Early life adverse experiences and loneliness among young adults: The mediating role of social processes

Landry, Jyllenna; Asokumar, Ajani; Crump, Carly; Anisman, Hymie; Matheson, Kimberly

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.968383

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol., 20 September 2022

Sec. Personality and Social Psychology

Volume 13 - 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.968383

This article is part of the Research Topic Impact of Social Isolation and Loneliness on Mental Health and Wellbeing View all 15 articles

Early life adverse experiences and loneliness among young adults: The mediating role of social processes

$\r\nJyllenna Landry$ Jyllenna Landry¹

Ajani Asokumar¹

Carly Crump¹

Hymie Anisman¹

Kimberly Matheson^1,2*

¹Department of Neuroscience, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
²The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Loneliness has been described as endemic among young people. Such feelings of social isolation ‘even in a crowd’ are likely linked to adverse early life experiences that serve to diminish perceptions of social support and intensify negative social interactions. It was suggested in the present series of survey studies that childhood abuse, which compromises a child’s sense of safety in relationships, may affect social processes that contribute to loneliness in young adulthood. Study 1 assessed different adverse childhood and adult experiences in relation to loneliness among young adults (N = 171). Linear regression analyses indicated that childhood abuse was uniquely associated with greater loneliness, and this relationship was partially mediated by the perceived availability of social support. Study 2 (N = 289) assessed different forms of childhood abuse and demonstrated that early life emotional abuse was a unique predictor of loneliness, and this relationship was fully mediated by lower perceived support or value in social connections (social connectedness) and more frequent unsupportive interactions with friends. Study 3 evaluated the implications of the age of occurrence of abuse (N = 566). Both emotional and sexual abuse predicted young adult loneliness regardless of age; abuse that was recalled to have occurred at very early ages (0–5 years) was not predictive of loneliness over and above consideration of events that happened in older childhood. These relationships were at least partially mediated by perceived social support, social connectedness, and in the case of emotional abuse, unsupportive interactions with friends. Our results add to mounting evidence pointing to the prevalence of loneliness among young adults and the links to adverse early life experiences that may serve to shape appraisals of safety, value, and personal worth in social relationships.

Introduction

The prevalence of loneliness and its association with adverse health outcomes has become increasingly salient to the general public and among health professionals. Loneliness has been described as an epidemic (Jeste et al., 2020) and pandemic (Palgi et al., 2020). The United Kingdom and Japan each recently appointed a Minister for Loneliness (Basu, 2021). Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic rendered the consequences of loneliness highly visible, including associations with greater occurrence of anxiety, depression, and elevated substance use (Meade, 2021; Knox et al., 2022). These links were especially marked among younger individuals (Varma et al., 2021), including university students (Bu et al., 2020) who are increasingly being recognized as a group at risk (Diehl et al., 2018; Hysing et al., 2020).

While much attention was paid to these issues through the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of loneliness was not unique to the global social distancing policies that were invoked. Even prior to COVID-19, young adults (18–22 years) were described as the ‘loneliest generation of Americans’ (Cigna, 2018) with 20–48% reporting severe levels of loneliness (Williams and Braun, 2019). Loneliness at this stage of life poses developmental risks as the young adult years are marked by several transitions, including the expansion of their social world beyond the family, identity exploration, and greater autonomy (Kirwan et al., 2021). Thus, loneliness may be problematic for many adolescents and young adults, being related to cognitive and physical maturation, as well as developmental changes in social autonomy, perspective-taking, and individuation (Laursen and Hartl, 2013; Buecker et al., 2021).

Loneliness does not merely encompass social isolation but includes the psychological torment and pain that comes from a lack of meaningful relationships. Thus, loneliness is both a relational experience and an emotional one (Hawkley and Cacioppo, 2010; Von Soest et al., 2020). The factors that promote or prevent loneliness likely have strong roots in opportunities and safe environments that enable individuals to take full advantage of their social relationships in a manner that ensures well-being. Conversely, encounters that undermine trust, emotional connections to others, or that have been fraught with personal violation or emotional betrayal might diminish the ability to derive socially meaningful relationships. In this regard, early life socio-emotional events may play a significant role in whether individuals experience loneliness as young adults. It was the goal of the present investigation to assess the relations among adverse early life experiences, young adults’ social experiences and perceptions, and their reports of loneliness.

