Perceptions by and of Lonely People in Social Networks

Personal Relationships, 16 (2009), 221238. Printed in the United States of America.Copyright 2009 IARR. 1350-4126/09

Perceptions by and of lonely people in socialnetworks

FEN-FANG TSAIa AND HARRY T. REISb

aNational University of Singapore and bUniversity of Rochester

AbstractAlthough past research has associated loneliness with negative perceptions of others, P. Christensen and D. A. Kashy(1998), using the social relations model (SRM), found that among new acquaintances, loneliness was associated withmore positive other-perceptions. SRM was used to examine loneliness and interpersonal perception within existingsocial networks. Seventy-three university students in the United States rated themselves and others on 19 attributesand also judged how they thought others saw them (meta-perceptions). Results indicated that lonely people tended tobe more negative toward closer targets and somewhat positive toward less close acquaintances. Lonely people hadlower self-regard and perceived self-regard, invariant across acquaintanceship, and were rated more negatively byothers. Relationship contexts thus moderate effects of loneliness on other-perceptions.

Loneliness, defined as a discrepancy betweendesired and achieved social relations (Peplau& Perlman, 1982), is an aversive emotionalstate associated with a variety of adverse out-comes, such as depression and anxiety (Jones,Cavert, Snider, & Bruce, 1985; Pressmanet al., 2005; Rook, 1984; Segrin, 1998), ahealth-compromising profile of physiologicalresponses (Cacioppo et al., 2002; Hawkley,Burleson, Berntson, & Cacioppo, 2003), lowself-worth, poor academic competence andperformance (Guay, Boivin, & Hodges, 1999;Sletta, Valas, Skaalvik, & Sobstad, 1996), anda self-blaming attributional style (Anderson,Miller, Riger, Dill, & Sedikides, 1994). Lone-liness has a well-documented association withnegative interpersonal processes or outcomes,such as small social network size (Green,Richardson, Lago, & Schatten-Jones, 2001),

Fen-Fang Tsai, Department of Psychology, National Uni-versity of Singapore; Harry T. Reis, Department of Clin-ical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University ofRochester.

Correspondence should be addressed to Fen-FangTsai, Department of Psychology, National University ofSingapore, AS4 #0211, 9 Arts Link, Singapore 117570,e-mail: [email protected].

poor quality of social interactions (Greenet al., 2001; Wheeler, Reis, & Nezlek, 1983),perceived lack of social support and accep-tance (Hawkley et al., 2003; King et al., 1997;Riggio, Watring, & Throckmorton, 1993),unmet intimacy needs (Cacioppo et al., 2000;Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2005), and marital dis-tress (de Jong-Gierveld, 1987).

Loneliness and negativity in socialperceptions

Perceptions of the self in relation to oth-ers (i.e., self-perceptions, other-perceptions,and meta-perceptions, as described below) arecentral to all social-cognitive models of lone-liness (Miller, Perlman, & Brehm, 2007). Onemechanism underlying lonely peoples inter-personal problems is that lonely people tendto perceive others negatively. For example,lonely people evaluate interaction partnersmore negatively than nonlonely people do, afinding consistent with results obtained in lab-oratory settings with brief dyadic or groupinteractions (Jones, Freemon, & Goswick,1981; Jones, Sansone, & Helm, 1983). Studies

221

222 F.-F. Tsai and H. T. Reis

of social networks outside the laboratory havealso provided evidence for lonely peoplesnegative views of others. For example, loneli-ness was associated with a variety of negativejudgments of others in classrooms (Eronen& Nurmi, 1999), with negative attributionsfor others actions and intentions (Hanley-Dunn, Maxwell, & Santos, 1985), with collegestudents ratings of other students (Cacioppoet al., 2000), and in first-year college studentsevaluations of their roommates (Wittenberg &Reis, 1986).

