ArticleJournal of social and personal relationships2018
Loneliness in the older adult marriage: Associations with dyadic aversion, indifference, and ambivalence.
Article in Journal of social and personal relationships, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence and factors associated with loneliness among older adults in Africa: systematic review and meta-analysis.Systematic reviews · 2026Pooled it
- Loneliness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review with meta-analysis.The American psychologistPooled it
- How spousal, friend, and family ties predict health: Within- and between-person effects across 16 years.Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43) · 2026Article
- How perceiving pace of social change affects loneliness: psychological obsolescence as predictor for loneliness in late-life sample.European journal of ageing · 2026Article
- [Association Between Marital/Partner Relationship Quality and Accumulation Rate of Multiple Chronic Conditions in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: An Analysis Based on Data From English Longitudinal Study of Ageing].Sichuan da xue xue bao. Yi xue ban = Journal of Sichuan University. Medical science edition · 2026Article
- Daily closeness discrepancies and marital interaction quality in the context of chronic pain: mediating effect of loneliness.The Gerontologist · 2026Article
- Beyond Good or Bad: The Four Evaluative Quadrants of Relationships.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2026Article
- The mediating role of fragility of happiness in the association between marital loneliness and depression sensitivity: an actor-partner interdependence analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Family stress model pathways in middle adulthood to loneliness in later adulthood: Role of self-mastery.Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43) · 2025Article
- Article
- Perceived Discrimination and Incident Dementia Among Older Adults in the United States: The Buffering Role of Social Relationships.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Article
- Psychache status and associated contributing factors among the Hakka elderly in Fujian, China.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Marital Status and Happiness During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Journal of marriage and the family · 2024Article
- Moderation of associations between weight discrimination and diabetes status by psychosocial factors.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2024Article
- The Social Context of Partnered Older Adults' Insomnia Symptoms.International journal of aging & human development · 2023Article
- Difficulties in Emotion Regulation and Problematic Pornography Use: The Mediating Role of Loneliness.International journal of sexual health : official journal of the World Association for Sexual Health · 2023Article
- What's love got to do with it? Relationship quality appraisals and quality of life in couples facing cardiovascular disease.Health psychology and behavioral medicine · 2023Article
- Loneliness across time and space.Nature reviews psychology · 2023Review
- Actor and Partner Effect of Loneliness on Episodic Memory and Verbal Fluency: A Dyadic Multilevel Analysis of Romantic Couples Across 28 Countries.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2022Article
- The Impact of Marital Quality as Older Couples Adjust to Dementia Onset.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Marriage protects against loneliness, but not all marriages are equally protective. While marriage is a highly interdependent relationship, loneliness in marital dyads has received very little research attention. Unlike most studies proposing that positive and negative marital qualities independently affect loneliness at the individual level, we used a contextual approach to characterize each partner's ratings of the marriage as supportive (high support, low strain), ambivalent (high support, high strain), indifferent (low support, low strain), or aversive (low support, high strain), and examined how these qualities associate with own and partner's loneliness. Using couple data from the Wave II National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (N=953 couples), we found that more than half of the older adults live in an ambivalent, indifferent, or aversive marriage. Actor-partner interdependence models showed that positive and negative marital qualities synergistically predict couple loneliness. Spouses in aversive marriages are lonelier than their supportively married counterparts (actor effect), and that marital aversion increases the loneliness of their partners (partner effect). In addition, wives (but not husbands) in indifferent marriages are lonelier than their supportively married counterparts. These effects of poor marital quality on loneliness were not ameliorated by good relationships with friends and relatives. Results highlight the prominent role of the marriage relationship for imbuing a sense of connectedness among older adults, and underscore the need for additional research to identify strategies to help older adults optimize their marital relationship.
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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.