PR Shaver, M Mikulincer - Attachment and Human Development, 2002

1. This increases likelihood of survival/eventual reproduction.
2. Infants are born w/ tendency to seek proximity to others who can care for them, b/c they require a long period of protection.
3. Active throughout the life span manifested in thoughts & behaviors of seeking proximity to attachment figures in times of need.
4. During infancy primary caregivers (mom &/or dad) are main attachment figures. During adulthood it could a number of different types of people (friends, parents, etc) or groups & symbolic figures (Ex. G-d). Context-tailored attachment figures are for support only in certain situations (Ex. Teachers in school context). Primary attachment figures- the figures you maintain long-term & strong affectional bonds w/.

1. Attachment figures should be responsive to the individual’s proximity-seeking.
2. The attachment figure should provide a safe haven (help alleviate their stress, support & comfort them).
3. The attachment figure should provide a secure base that allows the individual to explore & develop their own capacities while feeling confident that support is there if needed.

1. Processing of info about person-environment relationship.
2. Monitoring & appraisal of attachment figure’s responses to our proximity-seeking
3. Monitoring & appraisal of survival ability of chosen behaviors w/in context so that effective adjustment can be made.

1. Working models of others: Representations of attachment figures’ responses
2. Working models of the self: Representations of the self’s efficacy & value

1. Episodic memories of the interaction sequence
2. Declarative knowledge about the attachment figure’s responses
3. Knowledge about efficacy of our responses
4. Procedural knowledge about how one responds to such situations & deals w/ different sources of stress.

1. Secure: Hold accessible working models of successful proximity-seeking attempts & security attainment. Strange situation: They exhibit distress when during their separation from the mother in the strange situation, but recover quickly & continue to explore the environment w/ interest. They greet their mother w/ joy when reunited & respond positively to being held & they initiate contact. Home observations: These mothers are emotionally available in times of need & are responsive to proximity-seeking behavior.
2. Avoidant: They hold accessible attachment-system deactivation working models. Strange situation: They show little distress when mother leaves & avoid her when she comes back. Home observations: The mother is emotionally rigid, angry & rejecting of their infant’s proximity-seeking attempts.
3. Anxious/ambivalent: Hold accessible attachment-system hyperactivation working models. Strange situation: Extremely distressed during separation & show conflictual responses towards the mother upon their reunion (ex. They may cling to her then angrily resist comforting, thus the reason they call them ambivalent). Home observations: Lack of harmony b/w the mother & infant & lack of caregiver’s consistent responsiveness.
4. Disorganized/disoriented: Recently added, characterized by odd behavior during separation & reunion episodes & random fluctuations b/w signs of anxiety & avoidance. Ex. They may lie face down on the floor w/o moving (not a strategy). Most likely due to disorganized & unpredictable behavior on the part of the attachment figures who research shows are likely to be suffering from unresolved losses/attachment-related traumas.

1. Secure: Free & autonomous w/ respect to attachment.
2. Dismissing of attachment: the interviewee dismisses the importance of attachment relationships or idealizes the importance them & provides no clear examples to support his/her characterizations. Parallel w/ avoidant.
3. Preoccupied w/ attachment: The interviewee is entangled in still-intense worries & conflicted feelings about parents, can easily retrieve attachment-related memories, but has trouble coherently discussing them w/o anxiety. Parallel to anxious.

1. Expensive to administer & score
2. Deals almost exclusively w/ memories of child-parent relationships.

1. Hazan & Shaver for studies on romantic attachment: Original form consisted of 3 brief descriptions of feelings & behaviors in close relationships intended to parallel Ainsworth’s 3 types of infants. They were asked which of the 3 best characterized them in close relationships.

