Relational roots of retributive vs. restorative justice: attachment insecurity predicts harsher responses to crime

A two-generation study: The transmission of attachment and young adults’ depression, anxiety, and social media addiction

For sexual minority men (SMM), attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance are evidenced to predict poor mental health (e.g., depression and anxiety). While mindfulness is known to mediate this relationship among the general population, it has yet to be examined among SMM. This study examined the interaction of attachment anxiety and avoidance, and the mediating effect of mindfulness, in predicting symptoms of depression and anxiety among a sample of gay and bisexual men (GBM) in the U.S. We used regression-based path analyses to test the interaction of attachment anxiety and avoidance on symptoms of anxiety and depression. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were positively associated with mental health symptoms. In the model predicting anxiety, we found a significant interaction, indicating that individuals high in attachment anxiety and avoidance had the highest BSI scores. In model 2, direct effects for attachment anxiety and avoidance remained significant, and mindfulness was negatively associated with both mental health symptoms. Significant indirect effects from attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, through mindfulness, to both depressive and anxiety symptoms were observed. No evidence of mediated moderation was found. Our findings show that attachment is an important predictor of mental health among GBM and support previous research on the mediating role of mindfulness in this association.

There has been growing interest in the role of attachment mechanisms in the onset and maintenance of paranoia. The latest systematic reviews of mixed samples of healthy individuals and psychiatric patients have revealed that increased trait attachment anxiety and avoidance are associated with experiencing paranoia, with trait attachment anxiety showing a stronger association. Few studies have examined attachment and paranoia in naturalistic conditions via the Experience Sampling Method. The present study examined whether experiences of attachment anxiety and avoidance fluctuate in the flow of daily life, and whether a within-person change in both attachment states precedes the experience of momentary paranoia, and negative and positive emotions. Thirty-seven clinical participants and twenty-six healthy controls were studied over six consecutive days using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). An experience-in-close-relationships questionnaire (ECR-R 16 SF) was used to capture trait attachment dimensions. Several ESM items were used to capture momentary negative and positive affect, paranoia and attachment insecurity states. The findings revealed that fluctuations in both attachment insecurity states were significantly higher in the clinical group. A prior elevated attachment anxiety and avoidance was followed by an increase in negative affect in the next moment and elevated attachment avoidance was additionally followed by a decrease in positive affect and an increase in paranoia. Our findings reveal the specific temporal associations between momentary attachment insecurity states as predictors of change in emotions/affects and paranoia, along with evidence that state attachment avoidance has a superior impact on momentary affect and paranoia compared to state attachment anxiety. These results contrast with those of recent cross-sectional studies.

Considering Attachment and Partner Perceptions in the Prediction of Physical and Emotional Sexual Satisfaction

ABSTRACTWe compared each individual group member’s attachment fit with the attachment of the other group members. Participants were 201 members of 20 therapy groups who sought treatment because they were overweight or obese. Group members completed the Attachment Style Questionnaire before commencing treatment and the Group Questionnaire at three points during group treatment. Multilevel polynomial regression followed by response surface analysis was used to examine how the attachment anxiety and avoidance of the individual group member and the aggregated attachment anxiety and avoidance of the group members were related to individual group members’ perceptions of the positive bonding, positive working relationships, and negative relationships in the group. The findings suggested that attachment heterogeneity in group is related to the perception of members’ stronger bonding relationships and lower negative relationships. In addition, positive bonding can be increased when a patient high in attachment avoidance is added to a group whose patients are low in attachment avoidance; however, group members reported weaker negative relationships when their attachment anxiety or avoidance became increasingly higher or lower than other group members’ attachment anxiety or avoidance.

