Influence Of Attachment Style Research Articles

Mom, dad, meet my mate: An evolutionary perspective on the introduction of parents and mates

Many studies focus on the role of parents in the selection of mates, with most showing that parents have influence, albeit variable, in this process. Within Western societies, individuals often present a potential mate to their parents. This meeting represents a turning point, signifying that one is serious about the potential mate becoming a long-term, committed partner. Although this introduction of parents and possible mate is important, there has been no prior investigation into its timing, or specific reasons (other than signifying commitment) why an individual would want to orchestrate the meeting. Using an evolutionary psychology framework, we hypothesized that individuals are motivated to bring home their mates in order to seek parental feedback and approval, as well as indicate to their mate that they are serious about the relationship. We also hypothesized individuals want to meet their new partner’s parents for insight into how their potential mate will look when older, their future health, and potential familial resources that will be available. Our findings generally supported our predictions. We also examined the influence of attachment style and birth order on the timing of the introduction, but found minimal influence for these factors.

Moving from theory to practice and back in social and health psychology.

Progressive advancement of interventions in health psychology requires improvements in underlying theory. The theoretical advances described in this special issue offer a number of possibilities for intervention development. These include advances in understanding the role of cognitive biases, priming effects, effective planning, the role of specific affective states, and the influence of attachment style on response to interventions. For these advances to translate into progressive improvements in interventions and realized gains in public health, we propose that the theories should: (a) be explicitly linked to the major theories from which they draw; (b) reflect the context sensitivity and dynamic nature of the intervention target; (c) show convincing evidence of improved effectiveness of interventions they spawn according to rigorous criteria; and (d) address the full translation process, including implementation by health care providers and engagement by the target population.

2273 – Attachment style and posttraumatic stress disorder after cardiac surgery

Cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass represents a severe source of stress and has been reported to be associated to the development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This disorder leads to a significant disability that might greatly decrease the benefits of surgery. Research rarely focused on the role of attachment styles in the development of PTSD, and no studies addressed this issue in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. To assess the influence of attachment styles on the development of PTSD. The identification of specific personological traits predictive of the development of PTSD. Participants were recruited among patients scheduled for elective cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass and evaluated through a) Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) b) Post-traumatic 10 Stress Symptom Inventory - Modified (PTSS-10) c) Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Six months after surgery, participants were mailed the PTSS-10 and the PSS. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed with PTSD as dependent variable, and attachment-related avoidance and anxiety, sex, age and perceived stress as independent variables. One hundred twenty-one patients (94% of candidates for elective cardiac surgery who met study inclusion criteria) underwent surgery; 61(59%) were assessed after 6 months. Fourteen subjects (19.7%) scored ≥35 on the PTSS-10 at followup and were considered as having a probable diagnosis of PTSD. Attachment related avoidance at baseline predicted the development of PTSD at follow-up (p< 0.017), after controlling for age, sex and perceived stress. Subjects endorsing the avoidant attachment style are more likely to develop PTSD after cardiac surgery.

Exploring Psychological Factors Influencing Deliberation

In contemporary societies there is a growing need to coordinate and legitimize different perspectives. Instead of a dialogical search for consensus polarizing communication still prevails. The legitimacy of formal political institutions and conventional forms of political participation is in decline; increasingly publicly expressed people's need for a greater influence on social developments reveals a deficit in approaches how to include them more actively in discussions on complex social problems. There has been a growing number of theoretical and empirical appeals to advance deliberation within governmental bodies and public institutions, as well as in a form of direct citizen involvement in (organized) face-to-face meetings. Yet, no radical shift has been made (so far), largely due to poor understanding of subjective and intersubjective (psychological) aspects of deliberation - the exploration of these aspects is the aim of this article. The case is being made for using till now unstudied influence of attachment style on the quality of deliberation and on the readiness to transform and coordinate attitudes with others in a deliberative process.

Being Secure Means Being Willing to Say You're Sorry: Attachment Style and the Communication of Relational Dissatisfaction and Disengagement

The present study examines the influence of attachment style on the communication choices people make in response to relational dissatisfaction and disengagement. A path analysis models these choices, showing that a secure attachment style predicts the use of voice and de-escalation. A preoccupied style predicts neglect, loyalty, and de-escalation. A dismissing-avoidant style also leads to neglect and loyalty, but predicts behavioural de-escalation. Finally, a fearful-avoidant style indicates more limited communication choices and relational exit. The model shows the possibility of strategically made communication choices changing the results of these attachment style outcomes. Pathways through the model show that active communication choices lead to more positive long-term relational outcomes and passive choices predict relational challenges.

