Loneliness and self-efficacy

Abstract

Loneliness could be defined as subjective dissatisfaction with interpersonal relationships resulting from either a change in actual social relationships or a change in one’s needs and desires for relationships. Because the forming and modelling of social relationships could be related to some social and general abilities, one of the aims of this research was to find out the relations among loneliness and self-efficacy. The subjects were 88 students of the Faculty of Arts in Zadar who participated in the investigation twice during a period of two weeks. All measures were group administered to subjects. Four measures were used: General Self-Efficacy Scale, Short form of UCLA Loneliness Scale, Perfectionism Scale and Optimism - Pessimism Scales. The subjects assessed their subjective study satisfaction as well as their life satisfaction. Results indicated that there is a negative correlation between general self-efficacy and loneliness, as well as between general self- efficacy and pessimism. There is a positive correlation between perfectionism and loneliness, and between pessimism and loneliness. Life satisfaction was the best negative predictor of loneliness, while perfectionism was the best positive predictor of loneliness. Optimism was one of the main predictors of general self-efficacy.