A Meta-Analysis of Interventions to Reduce Loneliness

By Christopher M. Masi, H. Chen, Louise C. Hawkley, John T. Cacioppo. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2010

1,778 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Social and demographic trends are placing an increasing number of adults at risk for loneliness, an established risk factor for physical and mental illness. The growing costs of loneliness have led to a number of loneliness reduction interventions. Qualitative reviews have identified four primary intervention strategies: (a) improving social skills, (b) enhancing social support, (c) increasing opportunities for social contact, and (d) addressing maladaptive social cognition. An integrative meta-analysis of loneliness reduction interventions was conducted to quantify the effects of each strategy and to examine the potential role of moderator variables. Results revealed that single-group pre-post and nonrandomized comparison studies yielded larger mean effect sizes relative to randomized comparison studies. Among studies that used the latter design, the most successful interventions addressed maladaptive social cognition. This is consistent with current theories regarding loneliness and its etiology. Theoretical and methodological issues associated with designing new loneliness reduction interventions are discussed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, General Health Professions, Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/650c6d6d42e48f88eb4af8c8e5d5eae5afd705a1

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Citations in the corpus

Interventions targeting social isolation in older people: a systematic review (2011, background): “A recent meta-analysis of 50 studies exclusively aimed at ameliorating feelings of loneliness [42] has been published since the date of our literature search.”
Loneliness Predicts Increased Blood Pressure: Five-Year Cross-Lagged Analyses in Middle-Aged and Older Adults (2010, neutral): “Do effective interventions for loneliness exist? We recently completed a meta-analysis examining the effectiveness of interventions for loneliness published between 1970 and April 2009 (Masi, Chen, Hawkley, & Cacioppo, 2009).”
Can Digital Technology Enhance Social Connectedness Among Older Adults? A Feasibility Study (2019, background): “Bringing together acceptability and efficacy, our findings revealed that an accessible app can be a feasible tool for social connectedness (as proposed in Findlay, 2003; Keefe et al., 2006; Khosravi et al., 2016; Masi et al., 2011) if five feasibility elements are considered.”
Loneliness and physical activity: A systematic review (2016, background): “Accordingly, studies have found different dimensions of loneliness to be highly correlated and their antecedents and consequences to have a high degree of overlap (for an overview, see Masi et al., 2011).”
No Employee an Island: Workplace Loneliness and Job Performance (2018, background): “This occurs when people come to believe that the meaningful social connections they want are not available; their fear, hypervigilance, and subjective feelings of rejection cause them to withdraw and give up on building the very interpersonal relationships they crave (Masi et al., 2011).”