Youth are at special risk for loneliness during late childhood and early adolescence, when peer relations are ascendent (1) The debilitating nature of loneliness cannot be overstated: Lonely children and adolescents present a host of short- and long-term mental health problems (2). Not everyone is equally disposed to being lonely. Shy, sensitive to rejection, and emotionally reactive youth have temperamental vulnerabilities that place them at heightened risk for loneliness (3–5). Alert to these risks, investigators have focused on factors that might mitigate loneliness in vulnerable youth. Chief among them is classroom climate, which is known to buffer against adjustment difficulties among children with peer difficulties (6). Using a community sample of Lithuanian youth ages 10 to14, we test the hypotheses that perceived positive classroom climate moderates longitudinal associations from temperamental vulnerabilities (i.e., shyness, emotional reactivity, and rejection sensitivity) to heightened loneliness.

Loneliness is a painful state of unwanted social isolation, often occurring in response to perceived relationship deficits (7, 8). Lonely children report higher rates of solitude and preference for solitude than their nonlonely counterparts (9), not because they enjoy being alone but rather typically to avoid social discomfort (10). Developmental changes conspire to make the transition into adolescence a period of heightened loneliness (1). By some estimates, up to 30% of youth report regularly feeling lonely or very lonely (11). Buffeted by uncertainties about identity, improved perspective taking abilities, and expectations for autonomy, opportunities for social isolation multiply as the social world is transformed from one constructed by adults to one dominated by peers. Lonely youth suffer, particularly from victimization and depression (12, 13).

Some youth have temperamental vulnerabilities that heighten their risk for loneliness. We focus here on children who present elevated levels of shyness, rejection sensitivity, or emotional reactivity, three risk factors with biological origins. Shyness is characterized by conflicting motivations to engage and avoid peers; interactions with agemates are appealing but concerns about negative evaluations can prompt distress and a desire to withdraw (14). Rejection sensitivity is a heightened tendency to “anxiously expect, readily perceive, and overreact” to social rejection (15). Emotional reactivity describes a heightened (often negative) emotional response to affective situations (16). Grounded in temperament, each manifests early in life and is relatively stable across development (17–19). Although modestly correlated [rs range from.300 to.450 (20–22)], the constructs are conceptually and empirically distinct. Shyness stems from a fear of novelty (17), rejection sensitivity has biopsychosocial origins associated with sensitive interpretation of ambiguous early social experiences (23), and emotional reactivity reflects a low emotional threshold for external stimuli (19).

Shy, reactive, and sensitive to rejection youth are assumed to be prone to loneliness because of two underlying mechanisms: An inclination to interpret social situations negatively and social inhibitions that interfere with the creation and maintenance of social ties (3, 24, 25). Solitude may be preferred to the uncertainties and potential pain of social engagement (26, 27), which heightens risks for loneliness (28). Many temperamentally vulnerable youth possess off-putting characteristics, a problem exacerbated by cascading social skills deficits brought on by minimal peer contact (29). A self-fulfilling prophecy unfolds whereby hypervigilance prompts negative interpretations or inaccurate interpretations of social cues and inappropriate emotional reactions to social situations, alienating peers who avoid them as unattractive interaction partners, forcing isolation and fostering loneliness. (30). Finally, temperamentally vulnerable children may find themselves with few friend options aside from other interpersonally challenged agemates, who may be equally unsatisfying partners (31, 32).

Consistent with the above, research indicates that temperamentally vulnerable children are at heightened risk for loneliness. The evidence for shyness is particularly compelling. Shy youth report feeling lonely more frequently than those who are not shy (5). Rejection sensitivity has also been linked to longitudinal increases in adolescent loneliness (4). Less is known about emotional reactivity. Longitudinal links between parent-reported negative reactivity and related constructs have been established. Specifically, among adolescents, emotional intelligence has been linked with loneliness (33) and emotional reactivity has been linked to emotional problems (34).

