This article provides an introduction to the academic paper titled “The social stigma of loneliness: A sociological approach to understanding the experiences of older people”. The paper was authored by Barbara Barbosa Neves and Alan Petersen and published in The Sociological Review, with a volume dated 2025 and an online copyright of 2024.
Purpose and Context of the Study The article addresses a significant gap in the understanding of loneliness, specifically its stigmatizing nature, which has long been of sociological interest but remains under-theorized. While germinal contributions exist from writers like Robert Weiss, recent scholarship on loneliness is predominantly influenced by psychological perspectives. These perspectives often overlook the crucial social role of stigma and its complex interplay with factors such as age-related norms and contexts. The authors highlight that sociological studies of loneliness have largely overlooked stigma, despite ample evidence for the link between the two.
The primary goal of Neves and Petersen’s work is to develop a conceptual understanding of the stigma of loneliness, particularly as it is experienced in later life. The focus on older people (aged 65 and above) is deliberate, as loneliness is often strongly associated with assumed age-related decline, including illness, perceived ‘uselessness,’ and increasing isolation. Research suggests that these assumptions are more likely to be internalized by individuals in later life. The authors also note that before the COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness research, policy, and media primarily focused on older people, although loneliness is not a universal experience in later life, nor is later life a homogeneous stage.
Theoretical Framework To fill the theoretical void, the authors innovatively combine two influential sociological theories: Erving Goffman’s (1963) thesis on stigma with Imogen Tyler’s (2020) work on stigma power. This theoretical reconfiguration integrates relationality (Goffman) and power (Tyler) within both micro- and macro-level sociological approaches, pushing forward existing sociological boundaries on stigma. It also emphasizes the connections between agentic (personal) and structural (social) elements of stigma, which have been largely missing in loneliness studies.
- Goffman’s relationality conceptualizes stigma as a complex social process of labelling, stereotyping, and discriminating that emerges within social interactions and how identities are perceived and managed. It distinguishes between virtual and actual social identity, where a discrepancy can lead to a person being seen as ‘tainted’ or ‘discounted’. Goffman also introduces ego identity, reflecting a person’s subjective sense of self and agency in managing their stigma.
- Tyler’s productive power (stigma power) emphasizes that stigma is a material force, a structural and structuring form of power used to manage, control, exclude, or exploit others. This perspective highlights how stigmatization intertwines with broader social structures of control and inequality, such as the political economy of stigma, which devalues people and reinforces social hierarchies. For example, the deficit discourses around loneliness and its association with later life reinforce societal values of youthfulness, hyper-sociability, and independence.
By combining these perspectives, the authors conceptualize the stigma of loneliness as both a personal and social phenomenon, designating the absence of meaningful relationships, felt individually but shaped by societal contexts.
Key Dimensions of Loneliness Stigma Through this combined theoretical lens, the authors derive three key conceptual dimensions to frame how loneliness stigmatization is created, felt, and handled within personal and social contexts:
- Enaction: Relates to the processes and practices of labelling, stereotyping, and discriminating, which can be internal or external. This is linked to social identities and the structural forces of productive power.
- Reception: Entails how individuals experiencing loneliness receive and understand stigma (enacted or potential) through their feelings, identities (ego identity, and tensions between social and personal identity), and “stigma-optics” (internal and external de/valuation processes).
- Management: Comprises mechanisms of control, self-presentation, and impression management used by individuals to cope with stigma. This is linked to personal identities and forms of social control like stigma internalization.
These dimensions, though analytically distinct, are interrelated and interact within broader sociocultural, historical, and productive power contexts.
Methodology and Findings The study applies this framework by drawing on qualitative data from two merged research projects focusing on older people (65+) who are particularly vulnerable to persistent loneliness: those living in care homes and those living alone with health issues affecting social interactions. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews, diaries, and ethnographic participant observation in Australian settings between 2018 and 2020. The use of diaries was particularly valuable as a participatory tool, empowering participants to control how they shared their experiences and avoiding the reproduction of stigmatizing social hierarchies.
The findings illuminate the complexity of loneliness stigma in later life contexts, offering new research and policy directions.
- Enaction of stigma was mostly internal, with participants concealing their loneliness to avoid feelings of personal failure, often intertwined with the stigma of being old and frail. External enaction was observed in how older lonely individuals like Gurney and Lisa were dismissed and ignored in institutional and work settings, highlighting the role of ageism, precarity, and other intersecting categorizations.
- Reception of stigma was characterized by intense feelings of pain, shame, embarrassment, and guilt. Participants often internalized “stigma-optics” about what it means to be lonely in later life, leading to self-descriptors reflecting societal devaluation, such as ‘parasite’ or ‘unproductive’. There was a significant tension between their ego identity (who they felt they were inside) and social/personal identities (who others perceived them to be).
- Management strategies involved distraction and concealment, even from close family and friends, contradicting some of Goffman’s original assumptions. Participants engaged in self-presentation and impression management, performing a desired self to resist the public presentation of the ‘lonely’ label, rather than resisting the label itself. However, this concealment often reinforced the societal values and practices that stigmatize loneliness.
Conclusion and Contribution The article contributes a novel sociological lens to the stigma of loneliness in later life by combining micro- and macro-level insights from Goffman and Tyler. This approach challenges prevailing individualistic psychological models of loneliness and maps how loneliness is politicized in neoliberal discourses that praise resilience and proactiveness, thereby augmenting stigma power. The conceptual framework of enaction, reception, and management provides a valuable tool for designing more inclusive interventions and policies, emphasizing that destigmatizing loneliness requires a deep reflection on how stigma is entrenched in societal structures and even in programs designed to alleviate it.
Reference: Neves, B. B., & Petersen, A. (2025). The social stigma of loneliness: A sociological approach to understanding the experiences of older people. The Sociological Review, 73(2), 362–383. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261231212100
