Revisiting the social stigma of loneliness

In past studies examining the stigmatization of loneliness, perceivers evaluated hypothetical targets who were lonely and socially inept or reclusive. For example, Lau and Gruen (1992) described the lonely target as a person who "pretty much keeps to himself." This is problematic because recent research shows that lonely people do not have deficient social skills, and they spend no more time alone than nonlonely people. The purpose of the current research was to replicate Lau and Gruen's well-cited findings and then examine current perceptions of lonely individuals without confounding loneliness and sociability. We began, in Study 1, with a replication of Lau and Gruen. In Study 2, we asked college students to make judgments about targets who varied in their feelings of loneliness but not in their social behaviors. In a final study, we examined the perceptions among a larger and more diverse sample of U.S. adults. We found that college students, in general, disparaged lonely targets, but the stigma was more apparent when the lonely targets were described as reclusive. We found little evidence of stigmatization among the more diverse sample of U.S. adults. Our results highlight the need for additional research on the stigma surrounding loneliness.