With 20 quick and simple questions, UCLA-affiliated researchers can assess the extent of a person’s loneliness.
Known as the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the brief survey was developed in the late 1970s to fill a void in psychological research.
“It was an important psychological phenomenon that we didn’t know much about and it piqued my curiosity,” said Letitia Anne Peplau, psychology professor and an author of the study.
Since then, the scale has been translated into numerous languages, including Spanish and Japanese, and used for college surveys, such as a recent poll of Iowa State University freshmen as well as telephone questionnaires.
With her then-graduate students Daniel Russell and Carolyn Cutrona, Peplau created a set of questions to quantitatively measure a person’s loneliness. After reading statements like “I lack companionship,” or “I am unhappy being so withdrawn,” patients would rate how often they felt that way, said Russell, now a professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State University.
When the study was first completed in the early 1980s, Peplau’s team found that students who were lonely reported less involvement with friends and social activities. Furthermore, students who were involved in casual dating or serious relationships had much lower scores of loneliness.
Age also played a factor. While younger students looked for friendships in their early years of college, older students placed a greater emphasis on romantic relationships.
The researchers then compared the results within the test group and came to a conclusion.
“Loneliness isn’t hard to measure,” Peplau said. “If people are feeling that their relationships are inadequate, they know they’re lonely. They’ll tell researchers about it.”
But not all people who spend time alone are lonely. This distinction relates to the difference between loneliness and social isolation.
While loneliness implies a feeling of dissatisfaction with the quality of current relationships or lack thereof, social isolation simply describes a person who is alone, Peplau said. People may choose to be alone, and Peplau said there is no evidence that people who are alone in living situations are more lonely than people who live in more communal environments. Similarly, people can be lonely while surrounded by others.
At UCLA, the process of meeting new people may be difficult, especially at the beginning of college. For Joseph Truong, a second-year biology student, the transition into college was a little lonely. He didn’t join clubs his first quarter to focus on academics, and with a dormitory floor full of second years, it was difficult to make friends, he added.
“I think if I had first years (on the floor), it would have been different,” he said.
While loneliness is tied to emotions, it is also related to biological factors.
“There’s growing evidence of a human need to be attached to a person,” Peplau said. “We’re social animals.”
This social impulse could relate to circuitry and structures in the brain. Some hormones are geared toward social interaction, such as oxytocin, which has the potential to affect the development of relationships, said Steve Lee, assistant professor of clinical psychology.
Another part of the brain, the fusiform gyrus, is a socioemotional center of the brain that is geared toward accurately reading people’s expressions, Lee said.
In Truong’s case, he was able to make friends in his small discussion section for his GE cluster. These friends also crossed over into his other classes, and this year, his floor is much more social.
But along with the changing social atmosphere, Truong said he has also changed.
“I think I’ve become more outgoing,” he said.