Several theoretical models use this sortof negativity to explain a vicious cycle ofloneliness whereby negativity in social judg-ment leads to poor quality interactions whichthen contribute to the maintenance of lone-liness (Miller et al., 2007). Thus, interper-sonal negativity contributes to poorer inter-personal relations. For example, lonely peopleoften display undesirable or detrimental socialbehaviors (Jones, Hobbs, & Hockenbury,1982). Loneliness is commonly associatedwith self-reported social-skill deficits, such aslow initiation, disclosure, assertiveness, andconflict resolution skills (Wittenberg & Reis,1986). Beyond self-reports, classmates oflonely people perceive their lonely classmatesas less likely to engage in approach-orientedinteractions but more likely to display anxiety-avoidant behaviors (Eronen & Nurmi, 1999);judges rate lonely peoples interaction styleas self-absorbed, less attentive to partners,and less responsive to their partners attitudes,activities, experience, or preceding statements(Jones et al., 1982), and generally as drab anddull (Solano & Koester, 1989). Other stud-ies link loneliness to shyness, social anxi-ety, and hypersensitivity to rejection (Jackson,2007; Jackson, Fritch, Nagasaka, & Gunder-son, 2002; Leary, Koch, & Hechenbleikner,2001), all of which would further contributeto a relative paucity of approach behaviors.These deficits likely would undermine every-day social engagement and thereby contributeto the lonely persons belief that social inter-action is neither satisfying nor rewarding.It is noteworthy that Wittenberg and Reis(1986) found that even after controlling socialskills, there was still a substantial correlation

between loneliness and negativity in socialperception.

The purpose of the present research wasto examine the impact of negative social per-ceptions in loneliness using the psychomet-ric advantages of the social relations model(SRM; Kenny, 1994; Kenny & LaVoie, 1984).Although research has consistently docu-mented the negativity of lonely peoples socialperceptions, an important study by Chris-tensen and Kashy (1998) found the opposite:After 30 min of structured tasks among pre-viously unacquainted persons, lonely peopledid not perceive others more negatively thannonlonely people did; instead, they displayeda positivity bias in perceiving others. Rec-ognizing that this result was not concordantwith previous research (p. 327), Christensenand Kashy distinguished their study from oth-ers in two ways: First, their participants werepreviously unacquainted persons, suggesting(but not demonstrating) that loneliness mayfoster different experiences in initial encoun-ters among persons becoming acquainted ver-sus ongoing relationships. By using structuredtasks, for example, the Wrecked on the MoonExercise (Johnson & Johnson, 1975), theirresearch may have provided a nonthreaten-ing context that facilitates social interaction,which lonely people may have perceived asan opportunity to engage with new contacts(a supposition supported by the fact that oth-ers rated their lonely participants as morefriendly). The second distinction is that theirdata analyses used the SRM, a method thatcontrols for interdependence, possible con-founding between actor and partner effects,and other potential artifacts in social percep-tion tasks that involve the bidirectional real-ity of dyadic interaction (Kenny, 1994, coverpage). It is possible that the general literatureresults reviewed above reflect one or moreof these artifacts rather than actual negativ-ity by lonely persons. To our knowledge, noother studies have used the SRM to examinethe social perceptions of lonely and nonlonelypeople. The present study sought to distin-guish the degree of preexisting acquaintanceand method of statistical analysis as possiblereasons for the discrepancy between Chris-tensen and Kashys results and prior studies by

Loneliness and person perceptions 223

using SRM analyses of social perception witha sample of individuals already acquaintedwith each other.

Lonely people and their social networks

There is good reason to theorize that exist-ing relationships play an influential role inloneliness. Peplau and Perlman (1982) defineloneliness as the discrepancy between an indi-viduals desires and achievements with respectto social relations. Not all discrepancies areequally significant, however. In one study,lonely college students, compared to non-lonely students, reported lower levels of inti-macy with their best friends but not withgeneral friends (Williams & Solano, 1983).This result is consistent with Wheeler andhis colleagues, (1983) social interaction diarystudy, which concluded that interaction inti-macy with close friends was the critical fac-tor distinguishing lonely from nonlonely per-sons. Examining friendships in college frater-nities and sororities, Samter (1994) found thatlonely peoples friends tended to be deficientin socioemotional skills associated with com-forting, social support, and attentiveness toother persons needs, suggesting that lonelypeople might be attributing their lonelinessto experiences in close friendships. Similarly,other studies have shown that perceptionsof social support received from the closestfriends are negatively associated with loneli-ness, over and above perceptions of supportfrom ones social network as a whole (Davis,Morris, & Kraus, 1998). These findings sug-gest that lonely peoples negativity might tar-get close friends more than new contacts orcausal acquaintances. After all, if lonelinessreflects the perception that intimacy needs areunfulfilled, and if close relationships are thetypical context for meeting those needs (cf.Reis, Clark, & Holmes, 2004), experienceswith close friends would provide the mostsalient attribution for loneliness. In summa-tion, this line of reasoning supports the firstexplanation mentioned above for why Chris-tensen and Kashys (1998) results differedfrom prior studies: To lonely people, a novelcontact may represent a new opportunity for

meeting intimacy needs, a fresh start to apotentially satisfying relationship.