Restorative justice is a philosophical framework that offers a different perspective on crime and criminal justice. It presents a new way of thinking about crime and how to respond to it. In other words, restorative justice is a process by which the parties involved decide how to address the consequences of a specific crime. Furthermore, restorative justice seeks to repair what has been violated. It is a form of justice (pertaining to criminal matters) based on "reparation," meaning that efforts should be made to repair the severe impacts of the crime and the resulting damages, either completely or symbolically. Since crime wounds the conscience of society, the justice system aims to mend the damages caused, and the parties are allowed to participate in this process. Retributive justice, which focuses on the crime, and rehabilitative justice, which focuses on the offender, are both known as the classic or traditional models of criminal justice. In recent decades, they have faced various criticisms regarding their efficiency and performance. The traditional (classic) criminal justice system faces significant limitations and challenges, increasing the demand for its reform and change. Both nationally and internationally, this system encounters fundamental criticisms. Some criminologists and jurists have sought to replace the classic criminal justice system, introducing a new system called "restorative justice" into the fields of criminology and criminal law. Restorative justice is a new and yet ancient and deep-rooted model of criminal justice that has been revitalized since the 1970s and 1980s. According to scholars, the inclination towards restorative justice in recent decades is due to the criminal justice system's inability to control delinquency through both retribution and rehabilitation, highlighted by the sudden and regrettable increase in crime rates. This raised fundamental questions about the traditional criminal justice system's and governments' capacity to control delinquency. Moreover, government officials have realized that crime control extends beyond the capabilities of the state in two significant and distinct ways: 1) The capacity of state criminal justice institutions is severely limited, and 2) there are control mechanisms that operate outside state boundaries and are somewhat independent of state policies. These challenges have led to the creation and development of alternative methods and a redefinition of the state's role in criminal justice. Critics believe that retributive criminal justice has neglected or at least not given adequate roles to the victim, the offender, and society in favor of public authority through criminal laws. This research employs an analytical-descriptive methodology, is of an applied nature, and utilizes laws, regulations, and library resources, also having an educational aspect. The results indicate the necessity of replacing classic criminal justice with restorative justice by examining the mechanisms related to the administration of justice by relevant national and international institutions, particularly the United Nations, and national efforts in most countries. According to its proponents, restorative justice can resolve the conflict arising from the crime, as well as the resulting hostility, tension, and conflict between the victim and the offender within the community framework through mediation, negotiation, collective reconciliation, and various methods of repair and restoration.

Daily variations in attachment anxiety and avoidance: A density distributions approach

ABSTRACTPerhaps unlike other social roles that people may hold, caring for children offers opportunities for both immense joy and incredible frustration. Yet what predicts how parents will feel during caregiving experiences? In the current study, we examined parents’ (N = 152) positive emotion, negative emotion, and felt meaning during caregiving using the Day Reconstruction Method. In addition, we tested attachment anxiety and avoidance as predictors of parents’ emotion during caregiving relative to their other daily experiences. We found that attachment avoidance was associated with elevated negative emotion and reduced positive emotion and meaning in life across the entire day, whereas attachment anxiety was associated with elevated negative emotion and marginally greater meaning in life, but not positive emotion, across the entire day. Furthermore, caregiving was associated with greater positive emotion and meaning, but not negative emotion, compared to parents’ other daily activities. Finally, attachment avoidance, but not anxiety, was associated with lower levels of positive emotion, negative emotion, and felt meaning during caregiving compared to other daily activities. These findings are consistent with other evidence that attachment avoidance is associated with deactivation of emotion in close relationships and suggest that attachment avoidance minimizes the joys of parenting.

