The Effectiveness of Attachment Security Priming in Improving Positive Affect and Reducing Negative Affect: A Systematic Review

Angela C Rowe,Katherine B Carnelley,Emily R Gold

doi:10.3390/ijerph17030968

Abstract

Attachment security priming has been extensively used in relationship research to explore the contents of mental models of attachment and examine the benefits derived from enhancing security. This systematic review explores the effectiveness of attachment security priming in improving positive affect and reducing negative affect in adults and children. The review searched four electronic databases for peer-reviewed journal articles. Thirty empirical studies met our inclusion criteria, including 28 adult and 2 child and adolescent samples. The findings show that attachment security priming improved positive affect and reduced negative affect relative to control primes. Supraliminal and subliminal primes were equally effective in enhancing security in one-shot prime studies (we only reviewed repeated priming studies using supraliminal primes so could not compare prime types in these). Global attachment style moderated the primed style in approximately half of the studies. Importantly, repeated priming studies showed a cumulative positive effect of security priming over time. We conclude that repeated priming study designs may be the most effective. More research is needed that explores the use of attachment security priming as a possible intervention to improve emotional wellbeing, in particular for adolescents and children.

Highlights

This systematic review evaluates the results and quality of studies using attachment security priming to reduce negative affect and/or improve positive affect in adults and children.Attachment styles represent individuals’ internalised histories of received care [1]
The effectiveness of positive affect priming relative to security priming varied; three studies found that positive affect primes [17] (b,d), [24] were less effective than attachment security primes, while three reported comparable results for the two primes [33] (a–c)
Four studies manipulated participant stress and in these attachment security priming was more effective than positive affect priming [32] (b), [33] (e–g)

Summary

Introduction

This systematic review evaluates the results and quality of studies using attachment security priming to reduce negative affect and/or improve positive affect in adults and children. Attachment styles represent individuals’ internalised histories of received care [1]. Attachment styles are conceptualised along two dimensions: anxiety regarding abandonment and avoidance of intimacy [4]. Individuals can be low or high on either. Being high on either dimension is referred to in shorthand as being attachment ‘insecure’. Attachment styles are important predictors of the way individuals regulate affect. Each attachment dimension is associated with distinct affect regulation strategies [6,7], with insecure individuals experiencing lower positive affect and greater levels of negative affect relative to secures [8,9]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion