What is it about?
This study looked at how loneliness and stress influence each other over time. More than 1900 adults reported how lonely and stressed they felt every month for four months. We found that when a person felt more lonely than usual, they tended to feel more stressed the next month. The opposite was also true: when someone felt more stressed than usual, they were lonelier the following month. This means loneliness and stress feed into each other in a self-perpetuating cycle. These patterns appeared even after accounting for the fact that people who are generally lonelier also tend to be generally more stressed.
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Why is it important?
The findings suggest that loneliness and stress are closely intertwined and that changes in one may trigger changes in the other. This has important implications for how researchers study these experiences and how interventions might break the cycle between them.
Perspectives
I hope this article helps people to think more seriously about the value of social connection. Building positive relationships with others can help to lower stress and improve both mental and physical health. It was a pleasure to write this article with co-authors from areas of not only clinical but health psychology. I strongly believe in the importance of interdisciplinary research so that we can better understand the social determinants of well-being.
Bronwen Grocott
University of British Columbia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reciprocal longitudinal associations of loneliness and perceived stress: A random intercept cross-lagged panel model., Emotion, November 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001618.
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