The present research used a sample of indi-viduals who were part of an existing socialnetwork and therefore already acquainted witheach other (members of small fraternities andsororities). Existing social networks of thissort provide a very different context than thatprovided during a 30-min session of structuredactivities, even notwithstanding the fact that agreat deal of information about a person canbe conveyed in 30 min. In existing social net-works, people know a great deal more aboutone another, have a history of mutual (andpossibly affectively significant) interactions,and share connections with others. Althoughnot all of our participants were necessarilygood friends, in the sense of having a close,affective bond, all of our participants wouldhave been reasonably well acquainted withone another, as a function of several fac-tors: participation in a common social net-work with many and diverse opportunities forinteraction; a dense social network in whicheach individual knows each other individual,which facilitates social information sharing(e.g., gossip); a history of interaction; andthe expectation of continued social interaction.We theorize that existing social networks ofthis sort offer the kind of social environmentlikely to reveal the unmet needs and disap-pointing experiences that underlie the socialnegativity of lonely persons.

Social judgment and the SRM

As mentioned earlier, the other factor dis-tinguishing Christensen and Kashys (1998)study from previous research concerned theSRM (Kenny, 1994). No other prior researchhas employed the SRM to examine asso-ciations between loneliness and social per-ception. SRM commonly uses a round-robindesign, in which every member of a grouprates, and is rated by, all other members ofthe group. Researchers in several areas of rela-tionship science have used the SRM, a pow-erful conceptual and analytic tool, to untanglesocial judgment data and thereby clarify basicconceptual issues. The SRM decomposes such


ratings into three components: how an indi-vidual rates other members of the group (theperceiver effect), how other members of thegroup rate that individual (the target effect),and uniqueness in the particular perceiver-target combination (the relationship effect).Substantial variability in the perceiver effectacross members of a group indicates that indi-viduals vary in their ratings of others; that is,some perceivers tend to give higher ratingswhereas others give lower ratings. Likewise,substantial variability in the target effect indi-cates that some group members receive higherratings than others do. Substantial relationshipvariance indicates that perceptions of othersare unique to particular dyadic combination,that is, that dyadic ratings differ over andabove the perceivers tendency to rate oth-ers in a particular manner and the targetstendency to be rated in a particular manner.Correlating these SRM effects with lonelinessprovides information about the extent to whichloneliness explains variability in each compo-nent. For instance, if loneliness was negativelycorrelated with the perceiver effect on ratingsof other group members positive attributes,it would indicate that more lonely personstend to rate others more negatively. Similarly,negative correlations between loneliness andtarget effects would indicate that others per-ceive lonely persons more negatively.

Using a round-robin design and SRM anal-yses, Christensen and Kashy (1998) foundpositive correlations between loneliness andperceiver effects in social perception. Thatis, lonelier individuals tended to rate othergroup members more positively (e.g., as moreintelligent and physically attractive). In addi-tion, positive correlations between lonelinessand target effects revealed that participants ingeneral rated lonely people as more friendlythan nonlonely people. As described above,Christensen and Kashys study left ambigu-ity about whether to attribute this result tothe use of participants who were previouslyunacquainted with each other or to the sophis-ticated SRM analyses. Therefore, the presentstudy used a very similar design and analysesas Christensen and Kashys, that is, a round-robin design with SRM analyses but now with

groups of individuals from existing social net-works.

