Role Of Culture And Self Esteem On Loneliness In Indians Shifted To USA And Indigenous Indians

ABSTRACT

Background: The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between self-esteem andloneliness scores in individualistic culture and collectivistic culture.Methods: Through the convenience sampling method, 50 participants chosen were Indians who hadshifted to United States of America and 57 participants chosen were Indigenous Indians. The age group ofthe sample was between 17 to 25 years. They were administered Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, M; 1965)and UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, D, Peplau, L. A.. and Ferguson, M.L.; 1978). On the basis of SelfEsteem scores the participants were divided into groups of two, high self-esteem and low self-esteem andtheir loneliness scores were compared. A two-way ANOVA for Randomized design was used to find ifthere was a significant difference in the loneliness scores of the four groups.Results: Results indicated that participants who had shifted to individualistic culture from collectivisticculture had higher loneliness scores and participants with low self-esteem has higher loneliness score.There was significant interaction effect, which indicated that participants with low self-esteem inindividualistic culture had the highest loneliness scores, however for participants in collectivistic culture,high self-esteem scores was associated with more reported loneliness than participants with low self-esteemscores.Conclusion:It is concluded from this study that in this sample, Indians in USA reported feeling morelonely than Indigenous Indians, while participants with lower self-esteem reported feeling lonelier thanindividuals with high self-esteem, with interaction effect whereby people with high self-esteem actuallyreported feeling more lonely in Indian than people with low self-esteem