Childhood experiences and loneliness

Both childhood and adult trauma experiences were predictive of feelings of loneliness among a range of populations (Kearney et al., 2018; Hyland et al., 2019). The disposition to loneliness and the trajectory toward loneliness among young people is variable over time and across individuals, being related to differences in emotional stability, agreeableness, and extraversion (Vanhalst et al., 2013). Of the many factors that can proactively influence adult well-being, adverse early life experiences may have especially pronounced consequences (Hays-Grudo and Morris, 2020), including links to anxiety and depressive disorders, and suicidal ideation (Anda et al., 2006; Brown et al., 2009; Hays-Grudo and Morris, 2020). It has been reported that childhood abuse was associated with elevated loneliness among young adults (Flett et al., 2016; Arslan and Yıldırım, 2021), and loneliness might represent a mediating factor in the relationship between abuse and psychological disorders (Shevlin et al., 2015). Among other things, traumatic childhood experiences may give rise to feelings of social indifference together with loneliness, which was predictive of suicidal ideation. However, the strength of these relationships diminished when individuals were recognized by others in relevant social groups (Wang et al., 2022).

Adverse childhood experiences may take many forms that can reflect environmental factors (e.g., living in poverty or unsafe neighborhoods) and relational factors, ranging from emotional, physical, or sexual abuse to disturbed parent-child interactions (e.g., neglect, disengagement from children, as well as hostility and coercion) (Rebbe et al., 2017). Some of these experiences may reflect multiple concurrent elements of a particular early life environment (e.g., parental substance use may co-occur with child neglect), and might represent the cumulative occurrence of events over time. While a greater number of adverse childhood events is associated with poorer adult health and wellness outcomes (Hughes et al., 2017; Petruccelli et al., 2019), the nature of these early life experiences may elicit different processes and outcomes (Rebbe et al., 2017; Shin et al., 2018). For example, both childhood physical and emotional abuse were related to suicidal ideation through their links to anxiety, whereas childhood neglect was tied to suicidal ideation through diminished social support (Bahk et al., 2017). Other researchers using latent class analysis of adverse childhood experiences have found commonalities in patterns associated with experiences involving deprivation or violence (Henry, 2020). However, the psychosocial mechanisms linking varying types of adverse experiences with mental health outcomes are less well understood, although multiple biopsychosocial processes are likely implicated (Anisman et al., 2018; Barrero-Castillero et al., 2022).

Young children are typically incapable of making accurate appraisals of situations and may misinterpret parental mistreatment and form inappropriate inferential attributions for their experiences to aspects of themselves, thereby promoting self-blame and diminished self-esteem (Hays-Grudo and Morris, 2020). Coupled with misappraisals, young children may lack effective coping strategies that might otherwise diminish distress (Compas et al., 2017). Cumulative adverse experiences may come to undermine school performance, disturb the ability to form and maintain close relationships, foster mistrust of others, and impair self-regulation, all of which may favor the emergence of psychological disorders in young adulthood (Kisely et al., 2018; Fitzgerald and Gallus, 2020; Karatekin and Ahluwalia, 2020; Colburn et al., 2021). Of course, the impact of early life experiences on the development of loneliness can be influenced by a gamut of psychosocial factors, including age and gender, maladaptive cognitive schemas, epigenetic factors, and socioeconomic status, among many others (Southwick et al., 2014).

