The Lonely States of America: Prevalence and Demographic Risk Factors for Affection Deprivation among U.S. Adults

Abstract

Affection deprivation indexes a deficit in the amount of affectionate communication one receives from others. According to affection exchange theory, affection deprivation is detrimental to physical and relational health, and empirical evidence supports that assertion. Little is known, however, about the prevalence of affection deprivation in the United States, a topic addressed here in two studies. The first study (N = 2,616) examined demographic and geographic variation in affection deprivation among a non-representative sample of U.S. adults. The latter study (N = 1,121) used a Census-matched representative sample of U.S. adults to replicate assessments of prevalence and examine how affection deprivation relates to loneliness and physical pain.

Keywords:

• Affectionate communication
• affection deprivation
• affection exchange theory
• loneliness
• pain

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. These percentages sum to >100 because some participants selected more than one ethnic/racial identity.

2. These percentages sum to >100 because some participants selected more than one ethnic/racial identity.

3. When using Prime Panels, our survey platform, SurveyMonkey, offers participants the opportunity to make a donation to a charity of their choice in lieu of receiving a direct payment. SurveyMonkey sets the rate of remuneration and Prime Panels is not able to specify the exact amount.

4. We would normally delete cases in which the time to completion was more than 2 standard deviations below the mean. Doing so was impossible in this case, however, because the standard deviation was less than half the mean for completion time, so no cases were removed due to completion time.

5. Tolerance (TOL) and variance inflation factor (VIF) test values were both 1 ± .072.

6. TOL and VIF test values were both 1 ± .013.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.