important that a person can form strong, close, and stable interpersonal relationships, and maintain them: only in this case the sense of belonging will be full. This makes sense even from the evolutionary point of view: staying together with other people was a guarantee of physical survival in ancient times. Continuing the parallel between emotional and physical (or basic) needs, our bodies are often wiser than our minds: when there is a lack or a surplus of something, our bodies react appropriately. Sensations (such as hunger, heat, and so on) and emotions are the signals our bodies send to our minds in order to alert them about these shortages and surpluses. Respectively, loneliness is an emotion which signals that the need of belonging is not satisfied, or that we are not getting the relationships (or the quality of already existing relationships) that we want (Web of Loneliness). This often seems irrational: for example, a person can have a lot of friends and see them often, he or she can be married and have children, have no problems with colleagues at work—everything is seemingly fine, but the sense of loneliness is still there, and it is important to understand why it is present, what is lacking.

Being in strong and close relationships affects our mental health beneficially; being alone for a long period of time can lead to a number of negative consequences, both on mental and physiological levels. In particular, loneliness can lead to depression (which is a dangerous mental condition on its own), a feeling of hopelessness, low self-esteem, an impaired ability for social interactions and work, suicidal tendencies, poor sleep, the sense of defeat, and helplessness. These sensations form a vicious circle—nurturing each other, they aggravate the situation of a lonely person, preventing him or her from getting out of this span on his or her own. Not only the emotional sphere, but also bodily functions are affected by loneliness. Studies show that lonely people face cardiovascular diseases more frequently than those enjoying strong and stable relationships with other people; other effects include the loss of weight, hormonal imbalances, the inhibition of the immune system, low resistance to infections and inflammations, dementia (in old age), and the degradation of bones and muscle tissue (The Doctor’s Tablet). All this does not mean that a person starts experiencing all these negative effects every time he or she feels lonely; however, these effects accumulate during prolonged isolation, “chronic” loneliness; therefore, it is important to not try to deal with this condition on one’s own, and seek professional help.

In fact, there are many effective ways to treat loneliness. Many people think that it is enough to increase the amount of social contacts, go out more often, and loneliness will be dealt with. However, loneliness is more about a person’s ability to form close relationships and bond with others, rather than about how often one is exposed to other people. Similar to other negative mental conditions, the first important step is to let yourself feel loneliness, and admit that you would like to live differently than you do. People often try to overpower their loneliness; they either tend to not treat it as something significant, considering it to be a weakness, or even deny that they are feeling lonely. When the problem is accepted and defined, it is recommended to start attending local psychotherapy sessions; cognitive-behavioral therapy usually provides solid results in treating loneliness, although other psychology schools, such as gestalt therapy can also be efficient, try finding what suits you the best. If you cannot afford attending a psychotherapist, consider utilizing a variety of relaxation and stress-relief techniques such as meditation, muscle relaxation training, guided mental imagery, or comforting self-talk. Pet therapy can be helpful as well; in fact, many people intuitively feel the need to have a living being nearby, whom they would be able to take care of, so owning a dog, cat, bird, or even a lizard can be a nice way to cope with loneliness (Psychologist Anywhere, Anytime). In many western countries, especially in the United States, it is extremely popular to prescribe medicine in order to deal with mental conditions; however, it is important to remember that loneliness is rather an emotional condition, not a biochemical one, so if you decide to take pills, it might help you inhibit unpleasant and painful feelings, but it will not solve your problem. Pills might be helpful if you are already suffering from depression as a result of loneliness—and even in this case, you should consider going to psychotherapy sessions.

Loneliness is not the same as solitude. The latter is a voluntary act of isolation from a society in order to refresh oneself, sort out one’s thoughts, and take a break from intense social interactions. Loneliness, in its turn, is a chronic and undesired condition when a person is unable (due to a number of reasons) to establish and maintain contact and close, stable relationships with surrounding people. Prolonged loneliness can be dangerous, since it can cause a variety of emotional and physiological problems. However, the good news is that loneliness can be treated effectively, mostly with the help of a professional psychotherapist.

Writing an expository essay is an interesting task. So, don’t skip on the opportunity to take up this challenge. However, be prepared to do some research and analysis of the chosen topic. In case you face some struggles while writing, don’t hesitate to check out assignment writing services . There, you can find assistance that will set you on the right path with your expository essay.

Works Cited

“What is Loneliness?” Web of Loneliness. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 July 2017. <http://www.webofloneliness.com/what-is-loneliness.html>

Winch, Guy. “10 Surprising Facts About Loneliness.” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, 21 Oct. 2014. Web. 03 July 2017. <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201410/10-surprising-facts-about-loneliness>

Kennedy, Gary J. “How Loneliness Affects the Mind and Body.” The Doctor’s Tablet. N.p., 07 May 2015. Web. 03 July 2017. <http://blogs.einstein.yu.edu/how-loneliness-affects-the-mind-and-body/>

“Loneliness and the Fear of Being Alone.” Psychologist Anywhere, Anytime. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 July 2017. <http://www.psychologistanywhereanytime.com/relationships_psychologist/psychologist_loneliness.htm>

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• Open access
• Published: 06 December 2020

Experiences of loneliness: a study protocol for a systematic review and thematic synthesis of qualitative literature

• Phoebe E. McKenna-Plumley   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5627-5730 1 ,
• Jenny M. Groarke 1 ,
• Rhiannon N. Turner 1 &
• Keming Yang 2  

Systematic Reviews volume  9 , Article number:  284 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Loneliness is a highly prevalent, harmful, and aversive experience which is fundamentally subjective: social isolation alone cannot account for loneliness, and people can experience loneliness even with ample social connections. A number of studies have qualitatively explored experiences of loneliness; however, the research lacks a comprehensive overview of these experiences. We present a protocol for a study that will, for the first time, systematically review and synthesise the qualitative literature on experiences of loneliness in people of all ages from the general, non-clinical population. The aim is to offer a fine-grained look at experiences of loneliness across the lifespan.

We will search multiple electronic databases from their inception onwards: PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Scopus, Child Development & Adolescent Studies, Sociological Abstracts, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, CINAHL, and the Education Resource Information Center. Sources of grey literature will also be searched. We will include empirical studies published in English including any qualitative study design (e.g. interview, focus group). Studies should focus on individuals from non-clinical populations of any age who describe experiences of loneliness. All citations, abstracts, and full-text articles will be screened by one author with a second author ensuring consistency regarding inclusion. Potential conflicts will be resolved through discussion. Thematic synthesis will be used to synthesise this literature, and study quality will be assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklist for Qualitative Research. The planned review will be reported according to the Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research (ENTREQ) statement.

The growing body of research on loneliness predictors, outcomes, and interventions must be grounded in an understanding of the lived experience of loneliness. This systematic review and thematic synthesis will clarify how loneliness is subjectively experienced across the lifespan in the general population. This will allow for a more holistic understanding of the lived experience of loneliness which can inform clinicians, researchers, and policymakers working in this important area.

Systematic review registration

PROSPERO CRD42020178105 .

Peer Review reports

Loneliness has become the focus of a wealth of research in recent years. This attention is well placed given that loneliness has been designated as a significant public health issue in the UK [ 1 ] and is associated with poor physical and mental health outcomes [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] and an increase in risk of death similar to that of smoking [ 6 ]. In light of this, it is concerning that recent research has found that loneliness is highly prevalent across age groups, with young people (under 25 years) and older adults (over 65 years) indicating the highest levels [ 7 , 8 ].

Whilst an ever-increasing body of research is situating loneliness at its centre, there is relatively little work which focuses on the lived experience of loneliness: how loneliness feels and what makes up experiences of loneliness. Phenomena that might appear to describe loneliness, such as social isolation, are distinct from the actual experience of it. Whilst loneliness is generally characterised as the distress one experiences when they perceive their social connections to be lacking in number or quality, social isolation is the objective limitation or absence of connections [ 9 ]. Social isolation does not necessarily beget loneliness, and indeed, Hawkley and Cacioppo [ 3 ] remark on how humans can perceive meaningful social relationships where none objectifiably exist, such as with God, or where reciprocity is not possible, such as with fictional characters. Whilst associations between aloneness and loneliness have been richly demonstrated [ 10 , 11 ], other research has found moderate and low correlations between social isolation and loneliness [ 12 , 13 ]. These findings underline the need to better understand what makes up the subjective experience of loneliness, given that it is clearly not sufficiently captured by the objective experience of being alone. Given the subjective nature of the phenomenon, qualitative methods are particularly suited to research into experiences of loneliness, as they can aim to capture the idiosyncrasies of these experiences.

A number of qualitative studies of loneliness experiences have been carried out. In perhaps the largest study of its type, Rokach [ 14 ] analysed written accounts of 526 adults’ loneliest experience, specifically asking about their thoughts, feelings, and coping strategies. This generated a model with four major elements (self-alienation, interpersonal isolation, distressed reactions, and agony) and twenty-three components such as emptiness, numbness, and missing a specific person or relationship. Although this study offered impressive scale, the vast majority of participants were between 19 and 45 years old, and as a result, the model may underestimate factors experienced across the lifespan. The findings might be usefully integrated with more recent research which qualitatively explores loneliness in other age groups (e.g. [ 15 ]). Harmonising this research by looking closely at how people describe their experiences of loneliness and working from the bottom-up to create a fine-grained view of what makes up these experiences will provide a more holistic understanding of loneliness and how it might best be defined and ameliorated.

There are a number of available definitions of loneliness offered by researchers. The widely accepted description from Perlman and Peplau [ 16 ], for example, states that loneliness is an unpleasant and distressing subjective phenomenon arising when one’s desired level of social relations differs from their actual level. However, research lacks an overarching subjective perspective, by which we mean a description of loneliness which is grounded in accounts of people’s lived experiences. This is a significant gap in the field given that loneliness is, by its nature, a subjective experience. Unlike objective phenomena like blood pressure or age, loneliness can only be definitively measured by asking a person whether they feel lonely. Weiss [ 17 ] argued that whilst available definitions of loneliness may be helpful, they do not sufficiently reflect the real phenomenon of loneliness because they define it in terms of its potential causes rather than the actual experience of being lonely. As such, studies which begin from definitions of loneliness like these may obscure the ways in which it is actually experienced and fail to capture the components and idiosyncrasies of these experiences.

