Social perception and loneliness in adolescence Attention to social cues, emotion recognition and social evolution

Human beings experience an innate need to form social connections with others to satisfy the so-called need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). This need drives human behavior, as it motivates people to form and maintain a satisfactory level of social relations, just like hunger motivates people to look for food (Cacioppo et al., 2006). Some people do not feel that their need to belong is fulfilled, and they may perceive that the quantity or the quality of their social relations is not sufficient. When people perceive such a discrepancy between their desired and actual social relations that leads to a negative emotional response, they may be experiencing loneliness (Perlman & Peplau, 1981). Loneliness can occur throughout the lifespan, but seems to be especially prominent in adolescence and young adulthood (Qualter et al., 2015). During this period, between 20% and 71% of all people report feeling lonely “sometimes” or “often”. During adolescence, loneliness may thus be a normative state. Adolescence is a crucial period of social development. Adolescents are confronted with many challenges in terms of physical development, identity formation, and social relations (Steinberg & Morris, 2001). The importance of parents decreases whereas peer relationships become increasingly important, and social relations become more complex and change in nature as adolescents become part of a complex network of cliques and crowds (Brown & Klute, 2006). These changes are accompanied by changes in the adolescent brain that enable adolescents to develop a more complex understanding of the mental state of others in their environment (Blakemore, 2008). Moreover, as early adolescents start high school and late adolescents start college and oftentimes move out from their parental home, adolescents are faced with challenges to form and maintain new social relations in a world that is novel to them (Kingery, Erdley, & Marshall, 2011; Shaver, Furman, & Buhrmester, 1985). These challenges make adolescents particularly sensitive to developing feelings of loneliness.status: publishe