The role of perceived social support for loneliness in the Chinese elderly: hope and core self-evaluations as mediators

To explore the effects of hope and core self-evaluation on perceived social support in elderly loneliness. We hypothesized that increased hope and core self-evaluation mediate the relationship between perceived social support and elderly loneliness. Older adults (n = 202) mean aged 65.5 years were investigated using the Perceived Social Support Questionnaire, Loneliness Scale, Adult Hope Scale, and Core Self-Evaluation Scale. The result showed the perceived family support dimension in Social Support, the will and agency dimensions in Hope, and core self-evaluations significantly and negatively predicted loneliness. Hope and core self-evaluations played a chain mediating role between perceived social support and loneliness. The significant mediating effects ranged from: perceived social support to core self-evaluation to loneliness, and perceived social support to hope to core self-evaluation to loneliness. We suggested that perceived social support can affect loneliness directly, as well as indirectly through the chain mediating effect of core self-evaluation and hope to core self-evaluations.