Determinantes psicosociales de la experiencia de soledad

Abstract

Today's lifestyle makes people feel more and more lonely, with a consequent reduction in their quality of life. Research has usually highlighted objective factors (number of social relationships, the time they last, number of friends...), subjective factors (quality of the interaction) and self-evaluational factors (feelings of happiness, shyness, feeling abandoned...). However, the psycho-social aspects have been related to loneliness to a lesser degree, especially perceived self-efficacy in situations of social interaction. Thus in a sample of young people a study was made of the influence of perceived self-efficacy in the self-assessment of the subject when facing affective and task experiences and how these experiences give rise to feelings of loneliness and absence of interactive behaviour. The results indicate that self-inefficacy determines the feeling of loneliness more significantly than self-evaluation. Likewise, the absence of a relationship between the objective and subjective indices of loneliness are confirmed. That is, a person does not feel more lonely when he/she has social interactions that are few and of short duration, few friends, etc., but rather when he/she does not feel capable of tackling those social situations that would prevent loneliness and thus improve quality of life.