Attitudes about psychotherapy: A qualitative study of introductory psychology students who have never been in psychotherapy and the influence of attachment style

Design: Interviews about attitudes about psychotherapy with 12 undergraduate students who had never been in psychotherapy were analysed using consensual qualitative research. Results: Participants believed that the client role is to disclose, be receptive, and be motivated; that the therapist role is to listen, support, and give advice; and that the therapeutic relationship should be close and personal. Participants had ideas about the benefits (a healing therapeutic relationship, personal and interpersonal changes) and the barriers (self‐stigma and public stigma, difficulty revealing, need to solve problems on own, cost) associated with seeking therapy, and they disliked the idea of being diagnosed. In contrast with participants who were securely attached, those who were insecurely attached more often wanted a professional therapeutic relationship, wanted the therapist to ask questions, mentioned fewer benefits to therapy, and thought that they would have difficulty disclosing to a therapist. Discussion: Implications for changing attitudes about psychotherapy and improving training programs for practitioners are discussed.

ATTACHMENT AND ALLIANCE IN THE TREATMENT OF DEPRESSED, SEXUALLY ABUSED WOMEN

Depression among women with sexual abuse histories is less treatment responsive than in general adult samples. One contributor to poorer treatment outcomes may be abused women's difficulties in forming and maintaining secure relationships, as reflected in insecure attachment styles, which could also impede the development of a positive therapeutic alliance. The current study examines how attachment orientation (i.e. anxiety and avoidance) and development of the working alliance are associated with treatment outcomes among depressed women with histories of childhood sexual abuse. Seventy women seeking treatment in a community mental health center who had Major Depressive Disorder and a childhood sexual abuse history were randomized to Interpersonal Psychotherapy or treatment as usual. Greater attachment avoidance and weaker working alliance were each related to worse depression symptom outcomes; these effects were independent of the presence of comorbid Borderline Personality Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The effect of avoidant attachment on outcomes was not mediated by the working alliance. Further, working alliance had a stronger effect on depression outcomes in the Interpersonal Psychotherapy group. Understanding the influence of attachment style and the working alliance on treatment outcomes can inform efforts to improve the treatments for depressed women with a history of childhood sexual abuse.

Adult attachment and incidental memory for emotional words

A dual task of attachment priming and memory recognition was proposed to explore the effect of adult attachment styles on the incidental memory for emotional words. Subjects completed an attachment priming task which intends to activate internal working model of attachment by describing attachment-related scenes, and then an incidental memory recognition test of words which differ in emotional meaning and relevance of attachment styles. Signal detection theory was used to compare the discriminability index and decision criterion of emotional words in subjects of different attachment style. Results showed that subjects with secure attachment styles performed better than insecure-attached subjects in the memory recognition test, in terms of higher hit rate, lower false alarm rate, and higher discriminability index. We extended the influence of attachment styles on cognition to lower level of incidental memory, not just on higher cognitive level with emotional arousal as suggested by previous research.

Predicting marital satisfaction from the attachment styles and gender of a culturally and religiously homogenous population

The study investigated the influence of attachment styles and gender on marital satisfaction. One hundred and fifty participants (73 males and 77females) were randomly selected from members of a Christian organization, Ewet Offot and indigenous residents of Nwaniba Road, Uyo. Two instruments used were the Love (2001) Attachment Style Survey and Hudson (1982) Index of Marital Satisfaction adapted by Anene (1994) for Nigerian use. A 2x2 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for unequal sample sizes was used for data analysis.Two hypotheses were tested. The first hypothesis predicted a statistically significant difference in marital satisfaction between participants with secure and insecure attachment styles while the second hypothesis made a similar prediction in respect of gender. The first finding showed a significant difference between participants with secure and insecure attachment styles on maritalsatisfaction [F(1,146) = 360.21, P.05]. The interaction effect of attachment styles and gender was however found to be significant [F(1,146) = 5.00, P

