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In 2. Rubin & E. B. McNeil. Psychology:4 t h Edition. New York: Harper and Row,Being Human. Brief /Update.1987, 475-479.Loneliness and the College StudentLETITIA ANNE PEPLAUportunities to meet French students,or even to see the same face twice.Although I tried to tell myself that Iwas having a valuable "learning experience," I was painfully lonely.Letters from friends and family athome helped, but could not substitute for daily companionship.Life finally started to improvewhen I began to spend more timewith other American students. Wegossiped about our French families,shared information about cheap restaurants, and planned sightseeingtrips. As our friendships deepened,my spirits lifted. Over the years, myclosest college ties are still with theAmerican friends I made in Paris.Loneliness occurs when a personlacks either an emotional attach-"ment to one special person or anetwork of friends and companions.One does not have to be physicallyisolated in order to be lonely. Indeed, it is quite possible to feellonely in the midst of a crowd.Rather, loneliness stems from thelack of social relationships.LETITIA ANNE PEPLAU is professor of psychology and director of the graduate program in social .osvcholoev,-. at the UniversityCalifornia, Los Aneeles. She has coniucted many studies of social relationshipsind of loneliness. Or. Peplau is coeditorwith Daniel Perlman) of Loneliness: A;ourcebook of Current Theory, Research,md Therapy.-What was your worst experience ofloneliness?For me, it was the junioryear in college that I spent studyingabroad in Paris. I left for Francewith high hopes, eager to use theFrench I'd studied for six years, toexperience life in another culture,and, most important, to makeFrench friends. I had arranged inadvance to live with a French familyand to enroll in courses at the Sorbonne. But things did not go as Iexpected. The Parisian couple Iboarded with were teetering on thebrink of divorce and used me tocomplain about each other. I foundParisians to be cold and impatientwith strangers. Since all the university classes I took were large impersonal lectures, there were few op-One does not have to be physically isolated in order to feel lonely.

ical health. Lonely people reporttwenty statements. Half the statemore symptoms of upset such asments describe negative feelingsheadaches, poor appetite, and sleepand thoughts that people may haveproblems. In studies using physiowhen they are lonely. Half describelogical measures to assess thepositive aspects of a satisfying socialbody's immune response system,life; these are scored in reverse soJanice Kiecolt-Gla er(1984a, b) hasthat a low score indicates greaterfound that lonely people may beloneliness. How would you answerthe sample questions given in Box I? less able to fight off infections effectively. We don't yet understandWe have found that most nonwhy loneliness i s linked to the imlonely college students say theymune system. Perhaps loneliness"rarely" experience the negativeitself has an effect, or perhaps therefeelings described in the UCLAare some behaviors engaged in byScale; the average score on queslonely people, such as greater usetions i s about 2. In contrast, lonelyof alcohol or drugs, that in turn afstudents who signed up for a threeweek "loneliness clinic" reportedfect the immune system.In a longitudinal study, followinghaving these negative experiencesthe same people over a two-year"sometimes" or "often"; their averperiod, Dan Russell and Carolynage score was 3 or higher. New colCutrona (1985) studied the health oflege students who were testedshortly after arriving on campus forpeople over age 65. Those individuals who were the loneliest at thetheir freshman year reported modinitial testing were more likely to beerate feelings of loneliness; theirinstitutionalized and to die duringscores were between 2 and 3.Research using the UCLA Lonelithe subsequent two years. Amongthe least lonely old people, only 4ness Scale and other lonelinesspercent moved from their ownmeasures has begun to show thathomes into a nursing home; amongsevere and persistent loneliness canthe loneliest group, 22 percenthave serious consequences for peomoved to an institution. And theple's mental health (Peplau andloneliest people were four times asGoldston, 1984). Lonely people arelikely to die during the two-yearmore likely to suffer from depresperiod as were the least lonely. Sevsion and anxiety. They are morelikely to abuse alcohol or drugs anderal factors may combine to makeare more likely to contemplate orthese lonely old people more vulnerable to illness. Feelings of loneliattempt suicide.ness may themselves be detrimentalThe most recent studies suggestthat loneliness may also affect physto health. In addition, lonelinessmay be associated with other riskfactors, such as a poorer immuneresponse system or the absence offriends who can provide care andDirections: .Indicate how often you feel the way described in each of the folencouragement.lowing statements. Circle one number for each.One of the first theorists to callattention to loneliness was RobertStatementNever Rarely Sometimes OftenWeiss. In an influential book pub1. I lack companionship1234lished in 1973, Weiss identified two*2. I have a lot in common with thedistinctkinds of loneliness, eachpeople around me1234linked to the absence of one of the3. No one really knows me well1234basic provisions of social relation*4. I feel in