Fig. 3: Beliefs about being alone moderate the relationship between time spent alone and changes in loneliness and other emotional outcomes in daily life.

A Data from a 2-week experience sampling study (N = 161 U.S. adults) indicate that people with negative beliefs about being alone display significant increases in loneliness after spending time alone in daily life, and the size of this effect increases with the amount of time they spent alone. Conversely, people with positive beliefs about being alone experience significant decreases in loneliness after spending any amount of time alone. B There is a similar buffering effect of positive beliefs about being alone on other negative emotions (i.e., negative affect, boredom, and stress). Further, people with positive beliefs also experience an increase in positive affect and contentment after spending any amount of time alone. A, B Time spent alone since the last survey represents the amount of time spent alone between two surveys (between T1 and T2). Change in emotion (y-axis) represents the change in emotion between T1 and T2 (i.e., T2 emotion – T1 emotion) controlling for emotion reported at T1. Positive/negative beliefs represent one SD above/below the mean on beliefs about being alone. Data are presented as model estimated mean values +/− 1 SE. Uncentered model estimates are presented for illustration purposes. Violin plots demonstrate the distribution of model predicted values. Note that full range of y-axis values is -100 to 100 for changes in loneliness, boredom, contentment, stress, and gratitude, and -10 to 10 for changes in negative and positive affect.