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

Spiritual identity is conceptualized as defining and identification of oneself based on spirituality and spiritual experiences. This study, in a framework of a causal model, investigated the mediating role of spiritual identity between family communication orientations and loneliness aspects. Participants, four hundred undergraduate Shiraz University students (268 girls and 132 boys) were participants of the study selected by multistage cluster random sampling and completed Revised Family Communication Patterns (Koerner and Fitzpatrick), Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults: SELSA-S and a researcher-made questionnaire to measure spiritual identity. The SEM method was conducted to test the model fitness and Bootstrapping method in AMOS was used to examine the mediating role of the variables. Results showed that conversation orientation predicted all three types of loneliness, though conformity orientation was only a positive significant predictor of family loneliness. Also, conversation orientation was a positive significant predictor of both moral and supernatural dimensions of spiritual identity. Furthermore, the results revealed that both dimensions of spiritual identity significantly mediated the relationship between conversation orientation and all types of loneliness. Overall, findings suggest that conversation decreases family loneliness, romantic loneliness, and social loneliness through increasing spiritual identity.