Our study starts from the premise that perceived support from classmates can help protect temperamentally vulnerable children against loneliness. Research based on social information processing mechanisms [predisposed emotional responses to social cues based on past experiences which impact the interpretation of the situation and the following behaviors] suggests that shy youth are less prone to interpret social situations in a self-defeating manner when interacting with supportive friends (35). Perceiving the classroom as supportive is the postulated mechanism through which the risk of loneliness is reduced. In supportive classes, vulnerable children may interpret social situations as pleasant, lowering the risk of loneliness as children reframe social experiences (36). Additionally, supportive classrooms have higher group cohesion and mutual respect, avoiding situations that elicit mismatched emotional responses that can lead to social exclusion (37). As a consequence, temperamentally vulnerable youth may feel comfortable engaging in interactions that lead to meaningful social connections (38). Additional social opportunities, in turn, help youth improve social skills in ways that diminish the tendency to withdraw (39).

Our study is novel in that we focus on perceptions of classroom climate as an index of support. Positive classroom climate is defined as the perceived tenor of the classroom and the degree to which students feel comfortable and at ease in the classroom and with classmates (40). Perceived classroom climate has been shown to moderate concurrent association between other biologically-linked traits (e.g., effortful control) and depressive symptoms (41). Longitudinal data from college students (42) and concurrent data from young adolescents (3) agree that friend support protects youth against loneliness arising from peer difficulties. Supportive classrooms should operate in a similar manner. For instance, two studies of indicate that school and classroom climate buffered against loneliness among victimized children and young adolescents (43, 44). Similarly, a 3-year study of primary school students indicated that anxious withdrawn children were less likely to be excluded in supportive classrooms than in unsupportive classrooms (37).

The present study utilizes a community sample of Lithuanian primary and middle school students to examine whether perceived positive classroom climate moderates longitudinal associations from shyness, emotional regulation, and rejection sensitivity to increases in loneliness across a four-month period during a single school year. We hypothesized that shyness, rejection sensitivity and emotional reactivity would predict increases in loneliness for youth who perceived low but not high levels of classroom support. Given that temperamental vulnerabilities may have different social outcomes depending on gender (e.g., shy girls face less rejection than shy boys) (45), we compared boys and girls on patterns of association. Because loneliness is associated with emotional problems (34) and the number and quality of friendships (41), each was included as a covariate in supplemental analyses. Victimization has been linked to perceived classroom climate (46) as well as shyness (47), emotional reactivity (48), and rejection sensitivity (49), so peer reports of relational and physical victimization were also included as potential confounders.

We followed a community sample of pre- and early adolescents over the course of a single school year to examine the mitigating role of perceived positive school climate in the development of loneliness among temperamentally vulnerable (i.e., shy, sensitive to rejection, or emotionally reactive) children. The results indicated that perceived positive classroom climate moderates longitudinal associations. In each case, temperamental vulnerabilities anticipated greater loneliness for youth reporting low but not high positive classroom climate.

The findings replicate and extend insights into the antecedents of loneliness. In terms of replication, the findings add to the long list of studies indicating that shy children are especially vulnerable to loneliness (5). Others have also reported that rejection sensitivity increases loneliness (25). Far fewer longitudinal studies have examined whether emotionally reactive children are similarly at risk (3). Taken together with results from previous research, our findings underscore the painful and potentially debilitating costs of loneliness that confront emotionally vulnerable children.

We are not the first to find that a positive classroom climate buffers against conditions that might otherwise have an adverse impact on development. Perceptions of classroom support protect against the untoward consequences of victimization (46, 66), and mitigate the effects of low effortful control on conduct problems (67) and depressive symptoms (36). As such, the findings align with social information processing theory (35), which posits that temperamentally vulnerable youth in classrooms perceived as supportive tend to interpret challenging social situations as benign and nonthreatening. Different processes may be at work depending on whether risks for loneliness have origins in overly sensitive perceptions of social situations (3) or relationship difficulties caused by unattractive traits (31, 32). Shy and sensitive youth may perceive supportive classrooms as a safe place where temperamental characteristics are not a social liability, providing confidence to build ties with classmates. Supportive classrooms are characterized by high engagement and positive peer and teacher interactions (68). Teachers and classmates may work to minimize the time the emotionally vulnerable spend alone and avoid activities that exclude or marginalize members. Finally, supportive classrooms are known to embrace prosocial norms (43), which may disrupt the self-fulfilling prophecy cycle among sensitive children or counteract incipient loneliness among youth so inclined.

