Identifying Robust Longitudinal Transactions Between Loneliness and the Big Five Personality Traits

Understanding when and why people become lonely is of theoretical and practical relevance. Personality traits and loneliness have been theorized to reciprocally influence each other over time. However, longitudinal research on personality-loneliness transactions remains scarce, yielded inconsistent findings, and shares methodological limitations. To advance understanding of the longitudinal transactions between loneliness and personality traits, the present study analyzed data from three nationally representative large-scale panel studies (N = 63,555). Meta-analytic aggregation of the findings across datasets showed that, at the within-person level, increases in extraversion (β = −0.04), conscientiousness (β = −0.02), and emotional stability (β = −0.03) predicted decreases in loneliness 4 years later. In turn, increases in loneliness predicted decreases in extraversion (β = −0.03), agreeableness (β = −0.02), conscientiousness (β = −0.02), and emotional stability (β = −0.02) 4 years later. Notably, effect sizes differed substantially across the individual datasets. Overall, the present findings highlight the dynamic relationship between loneliness and personality traits, indicating that traits not only shape but also adapt to changes in loneliness. Personality traits therefore represent an important factor in understanding, preventing, and reducing loneliness.