The relationship between family communication patterns and loneliness: The Mediating role of spiritual identity

Spiritual identity conceptualized as defining and identification of oneself based on spirituality and spiritual experiences. This study, in framework of a causal model, investigated the antecedents and outcomes of spiritual identity. In this model, family communication patterns were considered as the exogenous variables, spiritual identity as the mediating variable and loneliness as the endogenous variable. Participants were 400 M.A. and M.S. Shiraz University students (268girls and 132 boys) who completed Revised Family Communication Patterns (Fitzpatrick and Ritchie) and Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults: SELSA-S. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to measure spiritual identity. The Cronbach Alpha and factor analysis methods were used to verify the reliability and validity of the scales respectively. The SEM method was conducted to test the model and Bootstrapping method in AMOS was used to examine the mediating role of the variables. Results showed that conversation orietation predicted all three types of loneliness but conformity was only a positive significant predictor of family loneliness. Also, results revealed that conversation was a positive significant predictor of both moral and supernatural dimensions of spiritual identity. Furthermore, results demonstrated that both dimensions of spiritual identity mediated the relationship between conversation and all types of loneliness. Overall, findings suggest that conversation decreases family loneliness, romantic loneliness, and social loneliness through increasing spiritual identity.