Classroom climate has a downstream influence on solitude. Start from the premise that perceptions of a positive classroom climate are joined with perceptions of positive peer experiences (69). Children and adolescents who enjoy spending time with classmates may leap at opportunities to spend time together out of class, accepting and making social invitations, and enrolling in clubs and after-school activities. Additional social experiences may provide temperamentally vulnerable children with much needed social skills practice, bolstering confidence in abilities and reducing withdrawal tendencies (39, 70). Unsupportive classrooms, in contrast, may increase the likelihood that shy and emotionally sensitive children seek to be alone when out of school (37). Discouraged by interpersonal missteps and fearful of replicating painful peer experiences, temperamentally vulnerable children may learn that solitude is safer and preferable (27). In the process, children who most need the company of others instead fall further behind in social skills, developing a (sometimes well-deserved) reputation for awkwardness, which can make successful social integration more difficult in the future.

Other replicated results should bolster confidence in our novel findings. Consistent with previous reports (21, 71), shyness, emotional reactivity, and rejection sensitivity were interrelated longitudinally, such that higher levels of one begat increases in another. We also found that shy and rejection sensitive children were least likely to report that classroom climate improved over the course of the school year, recalling findings from other studies in which less empathetic children (who are lower in emotion regulation) and children with more behavioral problems perceived declining levels of school climate (72, 73).

Our study is not without limitations. First, reliance on self-report variables increases the risk of bias arising from shared-reporter variance. This problem lacks an easy solution, however, because many of the variables of interest focus on child feelings and perceptions, which are not reliably gaged by teachers or parents (74) and whose impact may vary as a function of the discrepancy between actual and ideal self-perceptions (75). Observational data could help distinguish between the impact of perceived and actual classroom climate. Second, it was not possible, with two waves of data, to conduct a random intercept model. In its absence, conclusions about within-individual cross-lagged associations must be tempered, because changes in loneliness may be a product of between-person effects (76).Person-oriented analyses may be better suited to identifying constellations of interpersonal and individual factors tied to adaptive and maladaptive outcomes (77). Third, perceived positive classroom climate is tied to the child’s perceptions of relationships with friends and teachers (78, 79). The same pattern of results emerged when we controlled for friendship quality, suggesting that classroom climate captures more than just getting along with friends. Unfortunately, we lacked data on teacher-child relationships and so cannot make conclusions about the degree to which climate is distinct from getting along with teachers. Finally, the participants lived in a small, homogeneous Northern European community. Those unfamiliar with Lithuania may be hesitant to generalize from its populace. Once involuntarily situated in the Soviet Union, Lithuania is currently a member of the European Union. Students in Lithuania resemble those in other Western European nations with regard to adolescent norms, values, and development (80). Of course, it remains to be seen whether findings from this sample generalize to other, dissimilar contexts.

The results emphasize the importance of perceptions of classroom climate for the well-being of temperamentally vulnerable youth. Future research could investigate the processes through which positive classroom climate protects vulnerable adolescents (67) or classroom level characteristics which determine it being perceived as positive by vulnerable youth (37). This research has implications for classroom oriented interventions that extend well beyond loneliness, with the potential to change the lives of many youths who might otherwise develop a snowballing cascade of interpersonal and mental health challenges.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Mykolas Romeris University, Institute of Psychology, Committee of Psychological Research Ethics. DECISION Nr. 6/−202. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

This project has received funding from European Social Fund (project no 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-17-0009) under grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1081989/full#supplementary-material