Coping with Loneliness
This study identifies a set of strategies that people use to cope with loneliness and examines causal attributions for loneliness as predictors of coping behavior. Subjects were 128 adults who completed a questionnaire including the NYU Loneliness Scale, two attributional measures, and a modification of the Ways of Coping Scale. A distinction was made between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies. Internal attributions for loneliness were found to be related to the intensity of coping efforts, but not to the type of strategy used (that is, problem-focused vs. emotion-focused).