This study examined whether preference for solitude promotes emotional well-being after controlling for the influence of loneliness. We administered a questionnaire that included variables regarding preference for solitude, loneliness, positive affect, and negative affect. The sample consisted of 318 young adult university students and 253 individuals aged 65 and older. The results showed a sig...

Most studies of solitude have focused on the modern individualized sense of solitude, located or originating in urbanized Western cultures where solitude is seen as a companion to urban modernity. In this perspective the larger historical and cultural context goes almost unnoticed together with the fact that the preoccupation with solitude, in various forms and functions, has been around for a ...

Social withdrawal has been associated with adjustment difficulties across development. Although much is known about shyness, little is known about preference-for-solitude; even less is known about its relations with adjustment across different periods of adolescence. We examined whether preference-for-solitude might be differentially associated with adjustment difficulties in early and late ado...

Being alone is a state resulting in a variety of consequences, including loneliness and solitude. While solitude is thought to promote individuality, creativity, and self-awareness, loneliness is a painful state marked by a distinct lack of satisfying social relationships. This essay deals with the psychosocial issues of loneliness and solitude. I have made a concerted effort to steer away from...

Transient, elevated concentrations of extracellular dopamine were characterized in the dorsal and ventral striatum of male rats during solitude, brief interaction with a conspecific, and copulation. Conspecific rats were systematically presented to male rats and allowed to interact for 30 sec; the males were kept in solitude between each presentation. During these episodes, 125 dopamine concent...

Increasingly, wilderness managers must choose between the objective of wildness (“untrammeled” wilderness) and the objectives of naturalness and solitude. This dilemma has surfaced with awareness of the pervasiveness of human influence in wilderness and that regulation is often the only way to maintain outstanding opportunities for solitude. Should we trammel wilderness to compensate for unnatu...