Social loneliness, emotional loneliness and self-gift giving: An exploratory study

Robert Earl Philip Steidle, Purdue University

Abstract

This exploratory study examines self-gift giving behavior using Weiss's (social, emotional) typology of loneliness. It also examines the relationship of subject's gender, social network size and well-being on the process of obtaining self-gifts. A convenience sample of students was given a take home questionnaire which contained short questions concerning everyday 'normal' shopping behavior, five self-gift scenarios (McKeage, 1992), the UCLA Loneliness Scale, Wittenberg's Scale, and a demographic section. Loneliness was determined to be unrelated to self-gift giving. It was determined that compared to nonlonely subjects, lonely subjects had lower well-being scores, did not differ in social network size, were less likely to converse with salespeople when shopping for self-gifts and when shopping normally, and were more likely to shop alone for self-gifts. As predicted, socially lonely subjects were significantly less likely to engage in self-gift giving than not socially lonely subjects. As hypothesized, socially lonely subjects had a smaller social network than not socially lonely subjects, while emotionally lonely subjects had a smaller emotional network. It was also found that gender was an important attribute in self-gift giving. Women were more likely to engage in self-gift giving than men and were more likely to go with a friend while shopping for self-gifts. Post hoc analysis revealed that gender was a significant variable in several other areas of self-gift giving. Because of the strength of gender, all hypotheses were retested using an analysis of covariance to partial out the effects of subject's gender. While gender proved to be a significant covariate, no changes were made to the hypotheses. While several hypotheses were nonsignificant a discussion is included explaining why these possibly occurred. Implications from these findings are discussed from an empirical and theoretical perspective.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Widdows, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Marketing|Social psychology|Families & family life|Personal relationships|Sociology

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