Potentially Morally Injurious Event Exposure and Loneliness: Factors Impacting the Development of Loneliness in a Non-Clinical Population

Background Loneliness has been found to have a deleterious effect on both mental and physical health outcomes. For those who are exposed to Potentially Morally Injurious Events (PMIEs) loneliness can not only worsen psychological symptoms following PMIE exposure, but the nature of events may make these individuals more prone to loneliness due to shame, anger and lack of trust. Method Factors associated with loneliness were explored in a cross-sectional secondary analysis. Self-reported indicators of shame, trust difficulties, anger and demographic factors were assessed in a community sample of 2,385 UK adults. Results Younger age (β=-0.02, 95% CI [-0.03,-0.02]) and not working (F(2,538.56)=37.49, p <.001) were significantly associated with higher loneliness scores. Ethnicity was also significantly associated with loneliness (F(4,200.07)=3.20, p= 0.01), with post-hoc comparisons indicating that participants who identified their ethnicity as ‘Other’ reported significantly higher loneliness scores than those who identified as ‘White’ ( p =.02). Not being in a relationship ( t (1195.13)=12.35, d =0.57, p <.001) and reporting PMIE exposure ( t (2173.45)=11.98, d =0.50, p <.001) were both associated with higher loneliness scores. In addition, shame (β=0.02, 95% CI[0.01,0.03], p =.01) and anger (β=0.03, 95% CI[0.01,0.06], p =.01), but not trust violations (β=0.00, 95% CI[-0.01,0.01], p =.89) were found to be significantly associated with higher loneliness scores. Conclusion Findings suggest that individuals who are younger, not working, not in a relationship and in ‘Other’ ethnicity groups may report feeling more lonely. In addition, for those who endorse PMIE exposure, loneliness was also significantly associated with greater feelings of shame and anger.