The association of loneliness with health and well-being: A second-order meta-analysis.

IF 2.9 2区心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY

Health Psychology Pub Date : 2026-09-03 DOI:10.1037/hea0001645

Ethan Zell, Tyler J Robinson

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Objective: Lonely people are dissatisfied with the quantity or quality of their social relationships. Prior meta-analyses examined the association of loneliness with specific indices of health or well-being. Here we explored associations of loneliness with several indices of health and well-being, in addition to how such associations vary across different conditions.

Method: We synthesized data from 49 independent meta-analyses that collectively included over 60 outcomes, 1,900 studies, and 4.8 million participants. We used second-order meta-analysis to assess relations of loneliness with health and well-being.

Results: We found a robust association of loneliness with broad indices of mental health, r = .37, 95% confidence interval [CI; 0.31, 0.44], psychological adjustment, r = .32, 95% CI [0.28, 0.36], and physical health, r = .15, 95% CI [0.10, 0.20], as well as specific indices of anxiety, cognitive functioning, depression, relationship functioning, social support, and problematic technology use. Loneliness associations varied significantly by loneliness measure and inclusion of unpublished studies, longitudinal studies, and covariates. However, risk of bias may have inflated effect sizes.

Conclusions: Our findings clarify the association of loneliness with several indices of health and well-being as well as the conditions under which these associations are most pronounced. Additional study is needed to examine longitudinal associations, interventions, and preregistered effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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孤独与健康和幸福的关系：二阶元分析。

目的：孤独的人对他们社会关系的数量或质量不满意。先前的荟萃分析考察了孤独与健康或幸福的特定指数之间的关系。在这里，我们探讨了孤独与几个健康和幸福指数的联系，以及这些联系在不同条件下的变化。方法：我们综合了来自49个独立荟萃分析的数据，共包括60多个结果、1900项研究和480万名参与者。我们使用二级元分析来评估孤独与健康和幸福的关系。结果：我们发现孤独感与心理健康的广泛指标存在显著相关性，r = 0.37, 95%可信区间[CI；0.31, 0.44]，心理适应，r = 0.32, 95% CI[0.28, 0.36]，身体健康，r = 0.15, 95% CI[0.10, 0.20]，以及焦虑，认知功能，抑郁，关系功能，社会支持和问题技术使用的具体指标。孤独感关联因孤独感测量、未发表研究、纵向研究和协变量的纳入而显著不同。然而，偏倚风险可能夸大了效应大小。结论：我们的研究结果阐明了孤独与健康和幸福的几个指标的联系，以及这些联系最明显的条件。需要进一步的研究来检验纵向关联、干预措施和预登记效应。（PsycInfo数据库记录(c) 2026 APA，版权所有）。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Health Psychology 医学-心理学

CiteScore

4.90

自引率

2.40%

发文量

170

审稿时长

4-8 weeks

期刊介绍： Health Psychology publishes articles on psychological, biobehavioral, social, and environmental factors in physical health and medical illness, and other issues in health psychology.