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Abstract: The study examines stereotypes of and emotional reactions to singles by choice and singles not by choice. Participants (N = 480 ) read a scenario describing persons, who were either single by choice or single not by choice and rated their thoughts and feelings about these persons. Singles by choice are perceived as more lonely and miserable, and as less warm and sociable, than singles not by choice. However, they are perceived as more successful and potent. Anger and sympathy mediate the relations between choosing singlehood and stereotyping levels. These findings extend the way in which the Attribution Theory explains activation of stereotypes.
Key words: singles, singlism, stereotypes, emotions, a ttribution theory
In recent years, researchers have increasingly used the term "socially single", which suggests that what matters most in everyday life is whether a person is in a significant romantic relationship or not, regardless of his or her legal marital status (DePaulo & Morris, 2006). The goal of our study was to examine whether "socially single" people are perceived differently than coupled people, and to determine whether a choice to remain single affected the intensity of stereotypes. In addition, we examined whether the emoFu tions experienced regarding people who are single by choice and people who are single not by choice mediate the activation of stereotypes.
The Increasing Phenomenon of Singlehood
The rate of single people in the Western world is constantly increasing. In the United States, 50.2% of the adult population - 124.6 million people - were single in August 2014. For comparison, the rate of adult single people in the US was 37.4% in 1976 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). Israel has also witnessed such a trend: since 1970, the rate of single men has doubled, and the rate of single women has tripled (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2012).
Stereotypes of Single People
While the rate of single people is increasing, negative stereotyping of and discrimination against single people (i.e., "singlism"; DePaulo & Morris, 2006) has been well-documented in the United States (DePaulo & Morris, 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Morris, DePaulo, Hertel, & Taylor, 2008) and in Germany (Greitemeyer, 2009; Hertel, Schütz, DePaulo, Morris, & Stucke, 2007).
When American students were asked to list traits describing married or...