Loneliness, meta-perception, and projection

Another goal of the present research was toexamine the role of meta-perceptions in lone-linessthat is, how lonely people believe thatothers see them. Research has established anassociation between loneliness and negativeself-regard. Loneliness is robustly associatedwith lower self-esteem (Ernst & Cacioppo,1999; Jones et al., 1981; Levin & Stokes,1986; Sletta et al., 1996), negative percep-tions of ones own appearance and likability(Christensen & Kashy, 1998; Jones, 1982),social anxiety, depression, neuroticism, intro-version (Ponzetti, 1990; Stokes, 1985), andshyness and fear of negative evaluation (Jack-son et al., 2002; Leary et al., 2001). Lonelypeople tend toward pessimistic anxiety andsocial avoidance (Eronen & Nurmi, 1999).They tend to perceive their conversations withfriends as poor quality, inferring that theserelationships are dissatisfying (Duck, Pond,& Leatham, 1994). Vitkus and Horowitz(1987) assigned participants to interact witha confederate in particular roles; afterward,independent judges rated those interactions.Although the judges ratings showed thatlonely people performed role-appropriatebehaviors as well as nonlonely people, lonelypeople evaluated their own interaction andperformance more negatively. In anotherstudy, lonely peoples negative evaluationsof their own interpersonal behavior remainednegative when reviewing videotapes of theactual interactions 6 weeks later (Ducket al., 1994). These findings are consistentwith results showing that lonely people tendto make self-blaming, internal, and stableattributions for their negative interpersonalencounters (Anderson et al., 1994). Thus, tothe extent that lonely peoples self-perceptionsoverlap with others perceptions of them,lower meta-perceptions may represent anaccurate construal of the social world.

Another possible explanation for thesefindings is that lonely peoples negative meta-perceptions represent projection of their ownnegative self-views onto others (Cacioppo &


Hawkley, 2005). That is, lonely people mayfeel that others see them negatively by assum-ing that others see them as they see them-selves (meta-perception). This idea is con-sistent with extensive research showing thatpeople generally believe that others see themin much the same way as they see them-selves (see Kenny, 1994, for a review of SRMstudies establishing this point). Importantly,meta-perceptions of a partners regard play asubstantial role in close relationships, espe-cially in satisfaction and need fulfillment withthose relationships (e.g., Murray, Holmes, &Collins, 2006; Murray, Holmes, & Griffin,2000). This negative meta-perception in turnleads to a less generous view of others becausepeople who believe that others view them neg-atively tend to reciprocate that view (Murray,Bellavia, Rose, & Griffin, 2003; Murray et al.,2000). Consequently, and somewhat ironi-cally, if lonely people project negative self-regard onto others, they may simultaneouslysee those others more negatively because ofthe partners assumed negative regard towardoneself. Research has not yet examined thispossibility.

The present research

In short, the present research had three mainpurposes. First, we sought to replicate Chris-tensen and Kashys (1998) SRM analyseswith a sample of acquainted persons. If thepresent findings are similar to their findings,this would suggest ratings artifact as one pos-sible explanation for the negativity effectsfound in prior research. If, on the other hand,our results showed correlations between lone-liness and negativity, this would implicatedegree of acquaintanceship as a moderator ofthe loneliness-negativity association. Second,we investigated whether other persons wouldrate lonely persons relatively more negatively,consistent with the prior literature, with themore rigorous analytic procedures of SRM.Third, based on research showing that lonelypersons may project their self-doubts onto oth-ers, we sought to determine whether lonelypersons would see themselves more negatively(a self-perception effect) and would perceive

that others also see them in a more negativelight (a perceiver effect for meta-perceptions).

Method

Participants

Seventy-three undergraduate students at amedium-sized, academically oriented univer-sity in the Northeastern United States partic-ipated in same-gender groups of four or five.All were between 18 and 23 years of age.We recruited students by flyers posted in fra-ternity or sorority residences, which offeredextra credit for their psychology courses. Ifonly one or two persons responded from agiven fraternity or sorority, we asked them tosolicit others from the same organization toreach a group size of four or five. Fraterni-ties and sororities at this university are small,interact regularly, and tend to do many social,academic, and athletic tasks together. Also,these social networks tend to be dense withmembers being acquainted with, and sharinginformation about, one another. Thus, it is rea-sonable to assume that all participants withineach group were fairly well acquainted withone another. There were 5 male groups of fiveand 1 male group of four; of the 10 femalegroups, 4 groups consisted of five memberswhereas 6 groups had four. Individuals tookpart in one and only one group and all groupswere independent of each other.