Does attachment style influence social support or the other way around? A longitudinal study of Early Head Start mothers

Understanding the association between attachment style and social support is important for informing programs that seek to improve outcomes for families by intervening with either or both of these systems. The present study examines whether increasing levels of social support among 181 low-income, primarily African American mothers leads to changes in their self-reported attachment style, or whether attachment style influences the extent to which they perceive others as supportive. Results suggest that whereas scores on the avoidant attachment dimension were relatively stable and led to decreasing perceptions of social support over time, scores on the anxious dimension were more malleable, at least under conditions of low stress. For mothers who experienced fewer stressful life events, increasing social support led to decreased attachment anxiety over time. However, when life stress was high, social support had no such positive influence. Implications for the need to attend to mothers' attachment styles in providing appropriate and effective intervention are discussed.

Influence of Attachment Style on Major Psychological Capacities to Lead

ABSTRACT Addressing psychological literature's deficiency in research on the early development of leaders in everyday life (e.g., leaders in the workplace, leaders in social settings, leaders in organizational settings), this study assumed that central psychological capacities required for such leaders can be predicted and explained by J. Bowlby's (1969) attachment theory concerning developmental processes in infancy. The authors administered a series of questionnaires to 402 participants. The authors analyzed data by using structural equation modeling. Findings indicate a potential-to-lead construct that forms in infancy. The results fully supported the authors’ main arguments: that secure attachment style influences the potential to lead and that this capacity is essential for leadership as measured by leadership ranking.

Group Leadership and the Influence of Attachment Styles

Group Leadership and the Influence of Attachment Styles

What affects willingness to mentor in the future? An investigation of attachment styles and mentoring experiences

This study examined the influence of attachment styles and mentoring experiences on willingness to mentor in the future in a formal mentoring program in China. For both mentors and protégés, avoidance and anxiety dimensions of attachment styles and their interaction had a significant influence on willingness to mentor in the future. Mentoring experiences explained unique variance in willingness to mentor beyond attachment styles. Crossover analysis of matched mentor–protégé pairs showed that mentoring functions fully mediated the mentor avoidance – protégé willingness to mentor relationship. The interaction between protégé avoidance and anxiety was directly related to mentor willingness to mentor in the future. Directions for research and implications for managerial practice are provided.

Attachment Style, Marital Satisfaction, Commitment, and Communal Strength Effects on Relational Repair Message Interpretation among Remarrieds

This article examines the influence of attachment style and several relational variables on the interpretation of relational repair messages. Participants were 191 remarried individuals who completed questionnaires that measured marital satisfaction, attachment style, commitment, communal strength, and interpretations of hypothetical repair messages from their spouses with varying levels of equivocation. Interpretations were measured along the dimensions of honesty, competence, and politeness using Likert-type scales developed and successfully employed in previous research. Results of regression and MANOVA analyses found that, as predicted, each of the relational variables positively influenced repair message interpretation, and that attachment styles also influenced these interpretations. Results are discussed in terms of the need for relational repair research that makes use of broader predictive models and deals with both production and interpretation of repair messages.

Physiological evidence for repressive coping among avoidantly attached adults

Research suggests that the quality of childhood attachments to caregivers influences the development of capacities and strategies for emotion regulation. Avoidantly attached individuals are characterized by emotion-regulation strategies involving the suppression of negative thoughts and feelings. Psychophysiological research on repressive coping suggests that these strategies might be associated with patterns of heightened and escalating sympathetic nervous system reactivity in the absence of correspondingly heightened self-reported affect. The present study tested this hypothesis by subjecting 148 adults to psychological stressors and discussions of attachment-related issues while monitoring their skin conductance level (SCL). Attachment avoidance – but not anxiety – was associated with heightened SCL reactivity to all tasks, especially among women, as well as escalation in reactivity. Additionally, on one stressor avoidance was associated with greater disassociation between subjective and physiological responses. These results have implications for understanding the influence of attachment style on cognitive and physiological aspects of emotion regulation.