tune with the peopleships discussed in Chapter 14around me1234(pages 450-451). The loneliness of5. I am no longer close to anyone1234emotional isolation results from theloss or absence of an intimate emoQuestions 2 and 4 should be scored in reverse, that is 1 4, 2 3, 3 2, 4 1.Source: Russell, Peplau, and Cutrona (1980).tional attachment, such as might beIn its mildest forms, lonelinesscan be no more than a momentarydesire for companionship. Christie,a young woman I interviewed, saidthat she often felt lonely when herhusband worked late at the office,but she explained that this didn'treally bother her much because sheknew that he would eventuallycome home. At the other extreme,loneliness can be a chronic problemthat persists for years. PsychiatristDavid Burns (1985) recalls that hewas lonely for the first twenty-sixyears of his life: "From the time Iwas a child, I felt ugly and awkward. .I was rarely invited toIn high school, peopleparties. .respected me for my seriousnessand intelligence-but I was lonelyand didn't feel close to very manypeople" (pages 17-18).Although most people sufferfrom loneliness at some time intheir life, psychologists have beenslow to study this everyday problem. Systematic research on loneliness began only about ten yearsago, but in that time loneliness hasbecome a major area of research.An important step in learningabout loneliness was the creation ofreliable paper-and-pencil tests tomeasure loneliness. One measure i sthe UCLA Loneliness Scale that DanRussell, Carolyn Cutrona, and I developed. The UCLA Scale asks youto rate how often you have had theexperience described in each of.

oneliness results from the lack of an emotional attachment or a network of friends.rovided by a dating partner orpouse. The loneliness of social isoition results from the loss or abence of a network of social ties.'he socially lonely person feels cutiff from companionship and theneaningful, identity-enhancing acivities provided by friends and covorkers.Weiss has found that one type ofelationship cannot readily substiUte for another in alleviating loneliless. Thus, a person suffering fromI loss of a love relationship i s likelyto feel painfully lonely, even thoughshe may have children at home orfriends to spend time with. Onedivorced mother described her experience of emotional isolation inthese terms:Your house is so noisy all day long,phones, people, kids, all kinds ofaction going on and come eighto'clock everybody's in bed, andhere's this dead silence. Like thewhole world has just come to an end.,411 of a sudden you get this feelinga t you're completely alone, that'here is no one else in the world. YOUlook out the window, you walk backand forth from room to room, youwatch television, and you're dead.(Weiss, 1973, page 136)And people who have close emotional attachments may still feelgreat loneliness if they lack a network of friends. Consider thenewlywed couple from Ohio whoset out for Alaska to seek their fortune in a new community. Untilthey make friends with neighbors orcoworkers and form ties to theirnew social world, they are likely toexperience social loneliness.Millions of Americans suffer fromloneliness. National surveys havefound that as many as one quarterof adults-over 50 million peoplehave recently felt severely lonely(Revenson and Johnson, 1984). Although loneliness occurs among allgroups in our society, it i s especiallyprevalent among those who are recently widowed or divorced (Peplauand Perlman, 1982). The loss of asignificant love relationship is amajor cause of loneliness. Anotherresearch finding is that loneliness islinked to age. Folk wisdom has itthat youth i s a time of great sociability and old age is a time of loneliness. Yet most surveys have foundthe opposite: loneliness is mostcommon among teenagers andyoung adults and appears to decrease in older age groups. Collegestudents are one of the groups mostlikely to suffer from loneliness.Perhaps the main reason that.young adults are so vulnerable toloneliness is that they confrontmany social transitions. Movingaway from home, going to college,starting a new job-all involve readjustments in social relations that canlead to loneliness. Young adultsoften leave behind the familiarworlds of high school, home town,and family to venture into new social worlds on their own. One coblege student commented that "Afterbeing voted in junior and seniorhigh 'Best Personality' and 'MostPopular,' 1 had to start over."In a recent study, Phillip Shaverand his colleagues at the Universityof Denver (1985) investigated thesocial changes experienced by 400students during their first year incollege. During the summer beforecollege, the students were contacted by mail and asked to complete detailed questionnaires aboutthemselves and their relationships.They were then recontacted early inthe fall, during the winter, and finally in the spring of their freshmanyear t o fill out additional questionnaires. Most students reported thatthe transition to college was themost difficult move or transitionthey had ever experienced. The researchers also concluded that thesestudents' social lives underwent asignificant upheaval.During freshman year, old friendships and love affairs tended towither. More than half of theprecollege romances ended, andthose that continued were rated asless satisfying in the spring thanthey had been during the previoussummer. Although the average student quickly found a new group ofcasual acquaintances, he or she felt