A recent systematic review report [ 18 ] has explored the conceptualisations of loneliness employed in qualitative research, finding that loneliness tended to be defined as social, emotional, or existential types. However, the review covered only studies of adults (16 years and up), including heterogenous clinical populations (e.g. people receiving cancer treatment, people living with specific mental health conditions, and people on long-term sick leave), and placed central importance on the concepts, models, theories, and frameworks of loneliness utilised in research. Studies which did not employ an identified concept, model, framework, or theory of loneliness were excluded. Moreover, rather than synthesising how people describe their loneliness, the authors aimed to assess how research conceptualises loneliness across the adult life course. This leaves a gap with respect to how research participants specifically describe their lived experiences of loneliness, rather than how researchers might conceptualise it. Achterberg and colleagues [ 19 ] recently conducted a meta-synthesis of qualitative studies on experiences of loneliness in young people with depression. As the findings are specific to experiences in this population, they may not reflect those of wider age groups or individuals who do not have depression. Kitzmüller and colleagues [ 20 ] used meta-ethnography to synthesise studies regarding experiences and ways of dealing with loneliness in older adults (60 years and older). However, they synthesised only articles from health care disciplines published in scientific journals from 2001 to 2016 and included studies on clinical populations, such as older women with multiple chronic conditions. Moreover, there has been an increase in research output regarding loneliness in recent years, and relevant studies may have been published since this review was conducted (e.g. [ 15 ]). To the authors’ knowledge, the systematic review report on conceptual frameworks used in loneliness research [ 18 ], the meta-synthesis of loneliness in young people with depression [ 19 ], and the meta-ethnography of older adults’ loneliness [ 20 ] are the only such systematic reviews of qualitative literature regarding experiences of loneliness to date. The current systematic review will instead take a bottom-up approach which focuses on non-clinical populations of all ages to synthesise findings on participants’ experiences of loneliness, rather than the conceptualisations that might be imposed by study authors. This will fill a gap in the literature by synthesising the qualitative evidence focusing on experiences of loneliness across the lifespan. This inductive synthesis of the available subjective descriptions of loneliness will offer a nuanced view of loneliness experiences. It is imperative for research and practice that we deepen the current understanding of these experiences to inform how we approach describing, researching, and attempting to ameliorate loneliness.

The proposed research aims to offer a holistic view of the experience of loneliness across the lifespan through a systematic review and thematic synthesis of the qualitative literature focusing on these experiences. To address this aim, there is one central research question: How do people describe their experiences of loneliness?

This research question concerns aspects of loneliness which participants discuss when describing their lived experiences. Whilst we expect that this would concern emotional, social, and cognitive components of the experience, we understand that these findings may also come to reflect perceived causes or effects of loneliness.

This review will also consider the age groups that have been studied and how experiences of loneliness might vary across the different age groups examined in this literature. Loneliness research is often weighted towards investigations of older adults, despite the fact that the prevalence of loneliness is high across the lifespan; recent UK research found a prevalence of 40% in 16- to 24-year-olds and 27% in people over 75 [ 7 ]. This review will also shed light on the age groups that have been included in qualitative research on loneliness experiences. In doing so, this research may identify age groups which have been understudied and may be underrepresented in this field of research, potentially pointing to life stages where experiences of loneliness might be usefully explored in more detail in the future.

Furthermore, given the relatively small number of qualitative studies into the experience of loneliness compared with quantitative research in this area, this review will also consider the reasons that study authors may offer for the relative shortage of qualitative work. This is an important point given that the review will inherently be constrained by the number of studies that exist and the focus that has primarily been given to quantitative loneliness research thus far.

Protocol registration and reporting

The review protocol has been registered within the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) database from the University of York (registration number: CRD42020178105). This review protocol is being reported in accordance with the reporting guidance provided in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocols (PRISMA-P) statement [ 21 ] (see checklist in Additional file 1 ). The proposed systematic review will be reported in accordance with the reporting guidance provided in the Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research (ENTREQ) statement [ 22 ]. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement [ 23 ] will inform the process of completing and reporting this planned review.

Eligibility criteria

Due to its suitability for qualitative evidence synthesis, the SPIDER tool [ 24 ] was used to assist in defining the research question and eligibility criteria in line with the following criteria: Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research type (see Table 1 for details of these criteria). The exclusion criteria are as follows:

Studies not meeting the inclusion criteria described in Table 1

Studies not published in English

Studies with no qualitative component

Studies of clinical populations

Studies which report solely on objective phenomena such as social isolation rather than the subjectively perceived experience of loneliness

Studies in which the primary focus or one of the primary focuses is not experiences of loneliness

Papers will be deemed to focus sufficiently on experiences of loneliness if studying these experiences is a key aspect of the work rather than simply a part of the output. Accordingly, studies will only be included if authors state a relevant aim, objective, or research question related to investigating experiences of loneliness (i.e. to study experiences of loneliness) or if loneliness experiences are clearly explored and described (e.g. relevant questions are present in an appended interview guide). At the title and abstract screening stage, at least one relevant sentence or information that indicates likely relevance must be present for inclusion. The decision to exclude articles which do not primarily or equally focus on these experiences was made in order to gather meaningful data about loneliness experiences specifically and to capture experiences identified as loneliness by participants as much as possible, rather than related phenomena which may be grouped and labelled retrospectively as loneliness by researchers.

Information sources and search strategy

The primary source of literature will be a structured search of multiple electronic databases (from inception onwards): PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Scopus, Child Development & Adolescent Studies, Sociological Abstracts, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), CINAHL, and the Education Resource Information Center (ERIC). The secondary source of potentially relevant material will be a search of the grey or difficult-to-locate literature using Google Scholar. In line with the guidance from Haddaway and colleagues [ 25 ] on using Google Scholar for systematic review, a title-only search using the same search terms will be conducted and the first 1000 results will be screened for eligibility. These searches will be supplemented with hand-searching in reference lists, such that the titles of all articles cited within eligible studies will be checked. When eligibility is unclear from the title, abstracts and full-texts will be checked until eligibility or ineligibility can be ascertained. This process will be repeated with any articles that are found to be eligible at this stage until no new eligible articles are found. Systematic reviews on similar topics will also be searched for potentially eligible studies. Grey literature will be located through searches of Google Scholar, opengrey.eu, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and websites of specific loneliness organisations such as the Campaign to End Loneliness, managed in collaboration with an information specialist. Efforts will be made to contact authors of completed, ongoing, and in-press studies for information regarding additional studies or relevant material.

The search strategy for our primary database (MEDLINE) was developed in collaboration with an information specialist. In collaboration with a specialist, the strategy will be translated for all of the databases. The search strategy has been peer reviewed using the Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies (PRESS) checklist [ 26 ]. Strategies will utilise keywords for loneliness and qualitative studies. A draft search strategy for MEDLINE is provided in Additional file 2 . Qualitative search terms were supplemented with relevant and useful subject headings and free-text terms from the Pearl Harvesting Search Framework synonym ring for qualitative research [ 27 ]. The inclusion of search terms related to social isolation specifically and related terms (e.g. “social engagement”) was considered and tested extensively through scoping searches and discussion with an information specialist. Adding these terms (and others such as “Patient Isolation” and “Quarantine”) did not appear to add unique papers that would be included above and beyond subject heading and free-text searching for “Loneliness”. Given the aim to include studies focused on experiences of loneliness specifically, this search strategy was deemed most appropriate. A similar strategy has been employed in other recent systematic review work focusing on loneliness (e.g. [ 28 , 29 ]). Moreover, test searches employing the search strategy retrieved all of seven informally identified likely eligible articles indexed in Scopus, indicating good sensitivity of the strategy. A free-text search to capture “perceived social isolation” was included as this specific term is used by some authors as a direct synonym for loneliness. The completed PRESS checklist is provided in Additional file 3 .

Data collection and analysis

Study selection.

Firstly, the main review author (PMP) will perform the database search and hand-searching and will screen all titles to remove studies which are clearly not relevant. PMP will also undertake abstract screening to exclude any which are found to be irrelevant or inapplicable to the inclusion criteria. A second author (JG) will independently screen 50% of the titles and abstracts. Finally, full-text versions of the remaining articles will be read by PMP to assess whether they are suitable for inclusion in the final review. JG will independently review 50% of these full texts. In cases of disagreement, the two reviewers will discuss the study to reach a decision about inclusion or exclusion. In case agreement cannot be reached after discussion between the two reviewers, a third reviewer will be invited to reconcile their disagreement and make a final decision. The reason for the exclusion at the full-text stage will be recorded. After this screening process, the remaining articles will be included in the review following data extraction, quality appraisal, and analysis. The PRISMA statement will be followed to create a flowchart of the number of studies included and excluded at each stage of this process.

Data management

The articles to be screened will be managed in EndNoteX9, with subsequent EndNote databases used to manage each stage of the screening process.

Data extraction

Data will be extracted from the studies by PMP using a purpose-designed and piloted Microsoft Excel form. Information on author, publication year, geographic location of study, methodological approach, method, population, participant demographics, and main findings will be extracted to understand the basis of each study. JG will check this extracted data for accuracy.

For the thematic synthesis, in line with Thomas and Harden [ 30 ], all text labelled as “results” or “findings” will be extracted and entered into the NVivo software for analysis. This will be done because many factors, including varied reporting styles and misrepresentation of data as findings, can make it difficult to identify the findings in qualitative research [ 31 ]; accordingly, a wide-ranging approach will be used to capture as much relevant data as possible from each included article. The aim is to extract all data in which experiences of loneliness are described.

Quality appraisal

Quality of the included articles will be assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Critical Appraisal Checklist for Qualitative Research [ 32 ]. This quality will be considered during the development of the data synthesis. Different authors hold different viewpoints about inclusion versus exclusion of low-quality studies. However, given that they may still add important, authentic accounts of phenomena that have simply been reported inadequately [ 33 ], it is common to include lower-quality studies and consider quality during the synthesis process rather than excluding on the basis of it. Accordingly, this approach will be used in the present research.

Data synthesis

There are various accepted approaches to reviewing and synthesising qualitative research, including meta-ethnography [ 34 ], meta-synthesis [ 35 ], and narrative synthesis [ 36 ]. The current systematic review will utilise thematic synthesis as a methodology to create an overarching understanding of the experiences of loneliness described across studies. In thematic synthesis, descriptive themes which remain close to the primary studies are developed. Next, a new stage of analytical theme development is undertaken wherein the reviewer “goes beyond” the interpretations of the primary studies and develops higher-order constructs or explanations based on these descriptive themes [ 30 ]. The process of thematic synthesis for reviewing is similar to that of grounded theory for primary data, in that a translation and interpretative account of the phenomena of interest is produced. Thematic synthesis has been used to synthesise research on the experience of fatigue in neurological patients with multiple sclerosis [ 37 ], children’s experiences of living with juvenile idiopathic arthritis [ 38 ], and parents’ experiences of parenting a child with chronic illness [ 39 ]. This use of thematic synthesis to consider subjective experiences (rather than, for example, attitudes or motivations) melds well with the present research, which also sets its focus on a subjective experience.

As well as its successful application in similar systematic reviews, thematic synthesis was selected based on its appropriateness to the research question, time frame, resources, expertise, purpose, and potential type of data in line with the RETREAT framework for selecting an approach to qualitative evidence synthesis [ 40 ]. The RETREAT framework considers thematic synthesis to be appropriate for relatively rapid approaches which can be sustained by researchers with primary qualitative experience, unlike approaches such as meta-ethnography in which a researcher with specific familiarity with the method is needed. This is appropriate to the project time frame and background of this research team. The Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewer’s Manual [ 41 ] also notes that thematic synthesis is useful when considering shared elements across studies which are otherwise heterogenous, which is likely to be the case in this review given that the common factor (experiences of loneliness) may be present across studies with otherwise diverse populations and methodologies.

Guidance from Thomas and Harden [ 30 ] will be followed to synthesise the data. Firstly, the extracted text will be inductively coded line-by-line according to content and meaning. This inductive creation of codes should allow the content and meaning of each sentence to be captured. Multiple codes may be applied to the same sentence, and codes may be “free” or structured in a tree formation at this stage. Before moving forward, all text referred to by each code will be rechecked to ensure consistency in what is considered a single code or whether more levels of coding are required.