Attachment orientations reflect individuals’ expectations for interpersonal relationships and influence emotion regulation strategies and coping. Previous research has documented that anxious and avoidant attachment orientations have deleterious effects on the trauma recovery process leaving these survivors vulnerable to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. However, avoidant attachment may be more complicated. Prior work has also found those high in avoidant attachment but also low in anxious attachment (i.e., dismissing) may not experience such vulnerabilities. Further, avoidant attachment individuals often report higher self-efficacy than their anxiously attached counterparts. The present study examined trauma coping self-efficacy (CSE-T) as a previously unexamined mechanism of action between adult attachment and PTSD symptoms. Structural equation modeling results showed that anxious attachment was associated with lower CSE-T and greater PTSD symptoms six weeks later. Further, a significant indirect effect of anxious attachment on PTSD symptoms through CSE-T was found. Contrary to hypotheses, avoidant attachment also exhibited an indirect effect on PTSD symptoms through CSE-T, such that avoidant attachment was associated with lower CSE-T, which in turn, was associated with greater PTSD symptoms. Also contrary to hypotheses, the interaction between anxious and avoidant attachment was not significantly associated with either CSE-T or PTSD symptoms. Results suggest that both anxious and avoidant attachment orientations contribute to poor self-regulation following trauma, as they undermine perceptions of trauma coping self-efficacy.

ObjectiveAttachment might shape the extent to which a person is self‐compassionate. Despite the plethora of research examining attachment and self‐compassion, no previous systematic review has quantified the magnitude of the associations between self‐compassion and different attachment dimensions.DesignRandom‐effects meta‐analyses examined the magnitude of the associations of self‐compassion with anxious, avoidant, and secure attachment, using correlational effects (r‐value). Moderator analyses tested whether the effects varied as a function of participant age, sex, population type (students vs. community sample) and attachment measure used within studies.MethodsA systematic search of the literature using SCOPUS, Web of Science, and CINAHL databases retrieved 37 eligible studies.ResultsThe meta‐analyses revealed a medium effect size for the positive association between self‐compassion with secure attachment, ravg = .395, 95% CI [0.248, 0.524], and medium and small effect sizes for the negative associations with anxious attachment, ravg = −.282, 95% CI [−0.329, −0.233], and avoidant attachment, ravg = −.280, 95% CI [−0.320, −0.240]. Moderator analyses indicate that the magnitude of associations with avoidant attachment varied as a function of participant age and population type (students vs. community samples).ConclusionsThe findings suggest differential associations between self‐compassion and attachment dimensions. Self‐compassion was positively associated with secure attachment, while the reverse was found for insecure attachment. Negative associations between self‐compassion and avoidant attachment were larger for older individuals. Ageing populations may be vulnerable to lower self‐compassion when already more prone to experiencing avoidant attachment. Compassion‐focused therapy may be an effective therapeutic option when working with individuals reliant on anxious or avoidant attachment dimensions.

Previous studies have demonstrated that insecure attachment patterns and a trait disposition toward negative affect and impulsivity are both associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD) features. According to attachment theory, insecure attachment patterns impart greater risk for the maladaptive personality traits underlying BPD. Hence, insecure attachment might be indirectly related to BPD through its association with these traits. The current cross-sectional study used structural equation modeling to compare two competing models of the relationship between adult attachment patterns, trait negative affect and impulsivity, and BPD features in a large nonclinical sample of young adults: (M1) attachment anxiety and avoidance are positively related to trait negative affect and impulsivity, which in turn, are directly associated with BPD features; and (M2) trait negative affect and impulsivity are positively related to attachment anxiety and avoidance, which in turn, are directly associated with BPD features. Consistent with attachment theory, M1 provided a better fit to the data than M2. However, only attachment anxiety, and not attachment avoidance, was significantly associated with negative affect and impulsivity. The results favored a model in which the relationship between adult attachment anxiety and BPD features is fully mediated by trait negative affect and impulsivity.

While the relationship between attachment anxiety and avoidance and the severity of prolonged grief disorder (PGD) has been well-studied, less is known about the relationship between disorganized attachment and PGD. We test the associations between disorganized attachment and the interaction between it and attachment avoidance and anxiety on PGD. Participants (N = 258) who had lost a family member from 0.5 to 8.0 years before the survey completed the experiences in close relationships-revised, the adult disorganized attachment scale, and the PGD-13 scale. The model explaining PGD symptoms through attachment, taking into account the level of disorganized attachment, explained variance in PGD significantly better than the model taking into account only the level of attachment anxiety and avoidance as predictors. Additionally, the relationships between attachment avoidance and PGD were positive, negative, or neither, depending on the configuration of the levels of disorganized attachment and attachment anxiety. Future research into the relationships between attachment and PGD should take into account disorganized attachment. Attachment-informed grief therapy focused on insecure styles of attachment - including the disorganized style - to the deceased person and other loved ones may prove a promising approach for bereaved persons who experience PGD.

