Which parts of the practice do the work: present-moment attention, disclosure, or hearing how you affect others?
Reducing Loneliness through the Power of Practicing Together: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Online Dyadic Socio-Emotional vs. Mindfulness-Based Training
Adjacent
Ten weeks of online partner practice (Affect Dyads) reduced loneliness compared with a waitlist. Against mindfulness training, the advantage showed only in momentary, everyday loneliness.
Participants practised for 12 minutes a day, six days a week, with weekly online coaching. In an Affect Dyad each partner speaks for two and a half minutes about a difficult emotion from the past day, then about something they are grateful for, while the other listens. Closeness rose after every dyad but didn’t build up over the ten weeks.
What it doesn’t show
On the main loneliness questionnaire the dyads did not beat mindfulness, although the abstract implies they did. Effects are small, and it tests a structured partner practice, not Circling. The Affect Dyad was designed by the trial’s own team, and Silveira et al. (2023) report other outcomes of the same trial. From 2021 to 2023 Singer was a co-founder and adviser of Humanize, a start-up releasing commercial versions of the dyads. Loneliness was measured only by the participants’ own ratings, during the ten weeks and right after them.
Directions that build on it
- Active ingredients
- A controlled trial of Circling
Does a Circling programme reduce loneliness or build closeness more than an active control?
- Transfer beyond the room
Does closeness built in a circle carry into people’s existing relationships?
Links
Cite
Matthaeus, H., Godara, M., Silveira, S., Hecht, M., Voelkle, M., & Singer, T. (2024). Reducing Loneliness through the Power of Practicing Together: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Online Dyadic Socio-Emotional vs. Mindfulness-Based Training. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21(5), 570. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21050570