After this stage, similarities and differences between the codes will be examined, and they will begin to be organised into a hierarchy of groups of codes. New codes will be applied to these groups to describe their overall meaning. This will create a tree structure of descriptive themes which should not deviate largely from the original study findings; rather, findings will have been integrated into an organised whole. At this stage, the synthesis should remain close to the findings of the included studies.

At the final stage of analysis, higher-order analytical themes may be inferred from the descriptive themes which will offer a theoretical structure for experiences of loneliness. This inferential process will be carried out through collaboration between the research team (primarily PMP and JG).

Sensitivity analysis

After the synthesis is complete, a sensitivity analysis will be undertaken in which any low-quality studies (as identified through the JBI checklist) are excluded from the analysis to assess whether the synthesis is altered when these studies are removed, in terms of any themes being lost entirely or becoming less rich or thick [ 42 ]. Sensitivity analysis will also be used to assess whether any age group is entirely responsible for a given theme. In this way, the robustness of the synthesis can be appraised and the individual findings can remain grounded in their context whilst also extending into a broader understanding of the experiences of loneliness.

Risk of bias in individual studies

Risk of bias in individual studies will be taken into account through utilisation of the JBI checklist, which includes ten questions to assess whether a study is adequately conceptualised and reported [ 32 ]. PMP will use the checklist to assess the quality of each study. Whilst all eligible studies will be included in the synthesis (as described in the “Quality appraisal” section), any lower-quality studies will be excluded during post-synthesis sensitivity analysis in order to assess whether their inclusion has affected the synthesis in any way as suggested by Carroll and Booth [ 43 ].

Confidence in cumulative evidence

The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation – Confidence in the Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative Research (GRADE-CERQual) approach [ 44 , 45 ] will be used to assess how much confidence can be placed in the findings of this qualitative evidence synthesis. This will allow a transparent, systematic appraisal of confidence in the findings for researchers, clinicians, and other decision-makers who may utilise the evidence from the planned systematic review. GRADE-CERQual involves assessment in four domains: (1) methodological limitations, (2) coherence, (3) adequacy of data, and (4) relevance. There is also an overall rating of confidence: high, moderate, low, or very low. These findings will be displayed in a Summary of Qualitative Findings table including a summary of each finding, confidence in that finding, and an explanation for the rating. Assessments for each finding will be made through discussion between PMP and JG.

The proposed systematic review will contribute to our knowledge of loneliness by clarifying how it is subjectively experienced across the lifespan. Synthesising the qualitative literature focusing on experiences of loneliness in the general population will offer a fine-grained, subjectively derived understanding of the components of this phenomenon which closely reflects the original descriptions provided by those who have experienced it. By including non-clinical populations of all ages, this research will provide an essential view of loneliness experiences across different life stages. This can be used to inform future research into correlates, consequences, and interventions for loneliness. The use of thematic synthesis will enable us to remain close to the data, offering an account which might also be useful for policy and practice in this area.

There are a number of limitations to the planned research. Primarily, this review will be unable to capture aspects of loneliness experiences which have not been described in the qualitative literature, for example, due to the sensitivity of the topic, given that loneliness can be stigmatising, or aspects that are specific to a given unstudied population. Moreover, by focusing on lifespan non-clinical research, we aim to offer a general synthesis which can in future be informed by insights from clinical groups, rather than subsuming and potentially obscuring the aspects of loneliness which might be unique to them. Whilst primary empirical studies are not themselves extensive sources, with books in particular often offering rich descriptions of loneliness (see, e.g. [ 11 , 46 ]), this research will focus on primary empirical studies of subjective descriptions to offer a manageable level of scope and rigour. As with any systematic review, some studies may also be missing information which would inform the synthesis. Quality appraisal and sensitivity analysis will aim to capture and potentially control for this issue, but it will ultimately be difficult to ascertain how missing information might affect the synthesis.

By providing a thorough overview of how loneliness is experienced, we expect that the findings from the planned review will be informative and useful for researchers, policymakers, and clinicians who work with and for people experiencing loneliness, as well as for these individuals themselves, to better understand this important, prevalent, and often misunderstood phenomenon. Mansfield et al. [ 18 ] have offered an illuminating systematic review covering the conceptual frameworks and models of loneliness included in the existing evidence base (i.e. social, emotional, and existential loneliness). This review will build upon this work by including research with children and adolescents and taking a bottom-up approach similar to grounded theory where the synthesis will remain close to the participants’ subjective descriptions of loneliness experiences within the included studies, rather than reflecting pre-existing themes in the evidence base. As such, this systematic review will offer specific insights into lifespan experiences of loneliness. This synthesis of lived experiences will shed light on the nuances of loneliness which existing definitions and typologies might overlook. It will offer an experience-focused overview of loneliness for people studying and developing measures of this phenomenon. In focusing on qualitative work, the planned review may also identify processes relevant to loneliness which are not expressed by statistical models. In this way, it may also provide a starting point for more nuanced qualitative work with specific populations and circumstances to ascertain components which may be characteristic of certain experiences.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research

Education Resource Information Center

Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation – Confidence in the Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative Research

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences

Joanna Briggs Institute

Jenny Groarke

Keming Yang

Phoebe McKenna-Plumley

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses – Protocol

International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews

Review question – Epistemology – Time/Timescale – Resources – Expertise – Audience and purpose – Type of data

Rhiannon Turner

Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research type

Department for Digital C, Media and Sport. A connected society: a strategy for tackling loneliness – laying the foundations for change. London; 2018.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge and thank Ms. Norma Menabney and Ms. Carol Dunlop, subject librarians at the McClay Library, Queen’s University Belfast, for their advice and assistance with designing a search strategy for this review. The authors would also like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Ciara Keenan, a research fellow at Queen’s University Belfast and associate director of Cochrane Ireland, for her completion of the PRESS checklist and guidance regarding the search strategy and systematic review methodology.

PMP wishes to acknowledge the funding received from the Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Partnership, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council with support from the Department for the Economy Northern Ireland. The funder did not play a role in the development of this protocol.

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PMP is the study guarantor. PMP and JG were responsible for the conception and design of the study. PMP, JG, RT, and KY contributed to the drafting and revising of the protocol. All authors approved the final manuscript.

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McKenna-Plumley, P.E., Groarke, J.M., Turner, R.N. et al. Experiences of loneliness: a study protocol for a systematic review and thematic synthesis of qualitative literature. Syst Rev 9 , 284 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-020-01544-x

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The Epidemic of Loneliness and What We Can Do About It

The evidence shows Americans are becoming lonelier, leading to mental and physical health problems for people of all ages.

Preliminary results of a Harvard University study  conducted in October 2020 found that 36 percent of Americans reported feeling seriously lonely. Among specific groups of people, that number was even higher, with 61 percent of participants ages 18-25 and 51 percent of mothers with young children reported feeling “frequently” or “almost always” lonely. In addition, there is ample evidence that older adults have experienced an increase in loneliness since the start of the pandemic.

Loneliness has broader implications for our mental and physical health. It’s not difficult to understand how  loneliness leads to depression , a growing problem in the U.S. Among older adults, loneliness increases the risk of developing  dementia ,  slows down  their walking speeds, interferes with their ability to care for themselves, and increases their risk of  heart disease and stroke . Loneliness is even associated with  dying earlier . Among adolescents and young adults, loneliness increases the likelihood of  headaches, stomach aches, sleep disturbances , and  compulsive internet use .

Neuroscientists  have found  feeling lonely changes the structure and function of our brains in areas associated with  cognition ,  stress  response, and emotions. Brain imaging studies have also found loneliness is related to the biological markers for Alzheimer’s disease.

The recent Harvard report offers a deep dive into who suffers the most from loneliness, and the best ways to alleviate this problem. They found, for example, that young adults ages 18-25, have been especially vulnerable to loneliness during the  COVID-19  pandemic. About half reported going weeks without having anyone ask how they were doing in a way that made them feel the person “genuinely cared about their well being.

They also found people who feel lonely tend to be more critical of themselves and others and are more likely to expect social rejection.

The report advocates for two main solutions. The first involves educating people about how loneliness changes the perceptions of self and others, and teaching techniques to reframe these negative perceptions. This includes informing people about how widespread loneliness is to reduce feelings of shame and encouraging lonely people to reach out to others, even though they might feel prone to rejection.

Second, the report also advocates for a broader public response that raises awareness about the importance of maintaining and creating social ties. It suggests a two-pronged approach: connecting people to others through digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google, and local organizations such as schools, churches, YMCAs, and libraries.

The report recommends embedding social connections into our society. Examples of this include making sure doctors ask about loneliness at annual check-ups and connect lonely patients with community resources; encouraging schools help to connect parents with one another and making sure every child has a trusting relationship with a school adult; colleges creating communities in which students feel they belong; senior centers finding ways to connect young people with the elderly; and workplaces finding ways to check in with employees and create social opportunities for colleagues.

The take-home message: Loneliness is pervasive in modern society and leads to a wide range of health problems. One solution is to encourage lonely people to recognize the negative perceptions through patterns associated with loneliness and to reach out to others. Encouraging institutions and community organizations to create social connections is another way to address loneliness on a broader scale.

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• How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .

Your thesis will look a bit different depending on the type of essay you’re writing. But the thesis statement should always clearly state the main idea you want to get across. Everything else in your essay should relate back to this idea.

You can write your thesis statement by following four simple steps:

• Start with a question
• Write your initial answer
• Develop your answer
• Refine your thesis statement

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Table of contents

What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.

A thesis statement summarizes the central points of your essay. It is a signpost telling the reader what the essay will argue and why.

The best thesis statements are:

• Concise: A good thesis statement is short and sweet—don’t use more words than necessary. State your point clearly and directly in one or two sentences.
• Contentious: Your thesis shouldn’t be a simple statement of fact that everyone already knows. A good thesis statement is a claim that requires further evidence or analysis to back it up.
• Coherent: Everything mentioned in your thesis statement must be supported and explained in the rest of your paper.

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The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts and among young people more generally is hotly debated. For many who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education: the internet facilitates easier access to information, exposure to different perspectives, and a flexible learning environment for both students and teachers.

You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis , early in the writing process . As soon as you’ve decided on your essay topic , you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.

You might already have a question in your assignment, but if not, try to come up with your own. What would you like to find out or decide about your topic?

For example, you might ask:

After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process .

Now you need to consider why this is your answer and how you will convince your reader to agree with you. As you read more about your topic and begin writing, your answer should get more detailed.

In your essay about the internet and education, the thesis states your position and sketches out the key arguments you’ll use to support it.

The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education because it facilitates easier access to information.

In your essay about braille, the thesis statement summarizes the key historical development that you’ll explain.

The invention of braille in the 19th century transformed the lives of blind people, allowing them to participate more actively in public life.

A strong thesis statement should tell the reader:

• Why you hold this position
• What they’ll learn from your essay
• The key points of your argument or narrative

The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.

These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.

Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:

• In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
• In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

• Ask a question about your topic .
• Write your initial answer.
• Develop your answer by including reasons.
• Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

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Loneliness & Isolation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Essay

Introduction.

The main character of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was sure regarding his uniqueness: “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (42). The reason is that Viktor Frankenstein was a young scientist obsessed with the idea of creating a unique living creature by referring to science and alchemy.

