In romantic comedies, singles are constantly depicted as cat lovers with a penchant for ice cream — but beyond big screen stereotypes, it turns out there are actual personality traits possessed by those who forgo love.
In a new study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers have identified three key traits that could potentially indicate whether someone is destined to fly solo for the rest of their life.
In general, lifelong loners were determined to be less outgoing, less conscientious, and less open than those who were married or in a relationship, per the study.
“There are differences between people who stay single their entire lives and people who get partnered,” declared study author Julia Stern, a senior researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany.
The team, which hailed from Germany, Canada and Switzerland, sought to reveal certain personality patterns among lifelong singletons amid a global uptick in unpartnered people. Their goal was to devise better ways to help this ever-growing demographic.
“We have to take extra care of these people,” declared Stern.
To shed light on the possible signs of terminal unattachment, the researchers enlisted more than 77,000 people over the age of 50, and divided them into five groups: currently partnered, never living with a partner, never married, or never experienced any long-term relationship.
Participants then filled out surveys related to life satisfaction as well as the big 5 personality traits. These entailed openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
They found that participants who’d never been in a long-term relationship scored lower when it came to extroversion, openness, and conscientiousness than their counterparts who were currently single but had been in a long-term relationship or married in the past.
They also experienced less life satisfaction on average.
Researchers haven’t yet determined whether personality differences are because certain personality types may be more likely to start relationships or because long-term relationships shape personalities.
However, scientists suspect that the former certainly plays a role in this romantic chicken-and-egg debate.
“For example, people who are more extroverted are more likely to enter a relationship,” said Stern.
The research team also found that single women were happier than single men, older people were happier to fly solo than middle-aged folks, and that singledom resulted in lower happiness scores in countries with higher marriage rates.
To help perennial loners, Stern advocates developing singledom-slashing programs that consider these personality differences and connect older singles with like-minded people.
“If they have people who care for them or look out for them regularly, this might help,” she said.