Attachment security and quality of life in atopic dermatitis

Attachment style is an important variable of influence on general and disease specific quality of life. Insecure attachment may go along with increased autonomic vulnerability and with compromised social support and coping resources. Patients with atopic dermatitis often report interactions of the status and severity of their disease with psychic wellbeing. It was the purpose of the present study to clarify the influence of attachment style and social support on the quality of life in probands with atopic dermatitis. We hypothesized that securely attached test persons with severe skin affection feel less constrained in their quality of life, because they may "buffer" strains from the disease more successfully due to better social support deriving from more satisfying relationships. We carried through a cross-sectional study on 124 probands with atopic dermatitis of varying severity, assessed with self report (Neurodermitis Severity Index, NSI) and in part by clinical dermatological ratings (NSI/SCORAD). Attachment style was captured with the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ), social support with the F-SOZU (K-22), and quality of life with the Skindex-29. We found slightly more insecurely attached individuals in the study sample than it was to be expected from representational healthy samples. Securely attached participants have no lower severity of their disease, but show a higher amount of social support. Irrespective of severity, securely attached persons feel less limited in their quality of life compared to insecurely attached participants. In their symptom based quality of life both feel equally limited. Severity predicts quality of life: contrary to our expectation of a buffering effect of attachment security this association is closer in securely attached probands. Suffering from atopic dermatitis may go along with more attachment insecurity. The unexpected stronger association between severity and quality of life in securely attached individuals can be interpreted as a more direct reaction to their skin condition in the absence of other encumbering factors (relationship problems etc.).

Effects of attachment styles on the experience of equity in heterosexual couples relationships.

Employing one correlational and two experimental studies, this paper examines the influence of attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant) on a person's experience of equity in intimate relationships. While one experimental study employed a priming technique to stimulate the different attachment styles, the other involved vignettes describing fictitious characters with typical attachment styles. As the specific hypotheses about the single equity components have been developed on the basis of the attachment theory, the equity ratio itself and the four equity components (own outcome, own input, partner's outcome, partner's input) are analyzed as dependent variables. While partners with a secure attachment style tend to describe their relationship as equitable (i.e., they give and take extensively), partners who feel anxious about their relationship generally see themselves as being in an inequitable, disadvantaged position (i.e., they receive little from their partner). The hypothesis that avoidant partners would feel advantaged as they were less committed was only supported by the correlational study. Against expectations, the results of both experiments indicate that avoidant partners generally see themselves (or see avoidant vignettes) as being treated equitably, but that there is less emotional exchange than is the case with secure partners. Avoidant partners give and take less than secure ones.

Self-views in close relationships: the influence of attachment styles.

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that self models (positive vs. negative) determine whether temporarily accessible information changes one's self-evaluations. Regularly dating participants were led to review selectively their relationship-related behaviours which had either favourable or unfavourable implications for their close relationships. Based on the four-group model of attachment (secure, preoccupied, fearful, and dismissing; Bartholomew, 1990), attachment orientations were either assessed (Study 1) or activated by a guided imagination task (Study 2). The results show that participants holding a negative model of the self were more susceptible to variations in accessible information than those holding a positive model of the self. Their self-evaluations shifted in the positive direction when positive information was salient and in the negative direction when negative information was salient. Secure and dismissing (positive self model) participants were largely unaffected by the salience manipulation. The results are discussed in light of theories that propose a dynamic self-concept.

Repressive Coping Style and Adult Romantic Attachment Style: is there a relationship?

Abstract Two studies aimed to explore whether individuals who possess a repressive coping style exhibit an avoidant style of adult romantic attachment. The Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MC) and the Bendig version of the Taylor Manifest Anxiety (MAS) scale were used to select a repressive coping style group (repressors: high MC, low MAS), three extreme-scoring control groups: low anxious (low MC, low MAS); high anxious (low MC, high MAS) defensive high anxious (high MC, high MAS), and an overall nonrepressor group. Two measures of romantic adult attachment were used: a categorical measure [Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualised as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 52 , 511–524] and a dimensional measure [Romantic Adult Attachment Style Questionnaire, RAASQ; Simpson, J. A. (1990). Influence of attachment styles on romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 59 , 971–980]. Repressors scored significantly higher on the avoidant attachment scale of the RAASQ than all nonrepressor groups, although this result was not found with the categorical measure. The results indicate that repressors report higher levels of romantic avoidant attachment than nonrepressors, and also highlight the importance of the type of measure used to elicit information from repressors. These findings suggest a potential link between the repressive coping literature and adult attachment literature.

Fewer Bricks, Better Buildings

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