Still, he cannot love this monstrous human being, and this fact leads to disastrous consequences (Cengage Learning 7; Seal 84-86). This novel represents the key characteristics of Romanticism through accentuating isolation from society, the focus on exploring nature, and the freedom of desires and feelings (Chase 165-166; Varner 137-138). Viktor, a Romantic character, chooses alienation as his path in the world that leads him to misery, and he develops as an irresponsible scientist who does not realize his duty.

Alienation in Shelley’s Novel

In Frankenstein, alienation is discussed through the perspective of sorrow and despair for the main characters. Although Viktor was brought up by loving parents, he always wanted to isolate himself from other people to focus on science (Gottlieb 127-129). Viktor states: “I must absent myself from all I loved while thus employed” (Shelley 117).

These words accentuate Viktor’s focus on himself and his desires that later determine his path, leading to more obsession with science and creating a new living being, as well as to more alienation while being locked in his laboratory and conducting experiments. Viktor’s alienation further leads him to despair because of creating the monster, but Frankenstein’s creature also suffers from isolation because he cannot be opened to society and accepted by it (Nesvet 348).

His first experience of interacting with people is described the following way: “The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me” (Shelley 83). The creature that wants to be loved faces the cruelty of the world that makes him become even more alienated and concentrated on revenge.

Responsibility in Frankenstein

In addition to making him and his creature be isolated, Viktor does not accept the idea of duty and responsibility for his actions because of his inability to understand what it means to be responsible for the creation. Being focused on a scientific aspect of creating, Viktor ignores his duty as a creator and a “father” (Bloom 22; Halpern et al. 50; Nair 78). As a result, the creature is forced to ask: “How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind” (Shelley 78). In this context, Viktor understands his duty only after his creature’s words.

However, he still does not accept his responsibility as a “father” because he cannot love his “child.” Thus, the creature states, “Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us” (Shelley 78). From this perspective, it is possible to note that Viktor is unable to take responsibility for his actions and perform his duties as both a scientist and a creator despite his ambition.

Alienation and the lack of responsibility regarding the scientist’s actions for society can be viewed as partially related to the modern world. On the one hand, the isolation of a scientist today cannot lead him to impressive results, but this characteristic is typical of Romanticism. On the other hand, modern scientists change the world, and they need to be responsible for their actions. Therefore, the ideas stated by Shelley in the novel should be reconsidered from the perspective of the modern world.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Infobase Learning, 2013.

Cengage Learning. A Study Guide for Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. Gale/Cengage Learning, 2015.

Chase, Cynthia. Romanticism. Routledge, 2014.

Gottlieb, Evan, editor. Global Romanticism: Origins, Orientations, and Engagements, 1760–1820. Bucknell University Press, 2014.

Halpern, Megan K., et al. “Stitching Together Creativity and Responsibility: Interpreting Frankenstein across Disciplines.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, vol. 36, no. 1, 2016, pp. 49-57.

Nair, Lekshmi R. “Playing God: Robin Cook’s ‘Mutation’ as a Reworking of the Frankenstein Theme of the Creator Pitted against the Creation.” Writers Editors Critics, vol. 6, no. 2, 2016, pp. 77-82.

Nesvet, Rebecca. “Review: Frankenstein: Text and Mythos.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2018, pp. 347-351.

Seal, Jon. GCSE English Literature for AQA Frankenstein Student Book. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Diversion Books, 2015.

Varner, Paul. Historical Dictionary of Romanticism in Literature. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

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IvyPanda. (2022, August 21). Loneliness & Isolation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. https://ivypanda.com/essays/loneliness-isolation-in-mary-shelleys-frankenstein/

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Existential Concerns and Cognitive-Behavioral Procedures pp 115–133 Cite as

Isolation, Loneliness and Mental Health

• Isabella Ingram 4 , 5 &
• Peter J. Kelly 4 , 5  
• First Online: 12 August 2022

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In this chapter, we discuss two conceptualisations of loneliness: a singular construct and a multidimensional construct that can be experienced in both social and emotional forms. Based on these two views of loneliness, we discuss measurement approaches and difficulties capturing loneliness, which can be a highly subjective experience. We review two key theories that may help to explain how loneliness arises, is maintained and may be overcome. These are cognitive theories of loneliness and the social identity approach. The chapter goes on to highlight the significant physical and mental health implications of loneliness, including proposed mechanisms by which health affects loneliness and conversely how loneliness can affect health. Finally, we discuss research about the relationship between loneliness and various forms of psychopathology, including depression, anxiety, psychosis and substance use disorders. Empirical studies are reviewed throughout, and clinical implications of this evidence are highlighted.

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Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S., & Weishaar, M. E. (2006). Schema therapy: A practitioner’s guide (p. 7). Guilford Press.

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• NEWS FEATURE
• 03 April 2024

Why loneliness is bad for your health

• Saima May Sidik 0

Saima May Sidik is a freelance science journalist based in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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Some data challenge the popular notion that older people experience the highest rates of loneliness. Credit: Richard Baker/In Pictures Ltd/Corbis via Getty

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In 2010, Theresa Chaklos was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia — the first in a series of ailments that she has had to deal with since. She’d always been an independent person, living alone and supporting herself as a family-law facilitator in the Washington DC court system. But after illness hit, her independence turned into loneliness .

Loneliness, in turn, exacerbated Chaklos’s physical condition. “I dropped 15 pounds in less than a week because I wasn’t eating,” she says. “I was so miserable, I just would not get up.” Fortunately a co-worker convinced her to ask her friends to help out, and her mood began to lift. “It’s a great feeling” to know that other people are willing to show up, she says.

Many people can’t break out of a bout of loneliness so easily. And when acute loneliness becomes chronic, the health effects can be far-reaching. Chronic loneliness can be as detrimental as obesity, physical inactivity and smoking according to a report by Vivek Murthy , the US surgeon general. Depression, dementia, cardiovascular disease 1 and even early death 2 have all been linked to the condition. Worldwide, around one-quarter of adults feel very or fairly lonely, according to a 2023 poll conducted by the social-media firm Meta, the polling company Gallup and a group of academic advisers (see go.nature.com/48xhu3p ). That same year, the World Health Organization launched a campaign to address loneliness, which it called a “pressing health threat” .

But why does feeling alone lead to poor health? Over the past few years, scientists have begun to reveal the neural mechanisms that cause the human body to unravel when social needs go unmet. The field “seems to be expanding quite significantly”, says cognitive neuroscientist Nathan Spreng at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. And although the picture is far from complete, early results suggest that loneliness might alter many aspects of the brain, from its volume to the connections between neurons.

Subjective and contagious

Loneliness is a slippery concept. It’s not the same as social isolation, which occurs when someone has few meaningful social relationships, although “they’re two sides of the same coin”, says old-age psychiatrist Andrew Sommerlad at University College London. Rather, loneliness is a person’s subjective experience of being unsatisfied with their social relationships.

The list of health conditions linked to loneliness is long and sobering 1 (see ‘Loneliness and health’). Some of these make intuitive sense — people who feel lonely are often depressed, for example, sometimes to the point of being at risk of suicide. Other links are more surprising. Lonely people are at greater risk of high blood pressure and immune-system dysfunction compared with those who do not feel lonely, for example. There’s also a startling connection between loneliness and dementia, with one study reporting that people who feel lonely are 1.64 times more likely to develop this type of neurodegeneration than are those who do not 3 .

Source: The Cigna Group

A number of physiological effects, including the ability to sleep, increased stress-hormone levels and increased susceptibility to infections, could link loneliness with health problems. But the way in which these factors interact with one another makes it difficult to disentangle the effects of loneliness from the causes, cautions cognitive neuroscientist Livia Tomova at Cardiff University, UK. Do people’s brains start functioning differently when they become lonely, or do some people have differences in their brains that make them prone to loneliness? “We don’t really know which one is true,” she says.

Whatever the cause, loneliness seems to have the biggest effect on people who are in disadvantaged groups. In the United States, Black and Hispanic adults, as well as people who earn less than US$50,000 per year, have higher rates of loneliness than do other demographic groups by at least 10 percentage points, according to a 2021 survey by the Cigna Group, a US health-care and insurance company (see go.nature.com/43eakds ). That’s not surprising because “loneliness, by definition, is an emotional distress that wants us to adapt our social situations”, says geriatrician and palliative-care physician Ashwin Kotwal at the University of California, San Francisco. Without financial resources, adapting is harder.

The COVID-19 pandemic might have exacerbated loneliness by forcing people to isolate for months or years, although “that data is still emerging”, Kotwal says. Older adults have long been thought of as the demographic most heavily affected by loneliness, and indeed it is a major problem faced by many of the older people that Kotwal works with. But the Cigna Group’s data suggest that loneliness is actually highest in young adults — 79% of those between the ages of 18 and 24 reported feeling lonely, compared with 41% of people aged 66 and older.

Loneliness eats at you

A growing amount of research is exploring what happens in the brain when people feel lonely. Lonely people tend to view the world differently from those who aren’t, says cognitive neuroscientist Laetitia Mwilambwe-Tshilobo at Princeton University in New Jersey. In a 2023 study, researchers asked participants to watch videos of people in a variety of situations — for example, playing sports or on a date — while inside an magnetic resonance imaging scanner 4 . People who did not report being lonely all had similar neural responses to each other, whereas the responses in people who felt lonely were all different — from the other group and from each other. The authors hypothesized that lonely people pay attention to different aspects of situations from non-lonely people, which causes those who feel lonely to perceive themselves as being different from their peers.

Feeling lonely in research? You’re not alone

This would mean that loneliness can feed back on itself, becoming worse over time. “It’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Mwilambwe-Tshilobo says. “If you think that you’re lonely, you’re perceiving or interpreting your social world more negatively. And that makes you move further and further away.” Some studies have shown that this effect can spread through social networks, giving loneliness a contagious quality 5 .

Historically, staying close to others was probably a good survival strategy for humans. That’s why scientists think that temporary loneliness evolved — to motivate people to seek company, just as hunger and thirst evolved to motivate people to seek food and water.

In fact, the similarities between hunger and loneliness go right down to the physiological level. In a 2020 study, researchers deprived people of either food or social connections for ten hours. They then used brain imaging to identify areas that were activated by images of either food — such as a heaping plate of pasta — or social interactions, such as friends laughing together. Some of the activated regions were unique to images either of food or of people socializing, but a region in the midbrain known as the substantia nigra lit up when hungry people saw pictures of food and when people who felt lonely saw pictures of social interactions 6 . That’s “a key region for motivation — it’s known to be active whenever we want something”, says Tomova, who is an author on the study.

More links are emerging between loneliness and how the brain processes feelings of reward. In mice, loneliness sensitizes certain midbrain neurons to a neurotransmitter called dopamine 7 , which can also cause people to cave in to cravings, such as for food and drugs. Likewise, isolation might make humans more sensitive to rewards and more eager to seek them out. In 2023, Tomova and her colleagues published a preprint 8 for a study in which they isolated adolescents from social contact for up to four hours. After isolation, participants were offered the chance to earn a monetary reward. The isolated participants agreed more quickly than did those who were not isolated, suggesting that isolation had made them more responsive to rewarding actions.

Loneliness and health

Although research on dopamine and loneliness is still emerging, scientists have also long recognized the connection between loneliness and another type of chemical signal — stress hormones called glucocorticoids. Humans need some level of glucocorticoids “to function; to wake up”, says neurophysiologist John-Ioannis Sotiropoulos at the National Centre for Scientific Research ‘Demokritos’ in Athens. But persistent loneliness leads to chronically high levels.

