The results of the Personality and Individual Differences (PAID) study based on the BBC Loneliness Experiment launched on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service are published on 26 April 2020. This online survey collected data from almost 55.000 individuals living across 237 countries, islands, and territories. The survey assesses feelings of loneliness and social isolation with questions such as “How often do you feel left out?” and “How often do you feel part of a group of friends?” The research shows that there is evidence that age, gender, and the culture in which we live can be associated with slight differences in loneliness.
Professor Manuela Barreto (University of Exeter) says in an interview with PsyPost: “The extent to which loneliness is experienced might indeed be patterned by age, gender, and culture, such that younger men in so-called individualistic cultures are most vulnerable, and older people in collectivist cultures are the most protected. But this does not mean that we should only be attentive to young men living in individualistic cultures, because the differences are very small,” concluding that loneliness is something that “is not characteristic of any particular demographic group, but experienced by people of all ages, genders, and cultures.”
Read more about this study including an interview with Professor Barreto on PsyPost, on Inverse or on Scientia (in Dutch)
The PAID article was extensively covered in press and media with articles in the UK and abroad on TalkRadio, Telegraph, Daily mail, iNews, MSN, Metro, and more.
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