Trial reportPloS one2018
Loneliness predicts a preference for larger interpersonal distance within intimate space.
Trial report in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- Enhancing social functioning using multi-user, immersive virtual reality.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- Association between loneliness and hippocampal responses to dynamic social stimuli in psychotic disorders.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Loneliness in schizophrenia: Just loneliness.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- From Mandate to Choice: How Voluntary Mask Wearing Shapes Interpersonal Distance Among University Students After COVID-19.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The alone team: How an alone mindset affects group processes.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2025Article
- Targeting childhood loneliness in china: in silico interventions and moderated network analysis.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2025Article
- Neural correlates of personal space regulation in psychosis: role of the inferior parietal cortex.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Self-other boundary under social threat in schizophrenia.Schizophrenia research · 2024Article
- Urbanization, loneliness and mental health model - A cross-sectional network analysis with a representative sample.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Loneliness and Mode of Social Contact in Late Life.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Article
- How different face mask types affect interpersonal distance perception and threat feeling in social interaction.Cognitive processing · 2024Article
- Loneliness trajectories over three decades are associated with conspiracist worldviews in midlife.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Away from the herd: loneliness as a dysfunction of social alignment.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Social Withdrawal, Loneliness, and Health in Schizophrenia: Psychological and Neural Mechanisms.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2023Article
- Age-related social selectivity: An adaptive lens on a later life social phenotype.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Sexual Desire in the Time of COVID-19: How COVID-Related Stressors Are Associated with Sexual Desire in Romantic Relationships.Archives of sexual behavior · 2022Article
- Neural Correlates of Variation in Personal Space and Social Functioning in Schizophrenia and Healthy Individuals.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2022Article
- Wearing a Mask Shapes Interpersonal Space during COVID-19 Pandemic.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Loneliness among older adults in Europe: The relative importance of early and later life conditions.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Loneliness is thought to serve as an adaptive signal indicating the need to repair or replace salutary social connections. Accordingly, loneliness may influence preferences for interpersonal distance. If loneliness simply motivates a desire to socially reconnect, then loneliness may be associated with a preference for smaller interpersonal distances. According to the evolutionary model of loneliness, however, loneliness also signals an inadequacy of mutual aid and protection, augmenting self-preservation motives. If loneliness both increases the motivation to reconnect and increases the motivation for self-protection, then the resulting approach-avoidance conflict should produce a preference for larger interpersonal distance, at least within intimate (i.e., proximal) space. Here, we report two survey-based studies of participants' preferences for interpersonal distance to distinguish between these competing hypotheses. In Study 1 (N = 175), loneliness predicted preferences for larger interpersonal distance within intimate space net gender, objective social isolation, anxiety, depressive symptomatology, and marital status. In Study 2 (N = 405), we replicated these results, and mediation analyses indicated that measures of social closeness could not adequately explain our findings. These studies provide compelling evidence that loneliness predicts preferences for larger interpersonal distance within intimate space, consistent with predictions from the evolutionary model of loneliness.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.