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Young adults are currently the loneliest demographic in the UK and other Western countries, yet little is known about how they see the causes of their loneliness. Thus, the objective of this study is to explore the subjective causes of loneliness among young adults (18-24 years old), particularly those of lower socio-economic status (SES) who are in employment, renting and living in the most deprived areas, since they are the loneliest in the UK. Utilising a free association technique and thematic analysis, and embedded in a phenomenological framework, the subjective causes of loneliness in a matched sample of 48 young adults in the four most deprived boroughs of London are found to cluster around five themes: The Feeling of Being Disconnected, Contemporary Culture, Pressure, Social Comparison and Transitions Between Life Stages. Disconnection arises from feeling one does not matter, is not understood or is unable to express oneself. Challenges pertaining to social media and materialism in contemporary culture contribute to loneliness as does pressure associated with work, fitting in and social comparison. Social media play a major role in exacerbating these experiences. Finally, transitions between life stages such as breakups, loss of significant others and transitory stages to do with education and employment are felt to cause loneliness. The findings suggest potential avenues for loneliness reduction., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The evidence that social relationships are associated with well-being is so strong that it is taken as a 'fact' (Kushlev et al., 2018, Journal of Research in Personality, 74, 124). The bulk of the existing evidence derives from research examining social relationships with close others, such as family, romantic partners, and friends (Dolan et al., 2008, Journal Economic Psychology, 29, 94; Li & Kanazawa, 2016, British Journal of Psychology, 107, 675). However, less is known about how connecting with strangers is associated with well-being, how such connections are represented by people, and what motivates people's desire to connect with strangers. This study aims to examine representations and motivations for social connectedness with strangers in contemporary British cities. To do this, an interview study of 52 city-dwellers living in Britain's two largest cities, London and Birmingham, was conducted. The Grid Elaboration Method (GEM) (Joffe & Elsey, 2014, Review of General Psychology, 18, 173), a free association and interview technique, was applied. Thematic analysis revealed that representations of strangers vacillate between 'good' and 'bad', are built upon the 'self/other' thema, are shaped by the contextual factors place, time, and technology, and are motivated by a desire to 'matter'. This work makes a key contribution to the study of social connectedness in cities and can inform effective urban policy., (© 2020 The British Psychological Society.)

As a route to providing a framework for elucidating the content of public thinking concerning emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EID), this article examines public engagement with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It explores how British lay publics represent MRSA utilising a social representations framework. For this group, MRSA is associated primarily with dirty National Health Service (NHS) hospitals that have been neglected due to management culture having superseded the matron culture that dominated the putative golden age of the NHS. Furthermore, MRSA represents a transgression of the purpose of a hospital as a clean and curative institution. While this widely shared picture is accompanied by a strong sense of general concern, the respondents associate contracting MRSA with other identities, such as hospitalised, young and old people. These associations are linked to feelings of personal invulnerability. There is also blame of foreigners--especially cleaners and nurses--for MRSA's spread. Thus, the data corroborate a key pattern of response found in relation to myriad EID--that of othering. However, the identities associated with contracting MRSA are mutable; therefore, the threat cannot be distanced unequivocally. Beyond developing an understanding of the relationship between epidemics and identities, this article proposes a fitting theory with which to explore EID-related public thinking., (© 2011 Taylor & Francis)

This paper explores whether, and to what extent, national newspaper messages tally with public perceptions about meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It compares research on media messages about MRSA with interview data gathered from a demographically diverse sample of 60 people interviewed from the Greater London area. Across the interview sample there was a shared consensus that most people associated MRSA not with the history of antibiotic use, but with dirty and poorly managed hospitals. Some media messages, such as blaming MRSA on the alleged 'management culture' of the NHS, seemed to capture the Zeitgeist, whereas others, in particular the 'celebrity victims' of MRSA, did not seem to resonate with the audience. This study also found that ideas based on scientific understandings about germ theory and the immune system were held alongside folklore such as miasmic theory. The comparison of media and mind thus points to the existence of pre-scientific understandings of germs, contagion and blame in parallel with the biomedical story in the minds of the public. The findings contribute to our understanding of the public and patients' views of this infection.