Social Stigma Of Loneliness Essay

The purpose of this study was to determine the presence of the social stigma of loneliness and how it presents itself in different races, which in this case included both White and Hispanic. This study used the two independent variables of race and loneliness state in order to create several characters, which were then presented to the participant. Race was operationalized by changing the name of the character to represent either a White or Hispanic person. Some examples of the names used include John and Ryan for the White characters and Miguel and Juan for the Hispanic characters. Loneliness state was operationalized by either scenario that depicted the target character as either enjoying to socialize and having many friends or depicted the target character as disliking interaction and having few friends. …show more content…
Interpersonal attraction results from the set of characteristics between two people that is responsible for how likeable people are perceived and for the formation of relationships. The researchers coded each response onto a ratio scale where a score of 4 means that every unique aspect of likeability was met, and a score of 0 indicates that there is no likeability expressed. The distance between each of the unique aspects was meaningful in that each was in their own domain within interpersonal attraction. Additionally, because a score of 0 would suggest that the character was completely unlikeable, it can be said that the scale also had a meaningful 0 point, thus qualifying it as a ratio scale. The four domains of interpersonal attraction were adjustment, achievement, competence, and general