These chemicals could provide a link between loneliness and dementia. In a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, for example, glucocorticoids increased the levels of two proteins that are involved in the main hallmark of the condition, the protein plaques that tangle around neurons and interfere with memory and cognition 9 .

Stress is an extra assault on brains that are already wearing out as people get older, Mwilambwe-Tshilobo says, but she wants to see more research before committing to an opinion on exactly what part stress-related chemicals play in neurodegeneration. “It could accelerate the rate of ageing, but there hasn’t been work that explicitly looks at that,” she says.

Tomova says that although high levels of stress hormones probably contribute to dementia, it’s also likely that people who feel lonely miss out on the mental exercise that social interactions provide. And just as a muscle needs exercise to stay fit, so does the brain. In fact, loneliness has been associated with a smaller volume of grey matter in the brain 10 . “This is all hypothesis, really, at this stage,” Sommerlad says, but the idea is that socializing maintains neural connections that might otherwise be lost.

Turning inward

Researchers looking for the neural signature of loneliness have also found differences that could help to explain some of the correlations between loneliness and dementia. Previous research has suggested that there are changes in the connectivity between brain areas in people who feel lonely 11 . A 2020 study 12 examined an area of the brain called the default network — so called because it’s active by default when a person isn’t engaged in a particular task and turns their attention inward — in older people who reported being lonely.

The hurt of loneliness and social isolation

Previous work had suggested that young people who feel lonely have high neural cross-talk between the default network and other networks associated with vision, attention and executive control 13 , possibly because they’re on high alert for social cues, says Spreng, one of the authors on the 2020 study of older people. But his team found the opposite in brain scans from the UK Biobank cohort of people aged 40 to 69. Loneliness weakened connections between the default network and the visual system and instead strengthened connections within the default network.

That could be because older people remedy loneliness by retreating into memories of past social experiences, Spreng says. In doing so, they strengthen the default network.

The default network is one of many networks in the brain that accrues damage during Alzheimer’s disease. Spreng and his colleagues are investigating whether strong default networks can indeed be linked to neurodegeneration — and if so, why. He wonders whether robust neural connections might allow pathologies to spread more readily in the network. The idea is far from proven, but it’s a plausible explanation and “an interesting hypothesis”, says cognitive neuroscientist Anastasia Benedyk at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany.

The study “lays the foundation for us to be able to test some hypotheses a little bit more empirically”, says Mwilambwe-Tshilobo, who was also involved in the work linking the default network with loneliness.

Finding solutions

Some remedies for loneliness will come as no surprise. Increasing access to social activities, for example by housing people in communities with common areas, can help, Sommerlad says. Some researchers are also finding ways to tap into the neural mechanisms underlying loneliness directly, through exercise, for instance.

Walking 4–5 kilometres over the course of an hour completely reversed feelings of low mood associated with loneliness in some people, Benedyk and her colleagues found 14 . What’s more, people with high connectivity in their default networks — the same area Spreng studied, which is also known to be affected by depression — were among those who benefited from exercise the most.

One possible explanation for this observation is that people with depression are “stuck in rumination” — a behaviour that draws heavily on the default network, Benedyk says. Exercise could force them to use other parts of their brain by interrupting neural processes that are associated with self-reflection and shifting activity to areas associated with physical activities — freeing them from a cycle of negative thoughts.

Exercising is also a great excuse to socialize. These days, Chaklos is retired, but she now leads the Boston branch of a US programme called ‘Walk with a Doc’, in which physicians invite community members to walk with them. At the group’s February walk, about 14 people chatted and strolled inside the Prudential Center mall in Boston, Massachusetts, where they could avoid New England’s winter weather. The activity “just uplifts a person’s mood”, Chaklos says. “Even if you’re still going back home to be by yourself, you don’t feel totally alone any more.”

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Thesis Statement For Of Mice And Men

John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The story follows two main characters, George and Lennie, as they travel across America in search of work. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck explores the theme of the American Dream and its failure. The American Dream is the belief that anyone can succeed in America if they work hard enough. However, Of Mice and Men shows that this dream is not always attainable.

Many of the characters in the novel are poor, uneducated, and have no real prospects for a better life. They are forced to work hard just to survive, with no hope of ever achieving their dreams. In the end, George is forced to kill his friend Lennie, illustrating the tragic reality that the American Dream is often out of reach. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men highlights the failure of the American Dream, showing that sometimes it is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Of Mice and Men is a short story written by John Steinbeck set in the Salinas River Valley, California, during the Great Depression. It was written by John Steinbeck, who grew up near the Salinas River Valley in the 1910s. Stock markets crashed, leaving people penniless overnight. Some guys traveled from farm to farm just to acquire enough food to survive.

John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, is about the failure of the American Dream. The American Dream is “a happy way of life in which everything comes together for you.”

The book is set during the Great Depression, a time when the American Dream was hard to achieve. The characters in the book, George and Lennie, are two migrant workers who travel around looking for work. They hope to one day own their own farm, but their dream is never realized. The novel ends with Lennie accidentally killing his friend John’s wife, Curley’s wife. John then kills Lennie to prevent him from getting into trouble. In the end, George and Lennie’s dream dies along with them.

They didn’t have homes, so all they had was a backpack. In his novella Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck employs Curley’s wife, Crook, and Candy to illustrate the failure of the American Dream. To begin with, Steinbeck employs Curley’s wife to demonstrate the failure of the American Dream.

Unlike her husband, Curley’s wife is not content with what she has. For example, she tells Lennie, “I ain’t got no rights. Nobody never gives me no rights” (Steinbeck 71). Curley’s wife is always complaining about how unfair her life is and how she never gets what she wants. In addition, Steinbeck also uses Crooks to prove the failure of the American Dream.

Crooks is a black man who is not allowed to interact with the white people on the ranch. He is treated like an animal and is always living in fear. For instance, when Lennie goes into his room, Crooks says, “You got no rights comin’ in my room. I got a right to have a light” (Steinbeck 74). Crooks is always living in fear of being hurt or killed because he is different from the other ranch workers. Lastly, Steinbeck uses Candy to show the failure of the American Dream.

Candy is an old man who has lost his hand in an accident. He is no longer able to do the things he used to be able to do and is now just a burden on the ranch. For example, when Candy offers to pay George and Lennie for their dream, George says, “Candy, we ain’t gonna need your money” (Steinbeck 103). George knows that Candy is just going to be a burden on them and they don’t need his money.

In conclusion, John Steinbeck uses Curley’s wife, Crooks, and Candy to contribute to the failure of the American Dream. The American Dream is an unrealistic goal that is unattainable for most people. It is a dream that is only achievable by a select few.

Lennie is trying to hold on to a lady’s soft dress, which he has snatched. They must flee in order not to incur the wrath of the event. “And rabbits, and have rabbits,” Lennie adds. Tell me about the garden and about the rabbits in cages during rainy winter weather and how the cream is on milk like you can scarcely cut it, George says (Steinbeck 14).

From this, we see that Lennie is dreamer and he wants to have a place of their own so very badly. George is more level-headed, but he tolerates Lennie because he knows how much Lennie means to him. They are best friends and they need each other. “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place… With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us” (Steinbeck 15).

From this passage, Steinbeck is trying to show how companionship is one of the most important things to people like George and Lennie. They are looking for a place to call their own and to be accepted. Unfortunately, the American Dream is not always achievable and it certainly wasn’t for these two men.

Lennie is developmentally disabled and George knows that he can never really take care of himself. He tries his best, but in the end, it is clear that Lennie cannot survive on his own. When they get to the ranch, they meet Candy, an old man who has lost his hand in an accident. He tells them about his dream of buying a piece of land with them and living there together. However, this dream is quickly dashed when Curley’s wife enters the story.

Curley was furious with Lennie and wanted to kill him, but since his companion George did it for him, it was less painful. Steinbeck utilizes Lennie to illustrate the decay of the American Dream.

Lennie is a perfect example of someone who is not able to achieve the American Dream because he is not smart enough and is not able to control himself. This shows that the American Dream is unattainable for many people. John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California. He was the third of four children and the only son of John Ernst Steinbeck and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was a businessman and his mother was a schoolteacher. Steinbeck grew up in a rural community and his early years were spent working on farms with migrant workers. These experiences would later be reflected in his writing.

Steinbeck went to Stanford University but he dropped out after two years without taking a degree. He then moved to New York City where he worked as a journalist and wrote short stories. Steinbeck’s first novel, Cup of Gold, was published in 1929. His second novel, The Pastures of Heaven, was published the following year. These two novels were not successful and Steinbeck returned to California. In 1935, Steinbeck published Tortilla Flat, which was his first real success.

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Loneliness can kill, and new research shows middle-aged Americans are particularly vulnerable

Associate Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University

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Frank J. Infurna receives funding from the National Institute on Aging (Grant number: R01 AG079523).

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Middle-aged Americans are lonelier than their European counterparts. That’s the key finding of my team’s recent study , published in American Psychologist.

Our study identified a trend that has been evolving for multiple generations, and affects both baby boomers and Gen Xers. Middle-aged adults in England and Mediterranean Europe are not that far behind the U.S. In contrast, middle-aged adults in continental and Nordic Europe reported the lowest levels of loneliness and stability over time.

We used survey data drawn from over 53,000 middle-aged adults from the U.S. and 13 European nations from 2002 to 2020. We tracked their reported changes in loneliness every two years across the midlife years of 45 to 65. This span provided us data from the so-called silent generation of people born between 1937 and 1945; baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964; and members of Generation X, born between 1965 and 1974.

Our study makes clear that middle-aged Americans today are experiencing more loneliness than their peers in European nations. This coincides with existing evidence that mortality rates are rising for working-age adults in the U.S.

We focused on middle-aged adults for several reasons. Middle-aged adults form the backbone of society by constituting a majority of the workforce . But they also face increasing challenges today, notably greater demands for support from both their aging parents and their children .

Following the Great Recession from late 2007 to 2009, middle-aged adults in the U.S. reported poorer mental and physical health compared to same-aged peers in the 1990s. Compared to several European nations, U.S. middle-aged adults currently report more depressive symptoms and higher rates of chronic illness, pain and disability .

Why it matters

The desire to belong is an innate and fundamental need . When this is lacking, it can have downstream consequences.

Loneliness is bad for your health . Researchers have found that loneliness is as dangerous as smoking . Loneliness increases one’s vulnerability to sickness, depression, chronic illness and premature death .

Loneliness is considered a global public health issue. The U.S. surgeon general released an advisory report in 2023 documenting an epidemic of loneliness and a pressing need to increase social connection. Other nations, such as the U.K. and Japan , have appointed ministers of loneliness to ensure relationships and loneliness are considered in policymaking.

What still isn’t known

Why are middle-aged Americans exceptional when it comes to loneliness and poorer overall mental and physical health?

We did not directly test this in our study, but in the future we hope to zero in on the factors driving these trends. We think that the loneliness Americans are reporting compared to peer nations comes down to limited social safety nets and to cultural norms that prioritize individualism over community.

Individualization carries psychological costs, such as reductions in social connections and support structures, which are correlates of loneliness . Relative to the other nations in our study, Americans have a higher tendency to relocate , which is associated with weak social and community ties.

