The Personality of People Who Like Being Alone

There are people
who like being
alone, maybe even
love it. What do you
think they are like?
Does your mind
immediately leap to
the misanthrope or
the dreaded loner
hiding away somewhere plotting his next
murder? As Anneli Rufus told us in her
wonderful Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto,
those stereotypes don’t capture real loners.
True loners are people who embrace their alone
time. Those who lash out are typically alone
against their will. They want to be included.
They want to be loved by the objects of their
desire. But they’ve been excluded and rejected
instead. That exclusion and rejection (among
other things) fuels their hostility and rage.
What’s the truth about people who like being
alone? Thanks to some newly developed scales
for measuring attitudes toward being alone, we
now have research-based answers.
First, though, we need to understand what it
means to like being alone. One sense of “alone”
refers to spending time alone. The “Desire for
Being Alone” scale, developed by Birk
Hagemeyer and his colleagues, measures that.
People who score high on the desire to be
alone AGREE with items such as:
When I am alone, I feel relaxed.
I like to be completely alone.
They DISAGREE with items such as:
I feel uncomfortable when I am alone.
Being alone quickly gets to be too much
for me.
A second meaning of alone is the way it is
used to refer to people who are single. (I think
this usage is misleading and inappropriate, but
I’ll save that argument for another day.)
Thinking about single life as something some
people fear, Stephanie Spielmann and her
colleagues developed a “Fear of Being Single”
scale. I’m interested in the personality
characteristics of people who are UNAFRAID of
being single, so I just reversed their scale.
People who are UNAFRAID of being single
DISAGREE with items such as:
I feel anxious when I think about being
single forever.
If I end up alone in life, I will probably
feel like there is something wrong with
me.
Details of the Studies
Personality was measured for two groups of
people in the “Fear of Being Single” studies.
One group consisted of 301 people recruited
online, with an average age of 29. Only 33 were
married; 131 were single and not dating, and
the others were dating. The other group was
comprised of 147 Canadian undergraduates,
with an average age of 19. Only 2 were
married, 105 were single and not dating, and
the others were dating. Results were averaged
across both groups.
Two groups of German adults participated in
the “Desire for Being Alone” studies, and
unfortunately for people like me who are
interested in single people, all the participants
were coupled: They had been in a serious
sexual relationship for at least a year. The first
study included 476 participants (average age:
35), and the results were averaged across the
men and the women. The second study
included 578 heterosexual couples (average
age: 42). Results were reported separately for
the men and the women.
Personality Characteristics
The “Big Five” personality characteristics were
measured for all the participants in both sets
of studies:
Neurotic : tense, moody, worries a lot.
Open : original, curious, imaginative.
Extraverted : Outgoing and sociable,
talkative, assertive.
Agreeable : considerate and kind,
trusting, cooperative.
Conscientious : reliable, organized,
thorough.
The studies of people who like spending time
alone also included a measure of their
sociability , as measured by items such as, “I
find people more stimulating than everything
else.”
The studies of people unafraid to be single
included measures of six more characteristics:
Relationship-contingent self-esteem :
The extent to which a person’s self-
esteem is contingent on how their
romantic relationship is going (when
they have one).
Need to belong: People who are high in
the “need to belong” are especially likely
to agree with statements such as, “I
need to feel that there are people I can
turn to in times of need.”
Hurt feelings proneness: These are
people whose feelings are easily hurt.
Rejection sensitivity : People who are
particularly sensitive to rejection are
especially likely to expect to be rejected
and feel anxious about it.
Loneliness : Measured by items such as,
“How often do you feel that you lack
companionship?”
Depression : Measured by items such as,
“I felt that I could not shake off the
blues even with help from my family or
friends.”
The Findings
If our stereotypes about people who like being
alone were true, then we should find that they
are neurotic and closed-minded. In fact, just
the opposite is true: People who like spending
time alone, and who are unafraid of being
single, are especially unlikely to be neurotic.
They are not the tense, moody, worrying types.
People who like spending time alone, and
people who are unafraid of being single, are
also more likely than others to be open-
minded. People who are unafraid of being
single are more agreeable than people who are
afraid of being single. (People who like
spending time alone are no more or less
agreeable than people who don’t.) And people
who are unafraid of being single are also more
conscientious than those who are afraid. (The
results were not consistent for people who like
spending time alone.)
The question I am asked most often about the
personality of people who are single is whether
they are more introverted. The one relevant
study suggests that they probably are. But
research on single people typically includes all
single people, whether they want to be single
or not. The studies I’m describing here tell us
about people who are unafraid of being single
(or who like spending time alone).
People who are unafraid of being single were
more extraverted than those who are afraid of
being single. Perhaps this finding is consistent
with research showing that single people, on
average, have more friends than married people
do, and do more to maintain relationships with
friends, neighbors, siblings, and parents. But
again, the research on the social ties of single
people includes all single people, not just those
who are unafraid of being single.
People who like spending time alone were not
any more or less extraverted than those who
do not, but they did score as less sociable.
Those two scales (extraversion and sociability)
measure similar things so it is odd that they
did not produce consistent findings.
All the other personality characteristics were
measured only in the studies of people who are
unafraid of being single — and the results were
resoundingly affirming. People who are unafraid
of being alone are not overly sensitive to
rejection and they don’t get their feelings hurt
too easily. When they are in romantic
relationships, their own self-esteem does not
depend on how those relationships are faring.
They do not have a particularly strong need to
belong. And they are less likely to be lonely or
to be depressed.
Put all that together with their openness,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion,
and low levels of neuroticism, and people who
are unafraid of being single look totally badass.
People who are unafraid of being single are not
just talking a good game. Other studies have
looked at their behaviors and those results are
affirming, too. People who are unafraid of being
single have standards. For example, in speed
dating events, they give their contact
information to fewer people. And when they do
get into a romantic relationship and find it
unsatisfying, they are more likely to break it off
than people who are afraid of being single.
Despite all that is good and affirming about
people who are unafraid of being single, they
cannot expect to be celebrated or even
respected by other people. People who like
being single, or choose to be single, are
threatening cherished worldviews about what
people should want and how they should feel.
Other people evaluate them more harshly than
single people who wish they were coupled –
even expressing more anger toward them.
As more and more people openly embrace their
single lives, maybe things will change. Happy
singles will become part of our cultural
landscape, and those who are threatened by
them will recede to the fringes.