THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF: A LIFESPAN STUDY ON FEAR OF LONELINESS AND WELL-BEING ACROSS CULTURES

摘要

Individuals and societies strive to avoid loneliness in old age. The need for relatedness as human nature together with social pressure may lead to the fear of being lonely in old age (FEAR), which may hurt wellbeing. We examined whether FEAR explains the harmful effect of dissatisfying relationships towards depressive symptoms and life satisfaction over two years. Participants (N=583; 19–85 years old) in Hong Kong, USA and Germany reported relationship dissatisfaction, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction at the beginning and the end of a two-year interval. As expected, relationship dissatisfaction predicted more psychological maladjustment over 2 years (bs=-.09 to .19, ps = .001 to .002) through the mediation effect of the increase in FEAR across ages and cultures (bs=-.01 to .05, ps=.003 to .019). The results suggest that loneliness research and interventions should also take the fear of being lonely into consideration to improve older adults’ wellbeing.