Associations of Pain Intensity and Frequency With Loneliness, Hostility, and Social Functioning: Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Within-Person Relationships

Background The current studies investigated associations between pain intensity and pain frequency with loneliness, hostility, and social functioning using cross-sectional, longitudinal, and within-person data from community-dwelling adults with varying levels of pain. Method Secondary analysis of preexisting data was conducted. Study 1 investigated cross-sectional (baseline data: n = 741) and longitudinal (follow-up data: n = 549, observed range between baseline and follow-up: 6–53 months) associations. Study 2 tested within-person associations using daily diaries across 30 days from a subset of the participants in Study 1 ( n = 69). Results Cross-sectionally, pain intensity and frequency were associated with higher loneliness ( β intensity = 0.16, β frequency = 0.17) and worse social functioning ( β intensity = − 0.40, β frequency = − 0.34). Intensity was also associated with higher hostility ( β = 0.11). Longitudinally, pain intensity at baseline predicted hostility ( β = 0.19) and social functioning ( β = − 0.20) at follow-up, whereas pain frequency only predicted social functioning ( β = − 0.21). Within people, participants reported higher hostility (γ = 0.002) and worse social functioning (γ = − 0.013) on days with higher pain, and a significant average pain by daily pain interaction was found for loneliness. Pain intensity did not predict social well-being variables on the following day. Conclusion Pain intensity and frequency were associated with social well-being, although the effects were dependent on the social well-being outcome and the time course being examined.