Diminished perceptions of social support

Irrespective of age, several social factors, including number of friends, social engagement, and frequency of contact have been tied to feelings of loneliness (Luhmann and Hawkley, 2016). Not surprisingly, such social assets have been identified as critical protective factors that promote resilience in the face of adverse childhood experiences (Sperry and Widom, 2013; Fitzgerald and Gallus, 2020; Leung et al., 2022). Conversely, social ostracism partially mediated the link between adverse childhood experiences and later feelings of loneliness (Arslan and Yıldırım, 2021). Young adults who had experienced more adverse events in their household while growing up perceived less social support (Gayman et al., 2011; Caravaca-Sánchez et al., 2019; Karatekin and Ahluwalia, 2020; Colburn et al., 2021), which predicted greater symptoms of anxiety and depression (Watt et al., 2020). Likewise, childhood physical and emotional abuse were associated with diminished social networks and greater perceived peer rejection in adulthood, which were linked to greater loneliness (Gibson and Hartshorne, 1996; Lev-Wiesel and Sternberg, 2012). It has been suggested that the shame associated with abusive experiences may promote negative perceptions of social support, and hence decreased disclosure of traumatic events (Aakvaag et al., 2019), which might undermine the longer-term capacity to cope effectively with such experiences.

Many adverse childhood experiences are inherently relational, often being committed by an individual who is an important attachment figure and should be a protective influence for the child. This may foster maladaptive cognitive processing of emotionally intense situations and limitations in emotional regulation and social skills (Dvir et al., 2014; Gama et al., 2021). In addition, the experience of childhood abuse may have important implications for how an individual appraises social support and social connection (Williams and Galliher, 2006; Dodson and Beck, 2017). Specifically, an individual may determine that the risks involved with social connections are not worth the potential benefits and may not actively seek out or appreciate the social support that is available to them (Lee and Robbins, 1995; Lee et al., 2001; Williams and Galliher, 2006), choosing social isolation instead of connection (Arslan and Yıldırım, 2021). The interpersonal foundation of childhood abuse and maltreatment has been proposed as a cogent mechanism by which child abuse promotes later life psychological distress and mental health challenges, including loneliness (Fitzgerald and Gallus, 2020).

The present investigation

Early life adverse experiences can profoundly influence psychosocial functioning among young adults. Yet, little is understood about the socio-emotional wellness of young people with respect to their feelings of loneliness, despite its prevalence and documented connection to mental health. A cluster of early life factors has been linked to loneliness among young adults, including reports of early life trauma, household adversity, psychological maltreatment, and various forms of abuse. There is emerging evidence that different forms of early life adversity trigger varying psychological trajectories. Similarly, diverse social processes have been implicated in the relations between childhood experiences and loneliness, including perceived social support, social isolation, social skills, rejection, and recognition or ostracism from others. Thus, the present multi-study investigation, conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, explored various early life adverse experiences and their relation to loneliness, together with several aspects of social functioning to better understand mechanisms that link the childhood experiences and loneliness in young adulthood. In Study 1, we assessed different forms of trauma experiences in relation to loneliness among young adults, including the mediating role of perceived social support from parents and peers. Study 2 further assessed relations between different forms of childhood abuse and loneliness and expanded on potential social mediators including social connectedness and unsupportive social interactions with parents and peers. Finally, Study 3 assessed whether the age at which specific forms of abuse were experienced had differential implications for social processes and the relationships with loneliness.

Study 1

While adverse childhood experiences have been found to be predictive of loneliness and the emergence of other psychopathologies in adulthood, what is rarely taken into consideration is the proliferation of stressors that may co-occur with early life adversities. In this regard, adverse childhood experiences have been associated with an elevated risk of subsequent stressor encounters (Widom et al., 2008; Radford et al., 2013). In addition, re-victimization is common among childhood abuse survivors, and it is possible that these later experiences could account for adult wellness (Grasso et al., 2016; Goemans et al., 2021). In Study 1, the relations between exposure to a range of traumatic events (including experiences of adult victimization) and loneliness in young adulthood were assessed. Of particular interest was whether abusive childhood experiences uniquely predicted loneliness relative to other forms of trauma that may be encountered either in adulthood or childhood.