One of the reasons why we chose countries from across Europe is that they differ dramatically from the U.S. when it comes to social and economic opportunities and social safety nets. Social and economic inequalities likely increase one’s loneliness through undermining one’s ability to meet basic needs. Generous family and work policies likely lessen midlife loneliness through reducing financial pressures and work-family conflict, as well as addressing health and gender inequities.

Our findings on loneliness in conjunction with previous studies on life expectancy, health, well-being and cognition suggest that being middle-aged in America is a risk factor for poor mental and physical health outcomes.

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The Psychological Structure of Loneliness

Associated data.

No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.

Despite the current surge of interest in loneliness, its health consequences, and possible remedies, the concept itself remains poorly understood. This paper seeks to contribute to a more fully worked out account of what loneliness consists in. It does this by stressing that loneliness always has an experiential component and by introducing a simple psychological structure to analyze the experience. On this basis, it suggests that we can distinguish between three ways of thinking about the phenomenal dimension of loneliness. There are objectivist views that seek to understand loneliness by a description of its intentional object, subjectivist views that consider its holistic relation to other aspects of the sufferer’s psyche, and embodied and enacted views that focus on the relation between the lonely person’s mental life and her social environment. The aim is not to adjudicate between these views or to suggest that they are mutually exclusive. Rather, this paper recommends a pluralistic framework on which all three approaches have something to contribute to a fuller understanding of the condition and may be of use in devising measures aimed at improving sufferers’ health.

1. Introduction

Loneliness is a pervasive public health concern, significantly correlated with increases in health problems and mortality rates [ 1 , 2 ]. A rapidly growing literature is aimed at identifying methods to diagnose the condition and provide help to sufferers (see [ 3 ] for an overview). For this to be possible, a plausible description or definition of loneliness has to be in place. Several such definitions are available; see [ 4 ] for an overview of definitions and [ 5 ] for a typology of interventions for loneliness. They are accompanied by corresponding measurement systems such as the UCLA Loneliness Scale [ 6 ]. In contemporary psychological research, many descriptions frame loneliness as a perceived discrepancy between desired and available social connections (e.g., [ 2 , 7 ]; p. 839). This seems uncontroversial as a first step, but questions arise immediately: what is meant by a “social connection” (or “social interaction” or “social relationship”)? How do you think about its absence? How do you make precise the notion of an “unpleasant experience” or a “distressing feeling”?

These questions are of philosophical import, but their relevance does not stop there. How they are approached has consequences for the design of measures designed to help sufferers. Different ways of thinking about loneliness bring with them different recommendations for therapy or changes in the affected person’s social environment. However, and in contrast to the flourishing debate in psychology about the diagnosis and remedy of loneliness, the discussion of its conceptual dimension is in its infancy. Historically, philosophers have thought about loneliness as an existential (e.g., [ 8 ]) or political concept [ 9 ]. It is only very recently that they have framed the condition as a mental health concern ([ 10 , 11 ]. It is hence telling that Motta’s [ 4 ] overview of theoretical approaches to loneliness builds on a summary of psychological concepts published several decades ago [ 12 ]. The research available on loneliness in contemporary philosophy is not yet robust enough to allow for a qualified discussion of its conceptual dimension.

The present paper is intended to contribute to this discussion by raising some questions that a full-fledged philosophical theory of loneliness, understood as a condition that is detrimental to the sufferer’s health, would have to address. After a brief classification of issues that arise from a widely used definition of loneliness in psychology, this paper draws on some long-standing debates in the philosophy of mind to show how these debates can inform the experiential dimension of loneliness research. Its aim is not to develop a comprehensive theory of loneliness or even its phenomenal aspect. It does not offer a framework that could be classified along the lines of Perlman and Peplau’s [ 12 ] conceptual or Mann, Bone, and Lloyd-Evans’s [ 5 ] practical typologies of loneliness. It merely helps prepare the ground for the development of a theory that incorporates the phenomenal dimension of loneliness and, in doing so, highlights the importance of the sufferer’s experience for the design of diagnostic and remedial work.

2. Three Dimensions of Loneliness

Here are two relatively recent definitions of loneliness in widely cited psychological research papers:

• Loneliness is “the unpleasant experience that occurs when there is a subjective discrepancy between desired and perceived availability and quality of social interactions” ([ 7 ] p. 839).
• Loneliness is “a distressing feeling that accompanies the perception that one’s social needs are not being met by the quantity or especially the quality of one’s social relationships” ([ 2 ]).

Variants of these two definitions are popular in the academic and popular literature on loneliness (consider, e.g., the definition of loneliness in the Encyclopedia Britannica as the “distressing experience that occurs when a person’s social relationships are perceived by that person to be less in quantity, and especially in quality, than desired” [ 13 ]). In particular, they are commonly adopted by writers who see loneliness as a condition that is detrimental to the sufferer’s mental and physical health and that thus benefits from remedial intervention. The two definitions, though not quite identical, represent what I shall call the “standard view” of loneliness. They have at least three features in common. They both understand loneliness as an experience—that is, a mental state, event, or relation that can be described in terms of its subjective characteristics. They both agree, secondly, that the experience in question has a negative valence: it is “unpleasant” or “distressing”. Thirdly, they agree that the experience is about something: it presents, or represents, a discrepancy between the social relationships that would meet one’s social needs and those that one does in fact enjoy, or that are available. These three features are associated with distinct philosophical areas of investigation. They can be classified along the following lines:

2.1. The Phenomenal Dimension

This dimension of loneliness research covers all questions that have to do with the first-person, subjective aspect of the phenomenon. Along the lines of the standard view, loneliness always has an experiential aspect to it. But more will need to be said for a well-worked out theory: what kind of experience is loneliness? Is it appropriately described as a feeling or an emotion (see Damasio [ 14 ] for a prominent account of the distinction)? If so, which (if any) of the extant theories of emotion in the philosophical literature is well placed to capture the experience of loneliness (see Scarantino and de Sousa [ 15 ] for an overview of theories of emotion)? Relatedly, should we think of the experience as having success conditions, and that (correspondingly) a token experience can misrepresent its intentional object? Or should we deny that one can feel lonely when in fact one is not? How these questions are answered will have considerable impact on the design of remedial measures: for instance, if the sense of being lonely has correctness conditions, then therapeutic work may promisingly highlight the falsidical character of a sufferer’s experience. If, however, feeling lonely is taken to be sufficient for loneliness, such an approach would be grossly misguided.

2.2. The Social Dimension

A separate set of question arises with regard to the “social relationships” or “social interactions” that a person is experiencing as lacking in loneliness. There are many kinds of social interactions and social relationships, and not all of them are equally relevant in the alleviation of the condition. More needs to be said about what is meant by these notions. Who are the partners in the relevant kinds of social interactions? Do they have to be exercised in person, or can virtual reality help (e.g., [ 16 ])? Is there an important bodily aspect to them? How does the developmental role of social interaction in the regulation of a person’s emotional life bear on a theory of loneliness? What factors other than interaction are important to substantiate the kind of social relationship whose enjoyment helps alleviate the condition? Depending on how you answer these questions, diagnostic and remedial measures will again vary considerably, and hence a more focused discussion of the social dimension of our understanding of loneliness is indispensable.

2.3. The Normative/Cognitive Dimension

On the standard view, the experience of loneliness arises because of a perceived discrepancy between the relationships (however conceived) needed for a satisfactory social life and those that are currently available to the sufferer. So there is a normative aspect to the experience: it reflects a lack or an absence of something that should be there but is not (I am using “normative” here in the philosophical rather than the psychological sense; thanks go to a reviewer for highlighting the distinction). Then at least two questions arise. The first is how to think of what it is that is perceived to be missing—what the intentional object of loneliness is. Is it meaningful relationships themselves, or is it an abstract object such as a friendship or another “social good” that is instantiated by but not the same as the right kinds of social relationships [ 11 ]? The second question, which bridges the normative and phenomenal dimensions, is how the absence of the relationships that would alleviate loneliness is present to the sufferer. What does it mean to experience a loss, or an absence? Does the experience of loneliness operate against a background, or a memory, of how one’s social relationships should be, or perhaps once were? Is this normative background or memory present in the sufferer’s experience, or does it register cognitively? Once again, answers to these questions are not merely of philosophical interest. They are directly relevant for remedial work: if the theorist can explain how the norm against which an experience of loneliness arises is present in experience or cognition, the practically oriented researcher will be much better placed to work out what can be done to minimize the perceived discrepancy between a sufferer’s actual and desired social relationships.

3. Experience as a Necessary Condition of Loneliness

The above taxonomy of questions arising for a fully developed philosophical theory of loneliness helps situate the present paper in the larger context of loneliness research. The project squarely falls into the first category: it is concerned with the phenomenal dimension of loneliness. Since it restricts itself to highlighting the relevance of some discussions in the philosophy of mind for such an investigation, it remains largely silent on the question of what loneliness is. Rather, it elaborates on three distinct ways of thinking about its phenomenal aspect. These ways pick up on debates in the philosophy of perception. The aim is to show that we can draw on these debates to better understand loneliness in practically useful ways.

Psychologists distinguish between loneliness as an “objective” and a “subjective” condition (e.g., [ 7 ]). Some people are objectively socially isolated: they have little social contact with others. Some people are subjectively lonely: they report feeling alone, in the sense of not having as much social contact as they would want. As is now well-known, the two kinds are not reliably correlated [ 17 ]. Not every hermit is lonely but some socialites are. Distinguishing between objective and subjective forms of loneliness thus tracks an intuitively obvious point. But it is important to think carefully about the exact difference that is being tracked. Begin with the consideration that on the standard view, thinking about loneliness always requires thinking about a person’s subjective life—their experience, the felt quality of their existence (this consideration is explicitly acknowledged in Hawkley and Cacioppo [ 2 ]). If so, it is not promising to distinguish between a purely objective kind of loneliness that is measurable in terms of the number and quality of a person’s social contacts and a subjective kind that tracks the sufferer’s experience. A better way to draw the distinction is to take it that the subjective dimension establishes a necessary condition of loneliness: a person can be lonely only if she feels lonely. This necessary condition does not require that the sufferer be cognitively aware of her loneliness: her experience need not gives rise to the knowledge that she is lonely. But it does rule out the possibility that the sufferer is (objectively) lonely without experiencing herself as lonely. On this picture, a person cannot be lonely without this fact being reflected in her mental life. By contrast, the absence of social connection is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of loneliness: loneliness begins and ends with experience.

This may seem an uncontroversial point: obviously loneliness has an experiential aspect to it. Otherwise, the important distinction between loneliness and the adjacent condition of solitude, in which a person also has few social connections but experiences this fact as beneficial, collapses (historically, the adjacent concepts of loneliness and solitude were not as clearly demarcated as they were today, as a reviewer pointed out; see Vincent [ 17 ] and Alberti [ 18 ] for recent overviews). But framing the relation between the subjective and objective aspects of loneliness in terms of a necessary condition highlights that even where objective social isolation can be shown to negatively affect a person’s physical health, there has to be an intermediate psychological component for the person to qualify as lonely: loneliness, on any account, is not a straightforward physiological condition whose causes can be directly traced to environmental factors without detour via the mental domain (see Motta [ 4 ] p. 74, for the related point that it would be a mistake to equate loneliness with social isolation). Consider this formal rendering of the necessary condition that a person has to meet if she is to be capable of loneliness:

(NEC) A person can suffer from loneliness only if she has a subjective life, and if illuminating her condition requires reference to her subjective life.

