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Loneliness
The Benefits of Solitude
Why being alone, even for a social animal, can be beneficial.
Posted December 29, 2022 Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
Key points
- Even for a social animal, solitude can have its benefits.
- Solitary does not necessarily mean lonely.
- Having solid social relationships but choosing to be solitary for a time can fend off loneliness.
Holidays are usually a series of social events, and the pressure to engage in them, and to be social, with the mandate to be happy. It seems to grow with each new Christmas movie debut, and re-airing of It’s a Wonderful Life. But, as the holiday season winds down, it may be time to reconsider the push to be with other people, to be social and engaged. Do we really need to?
We are, without doubt, social animals. There is overwhelming evidence that human beings thrive physically and emotionally when we are part of a group. However, even the most social among us can appreciate solitude. In a survey by the Pew Research Center (2015), 85 percent of American adults said it was important to have times when they could be completely alone and away from everyone else.
More than half of men and women, young and old, rated solitude as very important to them. So how do we reconcile the fact that humans are social animals and do better in groups with the apparent contradiction that we want to be alone at the same time?
Solitude Is Not the Same as Loneliness
There are some definitions to consider first. If you look up “solitude,” you’ll probably find yourself with pages of hits discussing loneliness, as if solitude and loneliness were the same things. They are not. Solitude is being alone without other human beings around you.
Loneliness is a negative and unpleasant emotional state we try very hard to avoid. The distinction between the two rests with whether or not we want to be alone. If we’re alone because we want to be, then the experience of solitude is not unpleasant and negative. If we are alone but don’t want to be, we really want to be with other people, to have contact with others, but for various reasons we can’t, we experience loneliness.
Long and Averill (2003) said,
The voluntariness or degree of control a person has in a situation may be the most important factor that tips the balance between an experience of positive solitude and an experience of loneliness (pg. 30).
Having solid social relationships in our lives but choosing to be solitary for a time can also fend off loneliness.
An individual’s personality may also play an important role in whether solitude is seen as a positive or a negative event. We all differ in our sociability, defined in psychology as a personality trait that distinguishes us in terms of our need to be with others and seek out the company of others.
People who score high on measures of sociability may see solitude as a distinctly negative event, whereas less sociable people may treat it as a necessity for a happy life. If you find yourself forced to be at odds with this personality trait, then you will interpret the experience of solitude differently.
The Benefits of Solitude
Assuming you want some time alone, what are the benefits of solitude? Long and Averill (2003) said that solitude could lead to a sense of freedom of choice (the freedom to do what you want to do without the constraints that a social situation can impose), heightened creativity and spirituality, and even a greater sense of intimacy or connectedness with others, despite the apparent contradiction.
In 2019, Birditt et al. examined the relationship between the experience of solitude (as positive or negative) and the quality and kind of relationships with others. They asked 313 older adults (age 65 and up) about their time spent alone and their social relationships, the size of their social circle, the positive qualities of those relationships, and the amount of conflict in those relationships.
The quality of the social relationships significantly predicted whether participants described solitude as positive or negative. Being solitary predicted lower levels of negative emotional response among participants with more conflict in their social networks but not among those with less conflictual networks.
So, if being home for the holidays is fraught with anxiety, and makes you think about protecting your emotional well-being, perhaps some solitude might be something to consider when the next holiday season rolls around.
References
“Americans’ Attitudes About Privacy, Security and Surveillance.” Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. May 20 2015, http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/
Long, C. R., and Averill, J.R. (2003). Solitude: An exploration of the benefits of being alone. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 33(1), 21-44.
Birditt, K.S., Manalel, J.A., Sommers, H., Luong, G., Karen L. Fingerman, K.L. (2019). Better off alone: Daily solitude is associated with lower negative affect in more conflictual social networks. The Gerontologist, 59(6), 1152-1161. doi:10.1093/geront/gny060