While multiple aspects of social relationships may be affected by early life experiences, a lack of perceived social support is a strong predictor of loneliness (Wang et al., 2018). Social support has been shown to mediate the relationship between experiences of early life trauma and abuse and loneliness in adolescence and adulthood (Runtz and Schallow, 1997; Sperry and Widom, 2013; Watt et al., 2020). The differential effects of such support from friends relative to parents may be especially pertinent during the transition to young adulthood (Riggio et al., 1993; Chen and Feeley, 2014). Adolescence is a developmental stage in which individuals’ identity begins to move from parental influences to those provided by peers, and the social-emotional skills that are critical to establishing supportive peer relationships are shaped by individuals’ well-being and sense of self (Mitic et al., 2021). It was hypothesized that the relationship between abusive childhood experiences and current loneliness would be mediated by diminished perceptions of social support. As the comparative effects of various sources of perceived support (i.e., parents, friends) in relation to loneliness are not yet well understood (Fitzgerald and Gallus, 2020), the relative contribution of perceived support from friends or parents was also evaluated.

Materials and methods

Participants and procedures

Participants were first-year undergraduate students aged 25 years or less recruited online through a computer registry (SONA system), and comprised primarily white/Caucasian females (see Table 1). Upon provision of informed consent, participants completed a series of measures, after which they were fully debriefed, and provided with course credit for their participation and contact information should they experience any distress. The study protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Board at Carleton University (REB#: 03-006).

TABLE 1

Table 1. Demographic description and prevalence of loneliness for participants of all three studies.

Measures

Demographics

Participants were asked to identify their gender, age, and ethnoracial background using an open-ended question format.

Loneliness

The UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3 (Russell, 1996) includes 20 items that assess perceived loneliness (e.g., “How often do you feel alone?”), social behaviors (e.g., “How often do you feel shy?”), and quality of relationships (e.g., How often do you feel that your relationships with others are not meaningful?”). Respondents rated the frequency of such feelings from 1 (never) to 4 (always) and ratings across the items were summed (Cronbach’s α = 0.89) to provide scores with a possible range of 20–80.

Social support provisions

Perceptions of social support provided by parents and friends were assessed using Cutrona and Russell’s (1987) Social Provisions Scale comprising 12 items in relation to each of the sources of support. Participants indicated whether a range of supportive behaviors was provided by each of the sources on a 3-point rating scale: no (1), not sure (2), and yes (3). Mean scores were calculated for the social support provided by parents (Cronbach’s α = 0.89) and friends (Cronbach’s α = 0.89). Perceptions of support from these sources was moderately correlated, r = 0.40, p < 0.001.

Trauma experiences

The Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (TLEQ) (Kubany et al., 2000) identifies significant traumatic life events at various points across the participant’s life. This measure comprises a broad spectrum of potentially traumatic events, ranging from natural disasters, accidents, and assaults, to childhood abuse. Events are described in behaviorally descriptive terms. The frequency of occurrence of each event is assessed using a 7-point scale on which participants indicate whether each event has occurred from never (0) to more than five times (6). For the present study, our interest in various trauma exposures resulted in consideration of five experiences, including (1) non-social experiences of shock (e.g., being in a car accident), social experiences of (2) loss (i.e., the death of a loved one) or (3) having something bad happen to a loved one (e.g., witnessing assault), (4) traumas that involved social threats to the participant directly as an adult (e.g., physically hurt by an intimate partner or threatened by a stranger), and (5) abuse ‘while growing up’ (i.e., physical punishment and inappropriate sexual interactions) (based on Breslau et al., 1999).

Trauma exposure was calculated in two ways. To assess whether different types of trauma were differentially associated with loneliness, for each of the five trauma types, the average occurrence of the respective events was calculated irrespective of the age at which they were experienced. Second, early life trauma exposure was calculated by counting the number of events participants reported as having occurred 10 or more years ago (given the mean age of the participants, events that happened 10 or more years ago likely constituted childhood experiences) collapsed across the trauma types (with the exception of abuse while growing up).

