Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Yuthika U. Singlehood, defined as not being in a romantic relationship, is becoming increasingly common worldwide. Despite this, research on singlehood has not received remotely equivalent research attention as romantic relationships. Well-being research that has explicitly included singles has focused on whether coupled versus single people are more satisfied with their lives. However, these between-group comparisons have not attended to within-group variability among singles that can point to when and for whom singlehood is associated with thriving.
In this review, we document findings from the emerging field of singlehood studies to highlight what is and is not known about factors that are associated with the well-being of single individuals from a within-group perspective. We conclude by offering future directions for the conceptualization of and research on singlehood with the goal of promoting a thorough and inclusive perspective. Keywords: individual differences, interpersonal relations, romantic relationships, singlehood, singlism, well-being.
Single adults represent a fast-growing demographic worldwide and across the adult life span United Nations, People are increasingly delaying romantic partnerships to pursue career goals and personal aspirations Copen et al. Clearly, singlehood status and identity play an important role in shaping outcomes across different life domains. Yet relationship science has focused largely on dynamics in romantic relationships within a limited range from early dating to committed relationships.
In this light, it is perhaps not surprising that the attention paid to singles has largely been directed toward group differences in well-being between coupled versus single people.
For example, several meta-analytic Diener et al. Decades of research on health and mortality has also illustrated that single individuals have a greater mortality risk compared with married people see meta-analyses by Roelfs et al. Of course, even these studies still adopted a between-group perspective by focusing on the argument that the well-being gap between single and coupled people is overstated. One approach that has not focused on between-group comparison is studies tracking within-person trajectories in well-being across life events.
