Individual Differences In Attachment Style Research Articles

Warmth, spatial proximity, and social attachment: The embodied perception of a social metaphor

Recent experiments in embodied social cognition suggest a fundamental link between physical warmth and social affiliation. Findings from two experiments support the hypothesis that physical warmth serves as a symbolic cue signaling the close proximity of a source of affiliation. In Experiment 1, participants perceived a warm object as being physically closer than a cold object. In Experiment 2, being primed with warmth led participants to display higher levels of self-reported social affiliative motivation. In both studies, effects were moderated by individual differences in attachment style; priming effects were pronounced among those low in attachment avoidance and those high in attachment anxiety. These findings contribute to a growing literature suggesting deep connections between perception, physical experience, and social cognition.

Attachment, skin deep? Relationships between adult attachment and skin barrier recovery

This study examined the relationship between individual differences in adult attachment and skin barrier recovery. Dating couples (N=34) completed a self-report measure of attachment anxiety and avoidance, and during two separate laboratory visits, normal skin barrier function was disrupted using a tape-stripping procedure, followed by a 20min discussion of personal concerns in one visit and relationship problems in the other, counterbalanced randomly across visits. Skin barrier recovery was assessed by measuring transepidermal water loss up to 2h after skin disruption. Multilevel modeling showed that skin barrier recovery did not differ between the personal concern or relationship problem discussions. Among women, greater attachment anxiety predicted faster skin barrier recovery across the two visits, while greater attachment avoidance predicted slower skin barrier recovery. Among men, greater attachment anxiety predicted slower skin barrier recovery during the personal concern discussion only. The observed effects remained significant after controlling for transepidermal water loss in undisturbed skin, suggesting that the relationship between attachment security and skin barrier recovery was not due to other skin-related factors like sweating. Cortisol changes, self-reported emotions, stress appraisals, and supportiveness ratings were tested as potential mediators, and none explained the relationships between attachment and skin barrier recovery. These findings are the first to demonstrate associations between individual differences in attachment style and restorative biological processes in the skin, even in a sample of young dating couples in satisfied relationships.

Knowing you care: Effects of perceived empathy and attachment style on pain perception

Other people can have a significant impact on one’s pain. Although correlational data abound, causal relationships between one’s pain experience, individual traits of social relating (e.g. attachment style), and social factors (e.g. empathy) have not been investigated. Here, we studied whether the presence of others and ‘perceived empathy’ (defined as participants’ knowledge of the extent to which observers felt they understood and shared their pain) can modulate subjective and autonomic responses to pain; and whether these influences can be explained by individual traits of pain coping and social attachment. Participants received noxious thermal stimuli via a thermode attached to their forearm and were asked to rate their pain. In separate blocks they were witnessed by (a) high-empathic and (b) low-empathic unfamiliar observers, and in a third condition (c) no observer was present (alone condition). We found that the effects of social presence and empathy on pain ratings depended on individual differences in attachment style. Higher scores on attachment anxiety predicted higher pain ratings in the low-empathy than in the high-empathy condition; and higher scores on attachment avoidance predicted lower pain ratings in the alone condition than with social presence. In addition, social presence decreased autonomic responses to pain irrespective of individual personality traits. To our knowledge this is the first time that adult attachment style has been shown to modulate the effects of social presence and ‘perceived empathy’ on experimentally induced pain. The results are discussed in relation to recent cognitive models of pain coping and attachment theory.

On the Role of the Implicit Self-Concept in Adult Attachment

We report a study that was designed to investigate attachment-related differences in the implicit self-concept and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in the context of attachment research. Two variants of the IAT were used to assess implicit relational self-esteem and relational anxiety after stress induction. Results showed that both the relational self-esteem and relational anxiety IAT (1) were meaningfully related to individual differences in attachment style and (2) predicted cognitive and affective reactions to attachment-related distress in addition to and beyond self-report measures of attachment. The results provide evidence for the reliability and validity of the IAT as an index of the implicit attachment self-concept.

214-THE IMPACT OF ICD DISCHARGES, ATTACHMENT STYLES AND SOCIAL SUPPORT ON ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

Insecure attachment styles and immature or neurotic defense mechanisms are related to psychological distress. However, their mutual interaction in influencing psychological distress deserves further investigation.One-thousand-one-hundred-twenty-nine University students were evaluated using the Global Severity Index of Symptoms Check List 90-Revised for psychological distress, Relationship Questionnaire for attachment styles and Defense Style Questionnaire for defense mechanisms. Following exploratory analyses, a Path Analysis was performed with psychological distress as outcome.Fearful and preoccupied attachment styles had a substantial impact on psychological distress. About 30% of their effect was mediated by Immature and Neurotic defenses, with the former having the major effect. Dismissing attachment showed no substantial effect on psychological distress. Secure Attachment and Mature Defenses had a small protective effect on psychological distress, but their inclusion in the path model did not improve overall goodness-of-fit. Attachment style and defense mechanisms accounted for nearly 25% of the variance in psychological distress.The results showed that attachment styles and defense mechanisms have a substantial impact on psychological distress. The effect of attachment style is mediated by defense mechanisms. Individual differences in attachment style and defense mechanisms represent risk factors for psychological distress in young adults.

Made to measure: Adapting emotionally focused couple therapy to partners' attachment styles.

This article summarizes the theory, practice, and empirical findings on emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT), now one of the best documented and validated approaches to repairing close relationships. EFT is based on an attachment perspective of adult intimacy. The article then considers how individual differences in attachment style have an impact on affect regulation, information processing, and communication in close relationships and how the practice of EFT is influenced by these differences.