Loneliness and Personality: Noise- and Bias-free True Correlations Between Loneliness and the Big Five Personality Domains

ObjectiveWhile loneliness is intertwined with many mental and physical health problems, its origins are not yet well-understood. We sought to better understand its link to personality in a large national cohort. MethodsCombining self- and informant ratings in multiple samples, we conducted the largest study to date to examine loneliness’ true correlations (rtrues) with the Big Five personality traits, free of single-method biases and transient and random errors. ResultsAcross three samples (Estonian-speaking, N = 20,893; Russian-speaking, N = 762; English-speaking, N = 599), we found a strong relationship between loneliness and Neuroticism (rtrue = .60 to .70). Loneliness also had robust but much weaker associations with Extraversion (rtrue = -.20 to -.30), and only weak associations (rtrue = .10 to -.20) with Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. Collectively, the Big Five accounted for over 50% of loneliness variance. In a subsample, the associations were only slightly smaller longitudinally over approximately 10 years. ConclusionOverall, feeling lonely is more closely related to Neuroticism than previously understood, and the association endures over time.