(NEC) is very broad. It does not take a view on how we should think about the notion of a “subjective life”, and it does not take a view on the shape or role of experience in possible accounts of loneliness. It is not presented as a novel or original insight for loneliness research; in fact, it amounts to little more than a platitude. But it brings out the point that even where objective social isolation is identified as the cause of, or reason for, someone’s loneliness, a full investigation of the condition requires reference to the sufferer’s experience.

Two discussions in the philosophy of mind are useful here. The first is the long-standing debate about the qualitative aspect of experience—its subjective dimension or “what’s-it-like”-ness—that is largely but not exclusively conducted in phenomenology. Tietjen and Furtak [ 19 ] investigate this subjective aspect of loneliness. The second is the debate about the internal structure of a person’s mental life and its relation to the environment in which she operates. To my knowledge there is, as yet, no work that relates this debate to loneliness research. Yet this is an important area of investigation for a philosophical theory of loneliness, as I hope to show in what follows. Begin by considering ordinary visual experience: suppose a perceiver has a visual experience of an apple that is placed on the table before her. One way of conceptualizing the experience is to say that it is directed at or about the apple and that it can succeed or fail in correctly presenting or representing the apple to the perceiver. Alternatively, one can think that the connection between experience and its object is less direct than this way of putting things allows: it is not only that experience is “in the head”; the direct object of the experience are sensory data that are in the head also. Or one can take it, thirdly, that when a subject’s visual experience succeeds in presenting the apple as it is to her, she is standing in a direct phenomenal relation to the object that is cognitively and (on some views) phenomenally distinct from the experience she would be suffering if she were, say, undergoing a hallucination.

These three ways of conceptualizing the relation between mind and world motivate three distinct approaches for the quest to understand the experiential dimension of loneliness (this is really all that the parallel with visual experience is meant to accomplish here; there is no suggestion that the three approaches to thinking about the phenomenal aspect of loneliness are wedded to particular theories of perception). One can take it that loneliness is or involves an experience that is directed at or about something, and that making sense of the experience requires you to consider the intentional object that it is directed at and the way (the “attitude”) in which this directedness manifests itself. I call such views “objectivist” or “intentionalist”. Secondly, one could seek to understand the experience of loneliness as what you might call a “mood”—a fundamental coloring of a sufferer’s subjective life that requires the theorist to reflect on facts that are internal to her psychology. Though conceiving of loneliness as a mood does not rule out the possibility that there are external factors that influence and help explain the sufferer’s mental life (such a view would not be at all attractive), coming to understand a mood requires that one think primarily about the larger psychological context in which it occurs and that it affects. I call such views “subjectivist”. A third way of thinking about loneliness is in terms of an embodied and enacted relation between the sufferer and her environment. On such a view, a creature’s relation to its environment is constituted in action upon and interaction with it, and its interactions shape both the way its objects are presented to the sufferer and how he comes to understand his own place in it. I call such views, “relationist” or “embodied”.

In the philosophy of perception, these three views are competitors: either the objects of experience are mind-independent, or they are not; either the body plays a constitutive role in the shaping of experience, or it does not. I am not suggesting that the theorist about loneliness is faced with a similarly binary choice. For instance, one can plausibly suppose that some kinds of loneliness are, or involve, object-directed mental states while others are general moods. Consider the difference between someone who feels lonely at a party full of strangers; someone who feels lonely because his partner has died; and someone whose chronic sense of loneliness pervades all areas of her life. The first two examples are, in different ways, object-involving, the third one qualifies as a mood. But each person qualifies as lonely in virtue of conforming to the standard view of loneliness outlined in Section 2 . Pluralism seems an advisable starting point for a reflection on how to conceive of this complex condition. Hence, the following is not meant as a sketch of rival conceptions of loneliness but rather of different approaches that each may be useful in particular cases and contexts.

4. The Psychological Structure of Loneliness

4.1. intentionality and objectivism.

Intentionalism in the philosophy of perception is the view that perceptual experience has an “intentional object” and that the experience is directed at or about that object (e.g., [ 20 , 21 ]). The intentionalist view of the mind in contemporary philosophy goes back to Brentano [ 3 ]; for a recent account of the concept in phenomenology see Krueger [ 22 ]; for an account of the notion as it pertains to the emotions see Ratcliffe [ 23 ]. The view can seem almost trivially true: when one has an experience of an apple on the table, the experience is about, or directed at, that apple (see Searle [ 24 ] for a classic account of intentionality in the philosophy of perception). It can misrepresent the apple: perhaps what one is seeing looks like an apple but is really a pear, or perhaps one is hallucinating an apple in the absence of any visual object. The resulting picture draws a stark distinction between a perceiver’s mental state and the object it is directed at. It can be put to use for a conception of loneliness. One way to substantiate the approach is to take it that the intentional object of an emotion can be specified physiologically. William James [ 25 ] suggested that emotions are reports on physiological change. Building on this view, Prinz [ 26 ] argues that emotions are perceptions of bodily change that have specific functions and valence markers. Thus, fear is the perception of a racing heart, has the function of being elicited by danger and signals “less of this!”, which motivates avoidant action. A related approach is being advocated by Cacioppo’s and Patrick’s prominent view that loneliness is “social pain” [ 27 ]. Loneliness is conceptualized as a felt response to the brain processes that are triggered by social isolation, whose unpleasant character motivates the sufferer to alleviate the condition.

A very different way to give substance to the intentionalist approach is Roberts and Krueger’s [ 11 ] proposal to understand loneliness as the experience of an absent social good. Then one can make sense of the condition by thinking about the notion of a social good and the attitude of the sufferer towards it (and the inquiry then crosses over from the phenomenal into the social dimension of loneliness research identified in Section 2 ). In what follows, I shall work with Roberts’s and Krueger’s account to draw out some implications of an intentionalist approach to loneliness. But the lessons are meant to be general: they are intended to apply to various possible ways of thinking about loneliness in intentionalist terms. One distinctive feature of Roberts’s and Krueger’s account is that it treats loneliness as the experience of an absence. This is an intuitively plausible suggestion: when you are lonely, something is missing. Roberts and Krueger make two moves to account for the experience of loneliness. They posit that there is a range of social goods that the sufferer desires but that she realizes to be out of reach, such as “companionship, moral support, physical contact and affection, sympathy, trust, romance, friendship, and the opportunity to act and interact” ([ 11 ] p. 7). These social goods constitute the object of the lonely person’s emotion. Secondly, the person has a “pro-attitude” towards these goods ([ 11 ] p. 10)—she actually desires (some of) them. At the same time, she realizes that they are out of reach, and this realization gives rise to the painful experience of loneliness. One question that arises for the account (and, in similar form, for other intentionalist proposals) is how we should think of the good that is absent. Compare again a perceptual scenario: a perceiver enters her living room in which she expects to find an armchair by the bookshelf. But, startlingly, the armchair is missing: there is only an empty bit of rug where the armchair should be. For the perceiver to be surprised by the armchair’s absence, she has to be operating with an expectation that it be on the rug, in its habitual place. She has to be operating with a norm (the habitual outlay of the living room), and it is by comparison with this norm that her surprise arises (the idea that visual perception is normative is classically defended by Merleau-Ponty [ 28 ]).

An emotion that is brought about by the absence of its intentional object also has a normative element to it: the experience is explained by the unattainability of a desired state-of-affairs, such as the presence of companionship, friendship, or some other social good (this consideration belongs to the third dimension of loneliness research outlined in Section 2 ). But note the difference between the perceptual case and the conception of the object of loneliness as a social good. In the perceptual case, an actual state of affairs, instantiated by particular objects, constitutes the norm. In the case of loneliness, on Roberts’ and Krueger’s view, the norm is constituted by a formal object. This provokes the question of how the person comes to desire this good—few people feel lonely because of a perceived lack of some abstract conception of “friendship”, for instance. Perhaps someone is lonely because of a particular friendship she enjoyed and lost, or perhaps of a story about friendship that she has read about and that has made her realize what is missing in her life. This can make it seem as if the insistence on a social good as the object of an experience of loneliness were unduly cumbersome—would it not be simpler to say that the object of someone’s loneliness, in many cases at least, is an actual person, or group of persons, the loss of interactions with whom is painfully felt? But such an alternative account invites questions too: it cannot simply be the person, qua person, whose absence gives rise to loneliness. It has to be the interactions with her and what these interactions mean to the sufferer. Now an account is needed of these interactions and their meanings. And then it is beginning to look as if this meaning might well be captured by the notion of a social good after all.

The upshot of this brief discussion is as follows: if one thinks of loneliness as being object-directed, one needs to say more about what this object consists in. This is not a trivial task; neither appealing to abstract objects such as friendship nor to particular persons is without its problems. The question of the conception of the object of someone’s loneliness has practical implications: what measures are undertaken to relieve the condition will depend on what the sufferer’s painful experience is about. Loneliness that is brought about by the loss of a particular person may require a different kind of help than loneliness that is about a general desire for companionship.

The second important dimension of this intentionalist account is that the subject exhibits a “pro-attitude” towards the object of her experience that is being frustrated (for a defense of the view that emotions are attitudes, see Deonna and Terroni [ 29 ]; for a recent discussion, see Rossi and Tappolet [ 30 ]). There is a question what this suggestion implies for the sufferer’s actions. The view that emotional attitudes are action-guiding is defended, e.g., by Deonna and Terroni [ 29 ] and in a different way by Goldie [ 31 ], who introduces the notion of “feeling towards”, a world-involving emotion that presents the environment in action-guiding ways (you may experience an icy stretch of road as slippery and thus step onto it with caution). What, though, should one say about the lonely person’s aptness to actively alleviate her condition? Cacioppo, Cacioppo, and Boomsma [ 32 ] suggest that loneliness evolved as a mechanism to enhance social connection, so the lonely person should be motivated to seek company (it should be noted that Cacioppo et al. do not claim that loneliness invariably motivates the sufferer to pursue social connections). On the other hand, you could think of deep loneliness as an experience that results in the sufferer leading an ever more solitary life. Thus, Roberts and Krueger [ 11 ] p. 16 suggest that chronic loneliness manifests itself in a lack of concern for the relevant social goods and that this results in an affective flattening in which people and environments cease to be presented as significant. More work is needed on the role of the attitude the lonely person displays towards the intentional object of her experience.

A brief closing consideration is to do with a much-discussed hallmark of intentionalist accounts of perceptual experience. The intentionalist is committed to the view that a perceiver can be in the same kind of mental state regardless of whether her experience of an external object is veridical. This consideration provokes the question of whether there is such a thing as an experience of apparent loneliness that misrepresents its object: the person experiences herself as lonely even though she is not, in fact, suffering from a lack of meaningful social connection, or social goods. Such a line of thought could develop in different directions. One option is to think that the lonely person may be mistaken about the object of her experience: perhaps it is not the lack of companionship but of love that makes her feel lonely. But you could also, more drastically, surmise that there are experiences of loneliness that the person ought not to have: someone might feel lonely without actually being lonely, and in that sense the experience is misguided; the person is not entitled to the experience. It is no doubt a delicate question whether that view has any substance.

