Loneliness and Sociotropy: the Moderation Effect of Age, Gender and Psychological Well-Being

Rationale. Loneliness is one of the most common conditions associated with negative consequences for the mental and physical health of a person. The work presents the study of the association between the experience of loneliness and sociotropy, as well as their moderators, such as age, gender, components of psychological well-being. Study Objective. We hypothesized that sociotropy could be a predictor of loneliness, but the power of the effect would be moderated by age-sex characteristics and levels of psychological well-being components. Materials and methods. The study involved 252 adults aged 19-73 years, 59% women. The following methods were used: the Differential Questionnaire for the Experience of Loneliness (K.N. Osin, D.A. Leontiev), the Sociotropy-Self-Sufficiency Questionnaire (O.Yu. Strizhitskaya et al.), the Scale of Psychological Well-Being C. Riff (adapted by L.V. Zhukovskaya, E.G. Troshikhina). Mathematical processing was performed on the basis of IBM SPSS 20.0 software using the PROCESS package (Hayes, 2018). Results. The results of the study confirmed the relationship between sociotropy and loneliness, and also revealed that age, autonomy, environmental mastery and personal growth act as moderators of the strength of this relationship. It was shown that in the older age group, as well as with high indicators of the components of psychological well-being, the strength of the connection between sociotropy and loneliness weakens and loses statistical significance. Conclusion. It can be concluded that the components of psychological well-being act as a resource that reduces one's vulnerability to the negative effects of loneliness.