Getting close from far away: Mediators of the association between attachment and blogging behavior

This paper is based on research carried out in Northern Uganda on the negotiation between retributive and restorative justice in conflict transformation. The findings show that in the daily lives of survivors of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) in post-conflict northern Uganda, retributive and restorative justice systems are not used as mutually exclusive mechanisms for seeking justice. Rather, they are constantly negotiated. Children and other stakeholders in post-conflict settings pragmatically choose to apply aspects of each justice system to serve their own goals. In the real life experience of these survivors and their families, the two systems are interconnected and interdependent. Their boundaries, therefore, seem to be porous; “places of meeting and exchange rather than walls of protection against each other”(Jordan J, Hartling L, New developments in relational-cultural theory. In: Ballou M, Brown L(eds) Rethinking mental health and disorder. Guilford Press, New York, 2002: 8). In the daily lives of children and their caretakers in post-conflict settings, it is a fallacy to imagine that retributive and restorative justice systems are working independent of each other. In other words, when each system operates independent of the other, it becomes incomplete as an explanatory model for justice in the context of the survivors and their families. This chapter demonstrates how people, especially survivors of SGBV and their families in Northern Uganda, negotiate between retributive and restorative justice in an effort to access justice. This chapter further explores whether an ingenious hybrid of retributive and restorative justice can creatively contribute to the achievement of justice for the survivors and their families. It also explores the extent to which the process of negotiating between the two justice systems may create space for impunity. The chapter concludes that although nurturing a hybrid justice system creates opportunities for participation and ownership of processes and outcomes by the victims/survivors and perpetrators of atrocities and their families, care must be taken to ensure that the best interests of the survivors and their rights are not compromised.

Background and Objectives: Loneliness is prevalent among residents of long-term care settings, posing significant challenges to their mental wellbeing. Insecure attachment has been identified as a contributing factor to loneliness in this population. Previous research has suggested that meditation may have beneficial effects on mental health outcomes. This study aimed to examine the relationship between meditation, insecure attachment, and loneliness among residents of long-term care facilities in Thailand. Specifically, the study sought to investigate the moderating effect of meditation on the association between insecure attachment (both avoidance and anxiety) and loneliness. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 236 residents living in long-term care homes in Thailand. Participants completed self-report measures including the 18-item Revised Experience of Close Relationship questionnaire (to assess attachment anxiety and avoidance), the Inner Strength-Based Inventory (to measure meditation practice), and the 6-item Revised Version of the University of California Los Angeles Loneliness Scale. Moderation analyses were performed to explore the role of meditation in the relationship between insecure attachment and loneliness. Results: The mean age of participants was 73.52 years, with females accounting for 57.6% of the sample. Among the participants, 58.4% reported engaging in meditation, with practice frequency ranging from often to daily. The mean meditation score was 2.92 out of 5, indicating regular but not daily practice. Meditation was found to moderate the relationship between insecure attachment (both avoidance and anxiety) and loneliness. Specifically, the moderation effect between attachment anxiety and loneliness was significant (B = 0.44, SE = 0.21, 95% CI [0.30, 0.86]), as was the interaction effect between attachment anxiety and loneliness (B = -0.34, SE = 0.17, 95% CI [-0.67, -0.02]). Conclusions: The findings suggest that the impact of meditation practice on loneliness is influenced by an individual's attachment dimension. Meditation demonstrates a moderating effect on attachment avoidance, anxiety, and loneliness, with variations observed in the direction of these effects. The clinical implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are discussed.