Abstract
Interdependence and attachment models have identified felt security as a critical foundation for commitment by orientating individuals towards relationship-promotion rather than self-protection. However, partners’ security also signals the relative safety to commit to relationships. The current investigation adopted a dyadic perspective to examine whether partners’ security acts as a strong link by buffering the negative effects of actors’ insecurity on daily commitment. Across two daily diary studies (Study 1, N = 78 dyads and Study 2, N = 73 dyads), actors’ X partners’ daily felt security interactions revealed a strong-link pattern: lower actors’ felt security on a given day predicted lower daily commitment, but these reductions were mitigated when partners reported higher levels of felt security that day. Actors’ X partners’ trait insecurity (attachment anxiety) interaction also showed this strong-link pattern in Study 1 but not Study 2. The results suggest that partners’ felt security can help individuals experiencing insecurity overcome their self-protective impulses and feel safe enough to commit to their relationship on a daily basis.
Highlights
Committing to relationships is accompanied by substantial risks—the more individuals invest in their relationship, the more vulnerable they are to the pain that will arise if partners are rejecting [1].To fully commit, it is necessary to feel secure in a partner’s regard, availability and responsiveness [2,3,4]
In models testing the effects of actor X partner attachment anxiety on daily levels of commitment, we examined whether greater attachment anxiety would predict lower daily commitment, but this negative association would be buffered by partners’ lower attachment anxiety
We examined our secondary research question (RQ2) exploring whether the expected negative effects of trait insecurity was buffered by partners’ trait security
Summary
Committing to relationships is accompanied by substantial risks—the more individuals invest in their relationship, the more vulnerable they are to the pain that will arise if partners are rejecting [1]. It is necessary to feel secure in a partner’s regard, availability and responsiveness [2,3,4]. For example, state feelings of security promote continued investment whereas feelings of insecurity prompt self-protective distancing [5]. Partners’ security should be an important signal of whether it is safe to commit to relationships. Partners’ insecurity heightens the risk of hurt and rejection that likely undermines commitment [4] whereas partners’ security signals the potential for a promising stable relationship that may promote commitment (e.g., [8,9]). Based on increasing evidence that partners play an important role in bolstering security [10], partners’ relative security may mitigate the effects of actors’
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