Lonely individuals reveal proximal social avoidance and distal general approach motivation: Evidence from time perception in social and non‐social contexts.
Loneliness is a major public health issue, leading to serious physical and mental health problems. Research has shown that trait‐like, chronically lonely individuals exhibit either avoidance or approach behaviour towards social connections. However, how social avoidance and approach motivation co‐oc...
| Publicado en: | British Journal of Psychology Vol. 117; no. 1; pp. 16 - 35 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Wiley-Blackwell
Feb2026
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=190788911&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 190788911 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00071269 BJP jtl: British Journal of Psychology issn: 00071269 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Feb2026 vid: 117 iid: 1 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 190788911 10.1111/bjop.70010 ppf: 16 ppct: 19 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: C – @attributes: type: P size: 1.4MB tig: atl: Lonely individuals reveal proximal social avoidance and distal general approach motivation: Evidence from time perception in social and non‐social contexts. aug: au: Wu, Chunlin Guo, Rui Chen, Youguo Long, Changquan affil: Faculty of Psychology and Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of the Ministry of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China su: Task performance Sensory perception Loneliness Anxiety Motivation (Psychology) Psychology Analysis of variance Psychological tests Avoidance (Psychology) Mental depression Psychosocial factors Statistical power analysis Effect sizes (Statistics) Conceptual models T-test (Statistics) Research funding Statistical sampling Sample size (Statistics) Descriptive statistics Experimental design State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Reaction time Data analysis software Time Regression analysis sug: subj: Task performance Sensory perception Loneliness Anxiety Motivation (Psychology) Psychology Analysis of variance Psychological tests Avoidance (Psychology) Mental depression Psychosocial factors Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling Statistical power analysis Effect sizes (Statistics) Conceptual models T-test (Statistics) Research funding Statistical sampling Sample size (Statistics) Descriptive statistics Experimental design State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Reaction time Data analysis software Time Regression analysis keyword: evolutionary theory general process model of threat and defence loneliness time bisection task evolutionary theory general process model of threat and defence loneliness time bisection task ab: Loneliness is a major public health issue, leading to serious physical and mental health problems. Research has shown that trait‐like, chronically lonely individuals exhibit either avoidance or approach behaviour towards social connections. However, how social avoidance and approach motivation co‐occur in trait‐like, chronically lonely individuals remains unclear. We hypothesized that loneliness would first induce social avoidance and then approach motivation, given the inherent negative bias of loneliness and the general process model of threat and defence, which asserts that threat first activates avoidance motivation followed by approach motivation. To test this hypothesis, we used sub‐ and supra‐second time bisection tasks in social and non‐social contexts based on the motivational dimensional model of time perception. The results showed that high‐loneliness (HL) and low‐loneliness (LL) individuals had similar sub‐second time estimates in non‐social contexts. However, HL individuals lengthened time in the sub‐second range in social contexts and shortened time in the supra‐second range compared to LL individuals, regardless of social or non‐social context. These findings suggest that HL individuals exhibit proximal social avoidance and distal general approach as a defence mechanism, which is consistent with the general process model of threat and defence and extends the evolutionary theory of loneliness. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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