Statistical analyses

Frequencies of traumatic events were reported, and gender differences were assessed using independent t-tests. Zero-order relationships among variables were explored using Pearson correlations. To determine whether different forms of trauma were uniquely predictive of loneliness, two linear regression analyses were conducted wherein the five trauma types (at any age; or those experienced 10 or more years ago) were entered simultaneously as predictors. A mediation analysis assessed whether the relations between childhood abuse and loneliness could be accounted for by the diminished levels of perceived social support from friends and parents. The PROCESS macro applying model 4 (Hayes, 2022) was used with bootstrapping procedures using 5,000 resamples to establish the 95% confidence intervals (CI) to assess significance. A follow-up analysis was conducted to determine whether gender moderated the mediated model (PROCESS model 8). For each analysis, the power to detect a medium effect size of partial R² = 0.05 at p = 0.05 with the sample size of the present study was β = 0.85.

Results

The most common form of traumatic event reported by participants was the death of a loved one (n = 94, 55.0%). However, other events were not uncommon, including those constituting a severe shock (n = 54, 31.6%), witnessing negative experiences among loved ones (n = 75, 43.9%), or even personal assault as an adult (n = 44, 25.7%). While the majority of participants did not report experiencing any of these forms of trauma as children (i.e., more than 10 years ago), 19.3% (n = 33) reported at least one early life general trauma experience. In addition, 25.7% (n = 44) indicated some form of childhood physical or sexual abuse. There was a significant relationship between experiencing abuse as a child and assault in adulthood, r = 0.37, p < 0.001. There were no gender differences in trauma experiences, nor in feelings of loneliness (M = 42.35, SD = 12.67). As seen in Table 1, about a third of participants reported relatively low levels of loneliness (scores of 34 or less), but a quarter had moderately high to high scores (50 or greater).

A multiple linear regression analysis conducted with the five trauma types entered together as predictors indicated that, as a whole, traumatic events were not associated with greater loneliness, R² = 0.054, F(5,164) = 1.86, p = 0.104. However, examination of the regression coefficients indicated that reports of childhood abuse were uniquely associated with greater loneliness, b = 2.82, SE = 1.16, p = 0.016, r = 0.22, p = 0.002. Assault as an adult was correlated with greater loneliness, r = 0.13, p = 0.052, whereas other trauma types were not significantly related to loneliness (ps > 0.17).

The multiple regression analysis with traumas experienced early in life trauma (more than 10 years ago) as predictors showed that early life experiences were associated with greater loneliness, R² = 0.064, F(2,168) = 5.07, p = 0.004. Examination of the regression coefficients indicated that, once again, only reports of childhood abuse were associated with greater loneliness, b = 6.10, SE = 1.84, p = 0.001, whereas other early life traumas were not, r = 0.05, b = 1.23, SE = 2.10, p = 0.559.

As childhood abuse was the only trauma type that was uniquely associated with loneliness, the extent to which this relation was mediated by diminished levels of perceived social support from parents or friends was assessed. As seen in Figure 1, the relationship between childhood abuse and loneliness was partially accounted for by lower perceived social support, Effect = 1.60, CI_0.95[0.02, 3.65], but not uniquely from friends, a₁b₁ = 1.21, CI_0.95[–0.18, 3.04], or parents, a₂b₂ = 0.40, CI_0.95[–0.03, 1.07]. Gender did not significantly moderate the mediated relationships.

FIGURE 1

Figure 1. Mediated relationship between experiences of childhood abuse and loneliness through perceived social support from friends and parents in Study 1. Path coefficients indicate that childhood abuse was associated with perceived support and such perceptions were, in turn, related to loneliness. Perceived support partially accounted for the relationship between experiences of child abuse and loneliness among young adults. c represents the total effect, whereas c’ represents the direct effect. ⁺p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; ^**p < 0.01; ^***p < 0.001. N = 171.

