Adolescent Loneliness and Social Skills: Agreement and Discrepancies Between Self-, Meta-, and Peer-Evaluations.

Autor: Lodder GM; Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. g.m.a.lodder@rug.nl.; Interuniversity Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology, Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. g.m.a.lodder@rug.nl., Goossens L; Research Group School Psychology and Child and Adolescent Development, KU Leuven, Louvain, Belgium., Scholte RH; Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.; Praktikon, Nijmegen, The Netherlands., Engels RC; Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.; Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, Trimbos Institute, Utrecht, The Netherlands.; Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands., Verhagen M; Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of youth and adolescence [J Youth Adolesc] 2016 Dec; Vol. 45 (12), pp. 2406-2416. Date of Electronic Publication: 2016 Apr 12.
DOI: 10.1007/s10964-016-0461-y
Abstrakt: Lonely adolescents report that they have poor social skills, but it is unknown whether this is due to an accurate perception of a social skills deficit, or a biased negative perception. This is an important distinction, as actual social skills deficits require different treatments than biased negative perceptions. In this study, we compared self-reported social skills evaluations with peer-reported social skills and meta-evaluations of social skills (i.e., adolescents' perceptions of how they believe their classmates evaluate them). Based on the social skills view, we expected negative relations between loneliness and these three forms of social skills evaluations. Based on the bias view, we expected lonely adolescents to have more negative self- and meta-evaluations compared to peer-evaluations of social skills. Participants were 1342 adolescents (48.64 % male, M age  = 13.95, SD = .54). All classmates rated each other in a round-robin design to obtain peer-evaluations. Self- and meta-evaluations were obtained using self-reports. Data were analyzed using polynomial regression analyses and response surface modeling. The results indicated that, when self-, peer- and meta-evaluations were similar, a greater sense of loneliness was related to poorer social skills. Loneliness was also related to larger discrepancies between self- and peer-evaluations of loneliness, but not related to the direction of these discrepancies. Thus, for some lonely adolescents, loneliness may be related to an actual social skills deficit, whereas for others a biased negative perception of one's own social skills or a mismatch with the environment may be related to their loneliness. This implies that different mechanisms may underlie loneliness, which has implications for interventions.
Competing Interests: The authors report no conflict of interests. Ethical Approval All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The IRB of the faculty of social sciences approved the study procedures (ECG2012-2711-701). Informed Consent Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Databáze: MEDLINE
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