Search for: All records

Loneliness, a significant public health issue, was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in disaster-prone regions like the U.S. Gulf Coast. This study examined how social and built environmental factors were associated with pandemic-related disruptions and loneliness among respondents from the third wave of the Survey of Trauma, Resilience, and Opportunity among Neighborhoods in the Gulf (STRONG). Using a retrospective measure of loneliness (pre-pandemic vs. during pandemic), we found that loneliness increased significantly during the pandemic. Using a measure of routine behavior disruptions and measures of both objective (e.g., parks, walkability, etc.) and subjective (e.g., neighborhood safety, social cohesion, etc.) environmental factors, we found that disruptions to daily routines strongly predicted higher loneliness, and subjective measures, such as neighborhood safety, social cohesion, and lacking post-disaster social support, were more salient predictors of loneliness than objective factors such as the number of parks in one’s neighborhood. Difficulty accessing green spaces and housing distress were linked to greater COVID-19 disruptions, indirectly contributing to loneliness. These findings highlight the importance of safe, supportive, and accessible social and physical environments in mitigating loneliness and enhancing community resilience during crises. 

Drawing from life-span psychology, we conducted two studies to test perceptions of time left in the future as an underlying mechanism for age differences in self-reported social risk taking. Study 1 included 120 younger (25–35 years) and 119 older (60–91 years) community-dwelling adults. Study 2 included 439 participants (18–85 years) mostly recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. In both studies, older age was associated with rating a lower likelihood of social risk taking (e.g., speaking about an unpopular issue) and perceiving the future as holding fewer future opportunities and being more limited. Perceptions of fewer future opportunities with aging statistically mediated age-related declines in social risk taking. Findings highlight motivational factors as key for understanding age differences in social risk taking. Implications of age differences in social risk taking on factors related to well-being, such as social support and strain, are discussed.