Loneliness and isolation are parts of the experience of growing old [1]. Due to exposure to age-related changes and losses, older persons are particularly vulnerable to loneliness [2]. Examples of age-related changes and losses are the loss of a partner and friends through death, worsening health, and loss of social roles through retirement [2].
Reported prevalence of loneliness among the elderly range from 39 to 72% [3,4,5,6,7]. The considerable variation in these estimates may partly be caused by the absence of a universally accepted definition of loneliness. Thus, a range of indicators and measurement tools of loneliness are used.
Several studies have shown that loneliness in old age is strongly associated with depression, and that both loneliness and depression have serious negative effects on well-being [6, 8,9,10,11]. Further, both loneliness and depression are risk factors for early death [12, 13]. In a recent study by Holwerda et al., it was shown that loneliness and depression are important predictors of early death in older adults, and that severe depression is strongly associated with excess mortality in older men who were lonely [14]. Furthermore, they found that the combination of either emotional or social loneliness with severe depression is a lethal combination in men in the long term. Thus, health authorities should develop interventions aimed at reducing the prevalence of loneliness in old age. In this context, increased knowledge about causes of loneliness may be helpful.
Several studies have aimed to explore factors associated with loneliness in old age. In a recent review by Cohen-Mansfield et al. [15], in which 38 mainly cross-sectional studies were reviewed, the variables significantly associated with loneliness in older adults were: female gender, non-married status, older age, low income, lower educational level, living alone, low quality of social relationships, poor self-reported health, and poor functional status. Further, psychological attributes associated with loneliness included poor mental health, low self-efficacy beliefs, negative life events, and cognitive deficits.
A few studies have addressed the role of personality traits when experiencing loneliness in old age. Hensley et al. studied participants from the Georgia Centenarian Study, and found that both extraversion and neuroticism significantly predicted loneliness [16]. Bishop and Martin [17] also found that neuroticism directly affected loneliness, and further, that educational attainment indirectly affected loneliness via neuroticism. Long and Martin (2000) reported that neuroticism was positively associated with loneliness in the oldest old [18]. As far as we can see, none of the above-mentioned studies investigated women and men separately, and none of them had a longitudinal design. Thus, more research is needed on the association between personality traits and loneliness in old age, applying a gender perspective. Moreover, studies with a longitudinal design are requested [1], since they will enable an improved understanding of causal order.
Over the past 40 years, a number of surveys have shown that personality traits tend to spread over five dimensions, the so-called ‘Big Five’ [19], including the following five traits; extraversion (dominance, extraversion, outgoing), agreeableness (human friendliness, warmth), conscientiousness, neuroticism (anxious, negative emotions), and openness to experience (openness, openness to impressions).
Based on growing evidence concerning the detrimental aspects of loneliness, we aim to explore to what extent the five personality traits in the Big Five are associated with the risk of becoming lonely in old age, focusing on a gender perspective.
The aim of the present study was to explore to what extent personality traits are associated with becoming lonely, based on self-reported loneliness among women and men aged 60–79 years at baseline.