The loneliness paradox: a scoping review of cognitive biases in loneliness

Loneliness motivates reconnection, yet paradoxically fosters hypervigilance to negative social cues and cognitive biases that may serve self-protection. This scoping review mapped studies of three biases, attention, interpretation and approach-avoidance, through the lens of Social Information Processing model, to identify patterns and methodological gaps. Searches of PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Scopus and Web of Science identified 50 studies using behavioural, eye-tracking, psychophysiological, self-report and neural measures. Findings depended on how each bias was measured. Behavioural evidence for attention bias towards negative social cues was mixed, whereas neural evidence more consistently showed heightened responses to such cues. Interpretation bias was the most consistent finding in which lonely individuals interpreted ambiguous social cues as hostile or rejecting. Evidence on approach-avoidance bias was limited but theoretically informative. Situational loneliness was linked to approach and chronic loneliness to avoidance. Because almost all studies were cross-sectional, they reflect between-person differences rather than the within-person processes that evolutionary accounts describe. Future research needs within-person and experimental designs, reliable bias measures, more studies of children and adolescents, and a clearer distinction between situational and chronic loneliness.