Smartphone-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment of Coping with Loneliness amid COVID-19 in Germany

Luisa Wegner, Matthias N. Haucke, Stephan Heinzel and Shuyan Liu
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Luisa Wegner: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Matthias N. Haucke: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Stephan Heinzel: Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Shuyan Liu: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 7, 1-7

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic may have caused people to feel isolated, left out, and in need of companionship. Effective strategies to cope with such unrelenting feelings of loneliness are needed. In times of COVID-19, we conducted a smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study with 280 lonely participants in Germany over 7 months, where a long and hard second national lockdown was in place. Each participant reported their daily loneliness and coping strategies for loneliness once in the evening for 7 consecutive days. We found that managing emotions and social relationships were associated with decreased feelings of loneliness, while using a problem-focused coping strategy was associated with increased feelings of loneliness amid COVID-19. Interestingly, managing emotions was particularly effective for easing loneliness during the second lockdown. Females tend to use more emotion-focused coping strategies to overcome their loneliness compared to males. Our study highlights the importance of managing emotions against loneliness throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Designing technology that provides emotional support to people may be one of the keys to easing loneliness and promoting well-being.

Keywords: perceived social isolation; problem-focused coping; emotion-focused coping; relationship-focused coping; second national lockdown (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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