The Influence Of Optimism On Loneliness Of The Elderly In Different Regions

At present,China’s aging problem is increasingly prominent.Protecting the physical and mental health and quality of life of the elderly is one of the main challenges of the elderly society.Although everyone will feel different levels of loneliness sometimes,the loneliness of the elderly is becoming more seriously.Feelings of loneliness are not only affected by an individual’s internal personality traits,but also by the resources available to the outside world.Optimism,as a personality trait,is an individual’s positive expectation of future events,and is considered to be an important predictor of elderly loneliness.As an external factor,social support is considered by researchers to be a more reliable protective factor for loneliness.There is also a significant correlation between optimism and social support.In addition,social support has also been explored by researchers as a mediator of the effects of optimism and negative emotions.This study intends to explore how these two kinds of social support work together to play a role between optimism and loneliness from the structural and functional dimensions of social support.In addition,because social support is not stable as an intermediate variable,under the influence of policies such as urbanization and family planning,there may also be regional differences in the structure and function of social support for the elderly.So how is it reflected in the above mechanism?In order to explore the above problems,in the first study,we revised nine structural-functional social support scale(ISSI-9)and verified its reliability and validity in the elderly.In the second study,1424 elderly people were investigated by using the optimism-pessimism scale,ISSI-9 and the loneliness scale,and the chain mediating effect of the structural and functional social support on the optimism and loneliness of the elderly was investigated.Finally,in the third study,we explored the regional differences of the chain mediating effect of the elderly’s structural social support and functional social support between optimism and loneliness through multi-group analysis.The research results are as follows:1.The Chinese version of ISSI-9 has good validity and reliability in the elderly.It is a reliable,effective and simple self-reported questionnaire.2.The elderly’s optimistic tendency is in the upper middle level,structural social support is in the middle level,and functional social support is better than average level.70.57% of the elderly felt different levels of loneliness,and 2.34% of the elderly reported that they often felt unaccompanied,neglected and isolated at the same time.3.There is a significant correlation between optimism,structural social support,functional social support and loneliness.4.The results indicated that optimism was negatively associated with loneliness.Structural social support and functional social support mediated this association,which contained three significant mediating pathways: the separate mediating effects of(a)structural social support and(b)functional social support,and the serial mediating effect of(c)structural social support and functional social support.5.The correlation coefficient between structural social support and loneliness of town elderly is significantly higher than that of urban elderly.The correlation coefficient between optimism and loneliness of town elderly is significantly higher than that of urban and rural elderly.6.For the urban elderly,structural social support and functional social support do not play an mediating role in the influence of optimism on loneliness,nor do they have a significant chain intermediary role;For the town elderly,structural social support plays a partial mediating role in the influence of optimism on loneliness,accounting for 44.29%of the total indirect effect.While functional social support plays no mediating role.Structural social support and functional social support did not significantly mediate the chain effect of optimism on loneliness;For the elderly in rural areas,structural and functional social support both played a mediating role in the influence of optimism on loneliness,accounting for 32.99% and 59.79% of the total indirect effect,respectively.Structural social support and functional social support played a significant role in the chain mediating effect of optimism on loneliness,accounting for 7.22% of the total indirect effect.7.The optimism of the old people living in town has a greater predictive effect on loneliness than that in urban and rural areas.There was no significant difference in the other path coefficients among the three regional variables.