The work started at a challenging time for solitude, together with the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Our focus was on understanding solitude recognizing the context of, but providing insights beyond, pandemic restrictions. To achieve this, we pursued the agenda planned in WP1, and expanded on its overall aims in response to evolving pandemic-specific insights.
WP1 was designed to provide a foundational understanding of the meaning of solitude and resilience within it. To pursue the aim we undertook planned qualitative in-depth interviews exploring these questions. We spoke with individuals living in extended solitude, across most adult ages, from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds (participants were from 20 country-of-origins), and who were balanced across genders. From these interviews we have built models of resilience predictors that participants identified helped them to flourish in solitude, and identified four types of solitude that differ on dimensions of psychological and physical distance from others. We elicited photographs from our participants illustrating their solitude, following the plan for WP1.
Alongside WP1 activities, the project team conducted a short-term longitudinal study of solitude of over 800 adults and older adults in the U.K. and U.S. over the first months of the pandemic. This was an intriguing period of time, when individuals spent more time in solitude than before, and discovered it has challenges and benefits. The work utilized a multi-step peer review open science registered format within the Royal Society Open Science.
As well, the team conducted a large-scale narrative study of over 2000 adolescents, adults, and older adults and used a mixed-methods approach wherein narratives were coded for spontaneously elicit themes and correlated quantitatively with self-reported loneliness, relaxation, and motivation for solitude. This paper identified key features of solitude that enriched the state, and explored differences across developmental groups. Older adults, on the whole, benefited from their solitude more and reported more of a sense of self-connection and self-reliance within it.
The team also focused on the role of connective technologies that could be tested within solitude, and through daily diary research did not identify evidence of psychopathology or systematic bias in extensive technology use (paper published in Technology, Mind, & Behavior). We also explored ways to encourage living-alone adults to self-isolate, contributing to our understanding of how to communicate health policy needs to individuals when it comes at a cost to social connection (paper published in Health Communication). From the work conducted, two chapters were written exploring the nature, antecedents, and outcomes of positive solitude in key solitude and motivational handbooks.
Finally, we are undertaking two major naturalistic studies of everyday solitude. In a first study, we are collecting data in line with WP2 goals to model predictors of solitude we have found to stand out in WP1 investigations: stimulation and self-connection. In doing so we account for individual differences and culture. In a second investigation, we are compiling daily diary existing datasets in the field to integrate societal, personality, and situational predictors of affect. These projects complement one another, providing an in-depth examination of key predictors along with a data-driven exploration of complex models.
