The Handbook of Solitude

Avoidant people’s social withdrawal is also manifested in recent studies that have assessed feelings of nostalgia (the emotional mechanism that activates a need for social connectedness and memories of emotional closeness; Wildschut et al., 2006). According to Wildschut et al. (2006), nostalgia is activated by loneliness, and the experience of nostalgia tends to reduce loneliness and increase perceptions of emotional connection to others. In three studies, Wildschut et al. (2010) found that feelings of nostalgia are inhibited by attachment‐related avoidance, which is compatible with the idea that avoidant people prefer social withdrawal over emotional connectedness. In addition, an experimental induction of relational isolation increased reports of nostalgia among low‐avoidant participants, but not among high‐avoidant participants.

In two additional studies, Wildschut et al. (2010) found that more avoidant people benefited less from nostalgia: An experimental induction of nostalgia in the laboratory (as compared with a control condition) increased perceptions of social connectedness and interpersonal competence, but only among low‐avoidant participants. Moreover, several studies have found that an experimental induction of nostalgia increased approach‐oriented social intentions/goals to connect with others or to pursue a romantic relationship when avoidant attachment was low but not when it was high (e.g., Abeyta et al., 2019; Juhl et al., 2012). Abeyta et al. (2015) content analyzed nostalgic narratives and found that the narratives of more avoidant people included less attachment‐related content.

The experience of being alone, like the experience of being together, is an enticing topic for personality‐social psychologists interested in attachment. In this chapter, we have proposed and briefly explored an attachment perspective on solitude that follows Rubenstein and Shaver's (1982) early distinction between loneliness and positive solitude, with the former being more common in people with an insecure attachment orientation, and the latter being a healthy state sustained by a sense of security. However, most of the research on attachment and solitude has focused largely on insecure people’s heightened feelings of loneliness and have overlooked the possibility that secure individuals might be most comfortable with solitude, and might be able to pursue it and benefit from it in healthy, creative ways. That possibility has recently been studied by Gal (2019), as summarized here, but we need more systematic research on this topic and on the ways in which a sense of security provides a basis for developing a capacity to be alone and savor moments of solitude while maintaining a healthy balance between aloneness and togetherness.

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