Social and emotional loneliness: A reexamination of Weiss' typology of loneliness

The present study examined Weiss' (1973) typology of social and emotional loneliness. The main purpose of this study was to assess Weiss' proposed links among relational needs, social and emotional loneliness, and mental health. A total of 241 university students responded to a measure of social and emotional loneliness, the social provisions scale and several indices of mental health. Evidence from this study suggests that social and emotional loneliness are distinct experiences. Moreover, emotional loneliness can be broken down into two aspects: romantic emotional loneliness and family emotional loneliness. The latter findings lend support to a multidimensional construct of loneliness. Results also indicated that, although both social and emotional loneliness were negatively correlated with the social provisions, each had a unique association with specific social provisions. These relationships were consistent with Weiss' predictions. On the other hand, his predictions regarding the consequences of relational deficits and loneliness received less support. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.