Procedure

Participants within a given group cametogether to complete the survey instrumentsin a classroom. We told participants thatthis was a study of impression formation ofothers in small group settings. First, theyprovided demographic information, includinggender, school year, and whether they wereinvolved in a romantic relationship, and ifyes, how long and how close their romanticrelationship was. Then they filled out a pack-age of measures including self-perceptions,other-perceptions, and meta-perceptions, asdescribed below.


Measures

Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale. This 20-item measure assessed loneliness experiences(Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980). Thepresent study slightly modified anchors anddirections so that participants indicated howoften they had felt what was described ineach item during the past year, using a 5-pointscale, ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often).Higher scores indicate higher levels of loneli-ness. Cronbachs showed that the scale hadgood reliability in this sample (Cronbachs = .92).

Social perceptions. We asked participantsto indicate the extent to which each of 19attributes was characteristic of themselves(self-perceptions): friendly, popular, assertive,physically attractive, warm, communicatingclearly, socially skillful, intelligent, interestedin people, understanding what others say,humorous, speaking fluently, open and self-disclosing, good leader, reasonable, confi-dent and self-assured, trusting, having positiveoutlook on life, and noticing good experi-ences (Lewinsohn, Mischel, Chaplin, & Bar-ton, 1980). These items replicated Christensenand Kashys (1998) and Wittenberg and Reiss(1986) items. Participants then gave theirimpression of each other person in the groupon the same 19 attributes (other-perceptions).Participants went through the same ratingquestionnaire until they had rated each ofthe other group members. We assured partici-pants that the other people would not see theirratings. After rating all group members, par-ticipants rated how they believed each othergroup member saw themselves (i.e., the partic-ipant) on the same list of 19 attributes (meta-perceptions). To facilitate these ratings, wegave participants an example: The first itemwould be how friendly do you think thisperson sees you? Participants went throughthe same instruction for each group member.All ratings used 5-point scales, ranging from1 (not at all characteristic) to 5 (very muchcharacteristic).

Closeness rating. At the end of eachother-perception page, the participant also

indicated the perceived closeness of this rela-tionship on the Inclusion of Other in the Self(IOS) scale (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992).The IOS scale is a single-item measure withseven pictures of two circles, one represent-ing the self and the other representing theother person, graduated from no overlap toconsiderable overlap. Participants picked onepicture that they felt best described their rela-tionship with that person, with a score of 1corresponding to no overlap between circlesto 7 corresponding to near-total overlap of thecircles.

Results

Preliminary analyses

The current sample yielded a mean of 2.13(SD = .56) on the UCLA Loneliness Scale.This value is very similar to the distributionobtained in prior studies, which used randomsamples of college students at the same uni-versity. We conducted one-way analyses ofvariance to examine whether the 16 groups ofparticipants differed in loneliness, which theydid not, F (15, 57) = 1.45, p > .05. There wasno gender difference on the loneliness score(Ms = 2.01 and 2.21 for men and women,respectively) t(71) = 1.46, p > .05. In addi-tion, gender did not relate to whether theparticipant was in a romantic relationship ornot, 2(1, N = 72) = .002, p > .05. Beinginvolved in romantic relationships was notassociated with loneliness, t(71) = 1.33, p >.05. Moreover, for those who were in romanticrelationships, there was no gender differencein the length and closeness of their roman-tic relationships, t(32) = 1.33 and t(33) =.45, respectively, ps > .05. There were afew gender differences in interpersonal per-ceptions. Men viewed themselves as morehumorous and popular than women viewedthemselves. In other-perceptions, women ratedtheir friends and acquaintances as more openand self-disclosing than men did. In meta-perceptions, men thought that they were per-ceived as more humorous and fluent by oth-ers than women did, all ts(71) > 2.46, ps< .05. Because these sex differences werefew, the following analyses combined menand women.


Because our sample was smaller than thatof Christensen and Kashy (1998), we con-ducted power analyses, using Lashley andKennys (1998) program. We computed powerfor finding significant variance estimates ofthe perceiver and target components of theSRM, once for groups of four, again forgroups of five, and then averaged the results.For other-perceptions, power was .82 for theperceiver effect and .89 for the target effect.For meta-perceptions, power was .97 for theperceiver effect and .40 for the target effect.For correlations between loneliness and thevariance components, simple power calcula-tions are appropriate, inasmuch these compo-nents have already removed dependence. Todetect a medium effect, the power was .81.