4.2. Subjectivism and Moods

A different way of thinking about loneliness becomes available if you do not begin with the idea that loneliness has an object. Such an approach does not necessarily (though it may) amount to the claim that the experience of loneliness altogether lacks an object; more moderately, the suggestion may be that the character of loneliness is to be found in the sufferer’s general attitude towards her surroundings. Something like this view is suggested by our adverbial everyday use of the word “lonely”. When we say that someone feels lonely, we are suggesting a mode of experience that is not obviously like, for instance, being afraid. Typically at least, the fearful person is afraid of some particular thing. It is not obvious that the lonely person’s experience is about something in an even roughly corresponding way. Rather, you might think, the absence of social companionship has a pervasive effect on her mood: much or all of her mental life is colored by it. This is true particularly for chronic loneliness, in which the person may feel lost in the world quite independently of what she is doing and in which surroundings she is moving.

Suppose loneliness is a mood, a fundamental coloring of experience. One can think of moods that are plausibly described as not having objects: a sense of bottomless fatigue or of nameless dread are examples. But it is not easy to see loneliness as that kind of mood. However one understands the notion, it is hard to deny that the very meaning of the term is in some way tied to the absence of others and is in that sense about something; take this aboutness away and it is not clear what we mean when we ascribe loneliness to someone. It may be more promising to think of loneliness as a mood without thinking of it as objectless. Goldie [ 31 ] suggests that moods are directed at the whole world. Applied to loneliness, the view might then be that the lonely person’s experience of her whole environment is pervaded by her sense of being alone wherever she goes. One can make particularly good sense of this proposal for instances of chronic loneliness, in which the person really may feel isolated not only from other people but everything else as well—institutions, countries, landscapes (such a view would not be far removed from the already mentioned way in which Krueger and Roberts understand chronic loneliness: a flattening of affect in which all social goods have lost their interest). There is a fine line here between this characterization and chronic depression, which also may feature an all-pervasive sense of isolation. Generally, there is an important and difficult question of how to think of loneliness in relation to depression: is it a kind of depression, or a different but related kind of psychological condition? The analysis of loneliness as a mood that is directed at the whole world makes the differentiation quite difficult, since one can describe deep depression as directed at the whole world also, and since its phenomenology—a sense of isolation, of lack of connection—can be described in similar terms too (for instance, Ratcliffe [ 33 ]) argues that depression is interpersonally structured).

A different way of understanding loneliness as a mood is available by appeal to Ratcliffe’s [ 34 , 35 ] notion of an “existential feeling”. Ratcliffe thinks of such feelings as all-encompassing moods, outlooks that constitute “a sense of how one finds oneself in the world as a whole” that shapes one’s sense of possibility. Different existential feelings, Ratcliffe [ 35 ] p. 252 suggests, “involve differences in the types of possibility to which one is receptive”. As such, they are presupposed by and make possible intentional states. They are, in this sense, themselves object-less but make the object-directedness of intentionality possible. You could then think of loneliness as an existential feeling that structures the sufferer’s experience as a whole. In a recent talk, Ratcliffe [ 36 ] suggested that many instances of loneliness involve a sense of being unable to belong, of “exclusion from possibilities open to others”. Such a view is well suited to explain both chronic and local experiences of loneliness: it can explain both how the person who is lonely due to the loss of his partner feels excluded from the possibilities offered by the entire life they used to have together, and it can explain also why someone feels a pang of loneliness at a party populated by strangers who all seem to be close friends. The hallmark of this way of understanding loneliness as a mood, and one aspect that distinguishes it from an account modelled on Goldie’s notion of “feeling towards”, is its forward-directedness: it seeks to explain a person’s sense of loneliness not in terms of the experience of her present surroundings, but of future possibilities for engagement with these surroundings.

4.3. Relationism and 4-E

A third way of thinking about loneliness is, yet again, inspired by the philosophy of perception. Most contemporary theories of visual perception acknowledge that in the ordinary case, in which things are as they appear to be, the perceiver stands in a relation to the perceived object. Differences arise with regard to the question of how to characterize this relation. In this section, I focus on the so-called “4-E” approach to perception and cognition, according to which someone’s relation to their environment is not best explained by appeal to purely psychological items such as mental representations but involves bodily activity in particular social and physical contexts—it is, variously, “embodied, embedded, enacted, extended” (see, e.g., the contributions in Newen, De Bruin, and Gallagher [ 37 ]; for a recent critical review, see Carney [ 38 ]). On such a view, visual perception is constituted by the perceiver’s active exploration of the environment; visual objects are presented as offering sensorimotor affordances for action (e.g., Noe [ 39 ]. These affordances are contingent on the physiological and psychological makeup of the perceiver: whether a set of stairs is experienced as climbable depends on the length of the perceiver’s legs as much as it does on the height of the stairs. The direct relation between the perceiver and the perceived object consists in the opportunities for action that are afforded by the object specifically to the perceiver (the classical account of the notion of affordance is due to Gibson [ 40 ]; Chemero [ 41 ] proposes a relational view that sees as affordances as relations between objects and particular perceivers).

One can build on this view to develop an enactivist account of the emotions [ 42 , 43 ]. One way to construe loneliness along these lines is to stress the bodily and interactive dimension of social relations and see loneliness as resulting from a lack of such interaction ([ 44 ] pp. 77–78). That interaction matters for building meaningful social relations is not in doubt [ 44 ]. The mere presence of others does not amount to companionship and does not usually help the lonely person: one does not feel any less lonely because one watches a crowd of people having fun or follows one’s favorite influencer on Instagram. Accounts of what is missing in loneliness are at pains to stress the importance of meaningful relationships. In the attempt to spell out what such relationships consist in, two considerations are worth noting. First, they involve active involvement with someone else; and secondly, they have an element of reciprocity built into them. The relationship between the participants is of a second- person kind [ 45 ]: each directs their attention and care to the other and knows themselves to be at the heart of the other’s attention in turn. One way to account for the importance of this kind of reciprocal connection is by reference to the notion of intersubjectivity, as it is discussed in developmental psychology (e.g., Hobson [ 46 ]; Reddy [ 47 ]; Trevarthen [ 48 ]). Along those lines, communicative interactions between child and caregiver play a crucial role in humans’ social and cognitive development and remain vital throughout life: without them, the rich and social life we enjoy would simply not be thinkable [ 49 ]. One can think also that humans’ conception of self is developed in and supported by communicative exchanges with others: who one takes oneself to be, and how comfortable one is with one’s self-image, much depends on the emotional attitudes of other towards oneself [ 50 ]. Loneliness, on the embodied and enacted view I am sketching, is at its root a deficiency in the sufferer’s embeddedness in the web of social intersubjectively constituted relations. The sense of being alone is ultimately due to a perceived lack of meaningful interaction that shapes and reflects the person’s view of herself.

This kind of account has two aspects: it focuses both on the role of the other person in creating meaningful relationships and on the self-understanding that is afforded by the other’s engagement with oneself. On such a view, loneliness is to be explained by the interplay of social connection and self-understanding. This interplay is taken up in narrative accounts of sense-making. 4-E approaches often combine embodied accounts of the mind with a stress on the importance of such narratives (e.g., Hutto [ 51 ]). Though there is, to my knowledge, as yet no 4-E account of loneliness, such a theory may be well-positioned to accommodate the consideration that experiences of loneliness have two directions: they are both about the absence of other persons and about oneself, as the one suffering from that absence. On such a view, the sense of being lonely is always a sense that I am not appropriately connected to others.

5. Practical Implications

The first implication of the considerations offered here is that the distinction between objective social isolation and the subjective experience of loneliness is in need of clarification. Social isolation can never be objective in the sense of being independent of the sufferer’s experience of it. All loneliness is, necessarily, experienced subjectively, but there are objective (environmental) and subjective (psychological) factors that may be contributing to the experience (and often someone’s loneliness will be due to an intricate combination of both). The psychological differentiation I have introduced can help with distinguishing between these factors. Begin with intentionalist views that situate the experience of loneliness in the apprehension of something that is external to the psychological state of the individual. I already highlighted the importance of making precise the intentional object of the sufferer’s experience. An additional consideration that is important for remedial work is how the lonely individual herself describes that object: can the sufferer say exactly what she is missing, or does her loneliness manifest itself in a vague but painful general sense of absence of some social connection that she is unable to specify? These questions are not mere philosophical niceties. Help for someone who feels lonely because of some sharply defined event such as the loss of a partner may look very different from support for someone who experiences herself as being deprived from companionship in a more general sense. In the first case the person is desiring something that cannot be retrieved and may benefit from being supported in finding acceptance of that loss; in the second case a change in the person’s social environment might bring relief.

Intentionalist accounts apply to particular emotions. Consequently, remedial measures that are designed from the intentionalist perspective will focus on particular aspects of the sufferer’s mental life. But, as we saw in the previous section, one can also think of loneliness as a kind of mood. On that approach, one may not treat loneliness as a singular mental state but rather as situated in the interplay between particular experiences and the evaluative perspective in which they arise and that they affect. Ratcliffe [ 52 ] discusses how an emotion such as grief can destabilize and unsettle the entire framework within which we experience the environment as meaningful and rationally structured. This meaning is not propositional or linguistic; it is situated on a pre-reflective, affective level. Additionally, as he points out, a common theme in depression is the sufferer’s need to make sense of their predicament, to understand what is happening to them. If you construe loneliness along related lines, the lonely person may benefit from help in working out not just why she feels lonely but also how the absence of others impacts her entire perspective on herself and the world around her.

The relational approach to loneliness shares some of its outlook with the mood-based account. Both views stress the situatedness and context-dependence of loneliness. On both views, you cannot adequately account for the experience without considering its relation to and impact on the sufferer’s larger psychological, social and physical environment. But the relational view, or at any rate the version I sketched above, places particular emphasis on, first, social interaction and its bodily aspect; and, secondly, the role of narrative in explaining the sufferer’s understanding of herself as being alone. Hutto and Gallagher ([ 53 ] p. 165) stress the connection between social interaction and narrative in therapeutic practice:

“A change in narrative self-understanding can modulate our intersubjective behaviors; a change in bodily practices can transform our narrative self-understanding; a change in worldly circumstances, or mood, or instituted practice can equally affect all the other factors that make us who we are.”

Applied to loneliness, this view suggests that improvements in the sufferer’s social surroundings, so that they afford more, or more satisfying, opportunities for interaction, may profitably go hand in hand with measures that help positively shape the lonely person’s self-narrative. Loneliness, on such a picture, is in many cases not simply the consequence of a lack of social connection, nor is it a subjective way of experiencing one’s relation to one’s surroundings. It is, rather, the result of a complex relation between a lack of opportunities for interaction and the narratives that shape one’s self-understanding as being disjointed from one’s environment, and a promising practical approach may build on the holistic character of the sufferer’s experience.

6. Conclusions

While much contemporary research aims at devising means to effectively relieve loneliness, its conceptual dimension remains poorly understood. To aid this investigation, I have classified questions arising for a theory of loneliness along their experiential, social, and normative and cognitive dimensions and have drawn on some considerations from the philosophy of mind to draw up three ways of thinking about the structure of the experience of loneliness. It is vital to stress the preliminary nature of this investigation. Since there are very few conceptually well-worked out accounts of loneliness, this paper cannot do more than provide cursory sketches of possible avenues for further work. Thinking more deeply about all three dimensions of loneliness outlined here is vital for a better understanding of this puzzling and intricate condition and for designing corresponding remedial measures.

This research received no external funding.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The author declares no conflict of interest.

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