How your attachment style is linked to the way you experience being alone

An online survey of Australian adults found that individuals with less secure adult attachment orientations tend to report higher loneliness. They also found that one specific type of motivation for solitude mediates the association between insecure attachment and loneliness. The paper was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

Loneliness is the distressing feeling that arises when a person believes their social relationships are fewer, weaker, or less satisfying than they would like them to be. It is not the same as being physically alone, because someone can enjoy solitude without feeling lonely. A person can also feel lonely while surrounded by other people if they lack a sense of closeness, understanding, or belonging.

Loneliness may be temporary, such as after moving to a new city, ending a relationship, or losing contact with friends. It can also become chronic when the feeling persists for a long time and begins to affect daily life. Loneliness can involve emotional loneliness, when someone lacks a close attachment figure, or social loneliness, when they feel disconnected from a wider group or community. It may contribute to sadness, anxiety, low self-esteem, sleep problems, and reduced motivation. Persistent loneliness is also associated with poorer physical health, partly because it can increase stress and reduce healthy behaviors.

Study author Samantha O’Brien and her colleagues examined how individuals’ anxious and avoidant attachment orientations are associated with their motivation for solitude, which, in turn, predicts loneliness. Motivation for solitude refers to reasons why a person chooses or ends up spending time alone. It can be self-determined or non-self-determined.

Self-determined motivation for solitude refers to choosing to spend time alone because it is personally enjoyable, meaningful, calming, or useful for reflection and creativity. Non-self-determined motivation for solitude refers to being alone because of external pressure, being rejected by others, anxiety, avoidance, or a feeling that one has no real choice.

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Study participants were 548 Australian adults recruited from the general community via social media and a student subject pool. Before the final analysis, 72 of them were excluded for failing attention checks. Of the remaining participants, 352 were university students. Seventy-three percent of the participants were women, and 59% were under 30 years of age.

Participants completed an online survey that included assessments of adult attachment orientations (the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale – Short Form) and motivation for solitude (the Motivation for Solitude Scale – Short Form). One week later, they completed a follow-up survey measuring loneliness (the UCLA 3-item Loneliness Scale).

Attachment orientations are a person’s typical patterns of feeling and behaving in close relationships. Individuals with pronounced attachment anxiety tend to fear rejection and abandonment a lot, while pronounced attachment avoidance involves feeling discomfort with closeness, dependence, or emotional intimacy. Pronounced attachment avoidance or anxiety are collectively referred to as insecure attachment, while secure attachment means scoring low on both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety scales.

Results showed that individuals with less secure attachment orientations (i.e., with pronounced attachment anxiety or avoidance) tended to report higher motivation for non-self-determined solitude. They also tended to report higher loneliness. Interestingly, motivation for self-determined solitude was not directly associated with either loneliness or attachment orientations in the initial, simple correlations. It was, however, weakly associated with motivation for non-self-determined solitude.

The study authors tested a statistical model that proposed that the two attachment orientations affect both motivations for solitude, which, in turn, affect loneliness. The analysis showed that it is highly probable that both attachment orientations increase motivation for non-self-determined solitude, which, in turn, increases loneliness. In other words, non-self-determined solitude acts as a mediator explaining why insecurely attached people feel so lonely.

On the other hand, the statistical model showed that avoidant orientation increases motivation for self-determined solitude, which in turn, decreases loneliness. However, this link was comparatively weak and fell just short of being statistically significant. Self-determined solitude did not mediate the relationship between anxious attachment and loneliness either. There were also direct links between attachment orientation and loneliness, not achieved through these two motivations for solitude.

“These findings highlight that higher motivation for non-self-determined solitude may be a key mechanism linking anxious and avoidant attachment orientations with loneliness. Additionally, self-determined solitude seems to play a key role in reducing loneliness,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of links between attachment orientations and loneliness. However, it should be noted that the study design does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results. Additionally, the link between self-determined solitude and either loneliness or attachment orientations is absent when these factors are examined individually via zero-order correlations, only emerging as significant when modeled together.

The paper, “Attachment orientations predicting loneliness: The role of self-determined and non-self-determined solitude,” was authored by Samantha G. O’Brien, Daniel J. Brown, Ashleigh B. Bryant, Hugh A. Hampton, Daniel J. Phipps, and Jacob J. Keech.