Mean ratings of self-perceptions, other-perceptions, and meta-perceptions on the 19attributes are listed in Table 1.1 FollowingChristensen and Kashys (1998) procedure,we compared the three sets of means at thegroup level rather than at the individual level,to account for nonindependence among partic-ipants within the same group. In other words,we first computed an average rating acrossthe participants within a given group andthen conducted comparisons (paired t tests)using these group means. Column 4 showsthat participants viewed themselves signifi-cantly more positively than they viewed otherson eight attributes (friendly, warm, interestedin people, understanding others, humorous,good leader, reasonable, and notices goodexperiences). Column 5 indicates that on thesame subset of attributes except for one (goodleader), they reported feeling less valued byothers than they rated themselves. Finally, col-umn 6 shows that participants viewed othersas more friendly and intelligent but as lessof a good leader than they thought they wereviewed by others.

1. Throughout this article we report results from the fullset of 19 attributes. When we examined results usingonly Christensen and Kashys (1998) attributes, thefindings were essentially identical.

Variances

We used the SRM to decompose ratings intothree components: perceiver, target, and rela-tionship (Table 2). For other-perceptions, per-ceiver effects indicate the general tendency toperceive others in a positive or negative man-ner; target effects represent how others gen-erally view the person. In meta-perceptions,perceiver effects represent how the personthinks others generally view himself or her-self, whereas target effects indicate how otherpeople think the target tends to view others.For both, relationship effects are a unique con-tribution of the pairing of perceiver and targetinvolved in a particular rating. The relation-ship effect also includes error because withsingle-item assessments the SRM does notallow distinguishing these two components.

In SRM, variances indicate the degree towhich perceiver or target effects differ fromone participant to another. For example, vari-ance in perceiver effects means some peo-ple tend to give higher ratings than othersdo. Significant variances are necessary to jus-tify correlating the SRM effects for particularcomponents with loneliness and other crite-rion variables (Christensen & Kashy, 1998;Kenny & LaVoie, 1984). Table 2 reports thevariance partitioning for the three componentsof other- and meta-perceptions, along withtheir significance tests. We did not conductsignificance tests on variances for relation-ship components because this term includeserror. Table 2 shows that there were signifi-cant variances for almost all perceiver and tar-get effects. Only two variance estimates werenot significant (target effects for intelligenceand speaking-fluently meta-perceptions).

SRM effects and loneliness

The first column of Table 3 shows correlationsbetween loneliness and self-perceptions. Allwere negative and 17 out of 19 were signif-icant (excluding intelligence and reasonable-ness), indicating that lonely people had lessfavorable perceptions of themselves than non-lonely people did.

The second through fifth columns ofTable 3 display correlations of loneliness withthe various SRM effects. The second column,


Tab

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Mea

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4.47

4.21

3.96

2.53

5.

44

3.63

Po

pula

r3.

413.

583.

481

.71

0.8

71.

92A

sser

tive

3.66

3.58

3.59

0.47

0.72

0.0

3Ph

ysic

ally

attrac

tive

3.63

3.57

3.60

0.22

0.37

0.1

1W

arm

4.10

3.76

3.75

2.42

3.

04

0.37

Com

mun

icat

escl

early

3.88

3.93

3.87

0.5

80.

120.

81So

cial

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illfu

l3.

883.

783.

730.

701.

470.

51In

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gent

4.26

4.27

4.09

0.1

212.

122.

87

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143.

823.

772.

52

3.56

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4.27

4.08

4.07

2.76

2.

87

0.21

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223.

893.

942.

55

3.23

0

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4.12

4.12

4.04

0.1

61.

331.

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323.

203.

251.

050.

730

.43

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dle

ader

3.71

3.29

3.55

3.21

2.

012

.93

Rea

sona

ble

4.29

3.95

3.95

4.16

5.

72

0.06

Con

fiden

tan

dse

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ed3.

843.

883.

880

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0.4

60.

11Tru

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993.

783.

801.

281.

330

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posi

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okon

life

4.07

3.95

3.98

1.05

0.91

0.3

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ces

4.34

4.05

4.03

2.18

4.

20

0.41

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Documents

Perceptions by and of Lonely People in Social Networks