Loneliness in Middle Childhood: Social Connectedness and Genetic Relatedness

The evolutionary approach argues that genetic similarity contributes to greater social similarity due to their desire to protect their genes. The social perspective model argues that loneliness is impacted by social relationships. It is hypothesized that MZ twins will show support for the evolutionary perspective, having the closest levels of loneliness, and will have levels comparable to FFs (Segal, 2000). It is hypothesized that loneliness means will show the following pattern: MZ \u3c DZ = FS \u3c VT with MZ = FF. Additionally, it is hypothesized that there will be a gender difference in loneliness in that M \u3e F (Junttila & Vauras, 2009). Participants were 300 pairs of children (8-12 years), who took part in the TAPS Study. The hypothesis was examined using 54 pairs of monozygotic (MZ) twins, 86 dizygotic (DZ) twins, 69 full siblings (FS), 48 friend-friend (FF) pairs and 43 virtual twins (VT). Each child completed the Children’s Loneliness Scale, which assessed feelings of social dissatisfaction and loneliness (Asher et. al, 1984). In contrast to our hypothesis, MANOVAs showed that genetic relatedness and loneliness were not significantly correlated. T-tests revealed that there was a significant main effect for gender, which supports social perspective theories