I think, therefore I am: The contributions of threat interpretations in generating and managing youth loneliness

孤独是一种负面情绪，当一个人感觉他/她的社会关系和网络不能满足他/她的社会需求时，这种情绪就会发生。由于孤独被认为已经演变成一种强大的动力，促使人们与他人建立联系并寻求他们的支持，因此它可能会在以社会动荡为特征的人生阶段出现。青年时期就是其中之一，在这一时期，外部社会环境发生了重大变化，如与同伴相处的时间长短以及新的同伴等级和集团的出现--但内部因素也发生了重大变化，如需要同伴的认可和厌恶同伴的拒绝。因此，由于这些社会变化可能带来社会关系的不稳定，孤独可能会产生，以促进与他人的重新联系，因此被认为是许多年轻人成长的正常部分。然而，对于一些年轻人来说，孤独可能是强烈的、令人沮丧的和持久的，预示着心理和身体健康会变得更差。因此，提供干预措施以管理青年的孤独是至关重要的，尤其是因为这可能反映出一段时期的可塑性，以学习更有效的情绪调节方法。由于一些消极的思维方式，如倾向于支持威胁而不是良性期望和对模棱两可的社交情况的解释与青少年的孤独感有关，在生活的早期测量和定位这些可能是降低孤独感风险的有效的“疫苗”。但是，在计划任何针对威胁解读的早期干预计划之前，有一些关键问题需要解决。首先，只有一项研究表明，对威胁的解读先于并预测孤独的风险，而不是反映后果。将这些角色分开可能会告诉我们，为了改变孤独感，修改威胁解释是否有用。此外，目前还不清楚威胁解释是否会像理论所说的那样，通过影响社交退缩行为来影响孤独感。其次，所有研究与孤独有关的威胁解释的研究都使用了关于假设社会情景的问卷，而不是直接评估对现实生活事件的想法。在日常生活中建立威胁解释和孤独之间的关系是很重要的，这也是为了告知改变这些思维方式是否有助于改变孤独感觉。最后，虽然已经开发了一些方法来挑战与社交焦虑等其他社会行为问题有关的威胁解读，但尚不清楚这些方法是否与孤独的年轻人相关，并被他们很好地容忍。本研究的目标是解决这些问题。将进行三项研究。首先，将对大约1000名年轻人进行纵向研究，以检验威胁解读、社交退缩和孤独感之间的跨时间关系，并通过嵌套访谈研究补充定量数据。其次，将进行一项生态瞬时评估研究，评估一周内一天中几次对真实社交情况和孤独的威胁解读，以调查日常生活中的这些关系。最后，我们将与一些年轻人一起，为一个旨在修改威胁解读的培训计划开发一些材料。然后，这些数据将被提交给另一组年轻人，以评估其相关性、可接受性以及这种干预措施的帮助和可行性。这些研究将产生数据，以支持对青少年孤独的认知干预措施的进一步调查，并促进从事青年工作的专业人员/从业者、决策者、公众和年轻人本身之间关于孤独问题的全国对话。

Loneliness is a negative emotion that occurs when one perceives his/her social relationships and networks to fall short of his/her social needs. Because loneliness is thought to have evolved as a powerful motivator to connect with others and solicit their support, it may arise during periods of life that are characterised by social turbulence. One such period is youth, where there are major changes in the external social environment such as the amount of time spent with peers and in the emergence of new peer hierarchies and cliques - but also in internal factors, such as the need for peer approval and the aversiveness of peer rejection. Accordingly, as these social changes may bring about instability in social relationships, loneliness can arise to facilitate re-connection with others, and therefore be considered a normal part of growing up for many young people. However for some young people loneliness can be intense, upsetting and persistent, predicting poorer mental and physical health. Delivering interventions to manage loneliness in youth is therefore crucial, made more so as this may reflect a period of plasticity for learning more effective ways of regulating emotions. As some negative thinking styles such as a tendency to endorse threatening over benign expectations and explanations of ambiguous social situations is associated with youth loneliness, measuring and targeting these earlier in life may be a powerful 'vaccine' for reducing the risk of loneliness.However before any early interventions programs are planned around the targeting of threat interpretations, there are some key questions that need to addressed. First there is only one study showing that threat interpretations precede and predict risk for loneliness rather than reflect consequences. Disentangling these roles may inform whether it is useful to modify threat interpretations in order to alter loneliness. In addition it is not clear whether threat interpretations affect loneliness by influencing social withdrawal behaviour, as theories would suggest. Second all studies investigating threat interpretations in relation to loneliness have used questionnaires about hypothetical social scenarios rather than directly assess thoughts to real-life events. Establishing the relationship between threat interpretations and loneliness in everyday life is important, again for informing whether it is helpful to modify these thinking styles to alter lonely feelings. Finally, although methods have been developed for challenging threat interpretations related to other social behavioural problems like social anxiety, it is not clear if these methods are as relevant to and well tolerated by young people who are lonely.The goals of this research are to address these questions. Three studies will be performed. First a longitudinal study of around 1000 young people will be conducted to examine the cross-time relationships between threat interpretations, social withdrawal and loneliness with a nested interview study supplementing quantitative data. Second an ecological momentary assessment study that assesses threat interpretations to real social situations and loneliness at several times in the day for a week will be conducted to investigate these relationships in daily life. Finally, together with some young people we will develop some materials for a training program that aims to modify threat interpretations. These will then be presented to another group of young people to assess for relevance, acceptability and how helpful and feasible such an intervention is. Potential effectiveness at reducing loneliness and threat interpretations, and changing social behaviour will be considered.These studies will generate data to support further investigation into cognitive interventions for youthloneliness and contribute to the national dialogue on loneliness between professionals/practitioners working with youth, policymakers, the public and young people themselves.