Feeling of Emptiness Emerges as the Central Hub of Negative Emotions, Network Analysis Finds

A pervasive sense of inner hollowness, long described by patients in therapy rooms and by writers in literature, has now been mapped with the tools of network science. A new study published in BMC Psychology suggests that the feeling of emptiness is not merely a vague byproduct of other emotional states, but may be the most strongly connected node in a web of negative affect that includes loneliness, dysphoria, boredom, hopelessness, and dissociation. The findings, based on a community sample of 396 adults, position emptiness as a central construct in the architecture of distressing emotions, with implications for how clinicians and researchers understand and treat this elusive experience.

The research team, led by Reyhaneh Sardarzehi and colleagues at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, set out to address a longstanding gap in the psychological literature. Although the feeling of emptiness is clinically significant, particularly in conditions such as borderline personality disorder, depression, and trauma-related disorders, it remains poorly defined and has often been treated as a symptom that overlaps with other constructs. The central question was whether emptiness is reducible to a combination of related states, or whether it exists as a distinct and influential entity within the broader landscape of negative emotion.

To answer this question, the researchers turned to network analysis, a statistical framework that treats psychological constructs as interconnected nodes rather than isolated variables. Participants completed validated self-report measures of emptiness, loneliness, dysphoria, boredom, hopelessness, and dissociation. The team then estimated a regularized partial correlation network using the EBICglasso method, a technique that identifies the unique associations between constructs while controlling for the influence of all other nodes in the network. This approach allows researchers to distinguish direct connections from indirect ones, revealing which emotional states are truly intertwined and which merely co-occur.

The results were striking. The feeling of emptiness emerged as the most influential node in the network, achieving the highest strength centrality score of 1.18. Strength centrality measures how strongly a node is connected to its neighbors, and in this case, emptiness demonstrated robust direct connections to dysphoria with an edge weight of 0.37, loneliness with 0.38, and boredom with 0.29. These edge weights represent the strength of the partial correlations between constructs after accounting for all other relationships in the network, indicating that emptiness maintains substantial unique associations with each of these three states.

Beyond its connections, emptiness also showed the highest predictability value in the network, with 69 percent of its variance explained by its neighboring nodes. This means that the emotional states surrounding emptiness, particularly loneliness, dysphoria, and boredom, account for a substantial proportion of the variation in how strongly people experience feelings of emptiness. In practical terms, the findings suggest that emptiness is not an isolated phenomenon but is deeply embedded in a cluster of related negative affective experiences.

To ensure that these results were not statistical artifacts, the researchers employed bootstrapped difference tests based on 95 percent bootstrap confidence intervals for pairwise differences in strength centrality. The analysis confirmed that the centrality of emptiness was significantly greater than that of all other nodes in the network, as the confidence intervals for all pairwise strength differences involving emptiness excluded zero. This rigorous statistical validation strengthens the claim that emptiness occupies a genuinely central position rather than appearing central by chance.

Not all relationships in the network were equally strong. The study found that emptiness had only a weak association with hopelessness and no unique direct association with dissociation once other connections were accounted for. This pattern suggests that while hopelessness and dissociation are related to the broader affective network, they are less central to the specific experience of emptiness. The distinction is important because it challenges assumptions that emptiness is simply another expression of hopelessness or a dissociative symptom, and instead points to a more specific emotional profile.

The findings provide empirical support for contemporary theoretical models that have proposed emptiness as a core construct in its own right. Theoretical accounts from psychodynamic, existential, and cognitive traditions have long described emptiness as a fundamental human experience linked to identity disturbance, meaninglessness, and disrupted interpersonal connection. By demonstrating that emptiness sits at the hub of a network of negative affect, the study offers quantitative evidence that this subjective experience may function as a central organizing feature of emotional distress rather than a secondary consequence of other symptoms.

The clinical implications are considerable. If emptiness is indeed a central node, then interventions targeting emptiness directly, rather than only addressing loneliness, dysphoria, or boredom in isolation, may be particularly effective. Therapeutic approaches that help individuals develop a coherent sense of self, establish meaningful connections, and cultivate emotional awareness may act on the hub of the network and produce cascading benefits across related emotional states. Conversely, treatments that focus narrowly on peripheral symptoms may leave the central experience of emptiness intact, potentially explaining why some interventions produce only partial relief.

The authors acknowledge that the study relied on a community sample and self-report measures, which means the findings may not generalize to clinical populations with severe psychopathology. Future research could examine whether emptiness maintains its central position in networks derived from individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, major depression, or complex trauma, and whether longitudinal designs can establish the direction of influence between emptiness and its connected states. Nonetheless, the study represents a significant step toward mapping the internal structure of negative affect and elevating the feeling of emptiness from a poorly defined complaint to a measurable, central construct in psychological science.

Subject of Research: Network analysis of the feeling of emptiness as a central node in an affective network of loneliness, dysphoria, boredom, hopelessness, and dissociation

Article Title: Mapping the void: feeling of emptiness as a central node in an affective network

Article References: Sardarzehi, R., Khazaei, A., Karimi Ahmadabadi, Z., Ahmadi, Z., & Mohajerin, B. (2026). Mapping the void: feeling of emptiness as a central node in an affective network. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05781-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05781-y

Keywords: feeling of emptiness, network analysis, loneliness, dysphoria, boredom, hopelessness, dissociation, negative affect, centrality, psychology, BMC Psychology, mental health