Lozena Ivanov, Zvjezdan Penezic, Ljiljana Gregov

LONELINESS AND SELF-EFFICACY: RELATIONSHIPS WITH SOME PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS

Summary

    Loneliness could be defined as subjective dissatisfaction with interpersonal relationships resulting from either a change in actual social relationships or a change in one’s needs and desires for relationships. Because the forming and modelling of social relationships could be related to some social and general abilities, one of the  aims of this research was to find out the relations among loneliness and self-efficacy.
     Subjects were 88 students of Faculty of Science and Arts in Zadar which participated in investigation twice in the  period of two weeks.
     All measures were group administered to subjects. Four measures were used: General Self-efficacy Scale, Short form of UCLA Loneliness Scale, Perfectionism Scale and Optimism- Pessimism Scales. Subjects assessed their subjective study satisfaction as well as life satisfaction.
 Results indicated that there are negative correlation among general self-efficacy and loneliness, as well as among general self-efficacy and pessimism. There are positive correlation among perfectionism and loneliness, and among pessimism and loneliness.
     Life satisfaction was the best negative predictor of loneliness, while perfectionism was the best positive predictor of loneliness. Optimism was one of the main predictors of general self-efficacy.

KEY WORDS: Loneliness, self-efficacy, perfectionism, optimism, pessimism