Cynical Hostility and Loneliness in Older Adult Married Couples: An Indirect Effect Through Friendships

Dikla Segel-Karpas, Ashley Ermer and Lynn Martire

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2021, vol. 76, issue 2, 306-316

Abstract: ObjectivesCynical hostility is a cognitive schema according to which people cannot be trusted, and it has associations with individuals’ loneliness. The present study takes a dyadic approach to examine whether cynical hostility is related to one’s own and their spouse’s loneliness. We further explore whether friendship factors serve as a mediator between individuals’ and spouses’ cynical hostility and loneliness.MethodWe used 2 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (N = 1,065 couples) and Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (APIMs) with mediation to examine the proposed model. Mediation was tested with the construction of path models and significance levels were reached using bootstrapping.ResultsFor both husbands and wives, cynical hostility was significantly associated with loneliness. Husband’s loneliness was also significantly associated with his wife’s cynical hostility, but wife’s loneliness was not associated with her husband’s cynical hostility. We further found that the association between wife’s own cynical hostility and loneliness was mediated by lower levels of contact with, and support from friends. Friendship factors did not serve as mediators for husbands.DiscussionHusbands and wives who have higher levels of cynical hostility may be more vulnerable to loneliness. High levels of cynical hostility in women may be related to deficits in their quantity and quality of friendship, and thus be associated with loneliness. Men who are married to women with a higher level of cynical hostility may experience increased loneliness, but this relationship is not explained by men’s friendships.

Keywords: Cynical hostility; Dyads; Friendship; Loneliness; Marital relationships (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbaa170 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:76:y:2021:i:2:p:306-316.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().