Discussion

As identified in previous research (Cigna, 2018; Williams and Braun, 2019), high levels of loneliness were prevalent in over a quarter of this population of young adults. In addition, a sizable proportion had experienced some form of traumatic event, and in particular, childhood abuse in the form of excessive physical punishment or inappropriate non-consensual sexual interactions was reported by more than 1 in 4 young adults. Although other types of childhood or adult traumatic experiences were common, they were not predictive of loneliness, whereas childhood abuse was related to increased loneliness as a young adult. It seems the social threat emanating from childhood abuse may be an important mechanism associated with later life well-being, whereas experiences reflecting more general adverse childhood experiences or the effects of a broad range of stressors encountered as young adults were less prominent. Childhood abuse was associated with a higher likelihood of revictimization in the form of assault in young adult years. Although adult assault experiences were related to loneliness, they did not account for unique variation when childhood abuse was controlled. This would suggest that the early life experiences play a greater role than those that might be reflective of adult revictimization in shaping feelings of loneliness among young adults.

The relation between childhood abuse and loneliness was partially mediated by lower perceptions of social support, which aligns with research demonstrating the mediating role of social support in the relationship between childhood abuse and well-being more generally (Runtz and Schallow, 1997; Fitzgerald and Gallus, 2020; Watt et al., 2020). As in earlier research, individuals who experienced childhood abuse were more likely to perceive lower social support from both parents and peers (friends) (Gayman et al., 2011; Caravaca-Sánchez et al., 2019; Karatekin and Ahluwalia, 2020; Colburn et al., 2021). Thus, the experience of childhood abuse may have important implications for how an individual appraises the availability of social support across sources, and may have significant implications for their ability to fill social needs (Gayman et al., 2011; Flett et al., 2016; Von Soest et al., 2020).

An important limitation of Study 1 was the assessment only of childhood sexual or physical abuse. Notably absent were experiences of emotional abuse. This is particularly relevant given that various forms of childhood abuse (i.e., sexual abuse, physical abuse, or emotional abuse) can have differential implications for later life mental health (Kisely et al., 2018; Poole et al., 2018; Colburn et al., 2021; Gama et al., 2021), as well as for social support resources.

Study 2

The numerous socio-emotional outcomes of childhood abuse, including shame and poor views of the self (Wright et al., 2009), a belief that one does not matter to others (Flett et al., 2016), lack of trust in others (Dodson and Beck, 2017), and low social skills (Li et al., 2022) can result in an individual feeling low social connectedness (Lee et al., 2001). Social connectedness is a relational schema that goes beyond perceptions of social support to encompass the value an individual places on their relationships with others and their sense of belonging (Lee and Robbins, 1998; Lee et al., 2001). Importantly, because the cognitive schemas that shape social connectedness begin to form in early life, they may be particularly prone to adverse childhood experiences that shape one’s view of the self in social situations (Lee et al., 2001; Wright et al., 2009). Low social connectedness has been proposed to be a coping mechanism designed to protect an individual from further harm to the self that others may inflict (i.e., rejection), and hence limits perceptions of social support (Lee et al., 2001) and may exacerbate feelings of loneliness.

Possibly due to trust and communication issues, an individual may not only be less likely to perceive that support is available, but might encounter more unsupportive responses from friends or parents when help is sought (Poole et al., 2018; Alink et al., 2019). Childhood abuse may influence choices in adult relationships that compound the likelihood of negative social interactions (Fergusson and Horwood, 1999; Aakvaag et al., 2019), either because they have been exposed to predominantly unsupportive relationships as children (Gayman et al., 2011; Von Soest et al., 2020) or because poor social functioning limits their friendship options (Lev-Wiesel and Sternberg, 2012; Li et al., 2022).

Study 2 broadened our assessment of childhood abuse and considered the mediating role of multiple aspects of social relationships. As Study 1 did not demonstrate that perceptions of support from friends relative to parents were differentially associated with reported child abuse or loneliness, Study 2 assessed perceived support in general, together with an overall sense of social connectedness. However, cognizant of the importance of establishing positive peer relationships through the transition to adulthood and the potentially powerful implications of not acquiring support from friends though this period, we evaluated the mediating role of unsupportive interactions with each of friends and parents in the relationship between trauma and loneliness in young adults.