• In the 2-dimensional attachment-style space, what was called “secure” is now a region in which both anxiety & avoidance are low. This region is defined by a sense of attachment security, comfort w/ closeness & interdependence & reliance on the primary attachment strategy in times of need.
• What was once called “anxious style” refers to a region in which there is high anxiety & low avoidance. This region is defined by a lack of attachment security, a strong need for closeness, worries about relationships & reliance on hyperactivating strategies.
• What was once called “avoidant style” refers to a region in which avoidance is high. Region defined by lack of attachment security, compulsive self-reliance, preference for emotional distance from others & reliance on deactivating strategies.

1. Primary strategy: Monitors & appraises threatening events. Responsible for attachment system activation.
2. Strategy related to attainment of sense of attachment security: Monitors & appraises attachment-figure availability. Responsible for individual differences in sense of attachment security & psychological consequences of secure attachment style.

1. Both physical & psychological threats & both threats related to & unrelated to attachment can trigger the system.
2. Activation depends on the subjective appraisal of threats.
3. These cognitive processes can occur at preconscious levels.
4. Inner sources of threat (ex. Thoughts, imagery) can activate the system.

1. Internal representations of security-enhancing attachment figures
2. Episodic memories of supportive & comforting interactions w/ these figures
3. Thoughts related to proximity, love & support
4. Proximity-seeking goals

1. Optimistic beliefs about distress management
2. Trusting others’ availability & good will in times of need
3. Sense of self-efficacy in dealing w/ threats

1. Acknowledgement & display of distress
2. Engagement in instrumental problem-solving
3. Seeking closeness & support

1. Active attempts of removing source of distress
2. Managing the problematic situation
3. Restoring emotional equanimity w/o creating negative socio-emotional side effects.

1. Impaired ability to regulate negative emotions leading to intense distress.
2. Could lead to cognitive disorganization & even psychopathology (ex. personality disorders)
3. Strong depressive reactions following actual or potential interpersonal losses.
4. Mood problems (ex. anger outbursts, impulsive behaviors)

1. Their dependent roles impair ability to form mature reciprocal relationship.
2. Chronic frustration due to unfulfilled need for demonstrations of love/commitment.
3. Catastrophic appraisal of interpersonal conflicts.
4. Partner could feel abused by their hypervigilance, distrust & suspicion. All of this may lead the partner to distance themselves from the person, intensifying the person’s insecurities (though a securely attached partner can be more tolerant of this, thus reducing relational tensions).

1. Denial of attachment needs: through active attempts to distance oneself from their partner & avoiding interactions that demand emotional involvement. Also suppressing attachment-related thoughts that imply a sense of closeness. Suppression of thoughts/emotions of rejection, loss, separation, abandonment.
2. Excessive self-reliance
3. Downplaying threats: reluctance to confront relational tensions/conflicts & unwillingness to deal w/ partner’s distress, need for proximity & security.
4. Blocking monitoring of attachment-figure availability

1. Negative beliefs about relationship partner being source of protection
2. Positive beliefs about self being able to deal w/ threats, heightened perceptions of self-efficacy.

1. Defensive projection- inhibited appraisal of negative aspects of the self.
2. Repressed memories of personal failure
3. Conscious sense of high self-esteem
4. Self-reliant attitude which requires enhancement of self worth

1. Negative beliefs about others & diverting attention away from others’ positive aspects
2. Overestimation of self-other dissimilarity

1. Suppressed distress stays unresolved & can lead to sense of inadequacy in coping w/ stress, a marked decline in functioning, constricted affect & “avoidance-related” post-traumatic symptoms.
2. Though they suppress their distress, it can be manifested through somatic & sleep disorders & other health problems.
3. The negative attitude towards close relationships can lead to feelings of hostility, loneliness, detachment & estrangement from others.

1. Person is emotionally detached from the partner forming superficial relationships that lack affection & intimacy.
2. Not resolving conflicts can lead to the partner feeling irritated & resentful.
3. Partner may feel frustrated & dissatisfied due to constant rejection of intimacy & non-responsiveness to their signs of distress.

1. Priming: They subliminally exposed participants to threat-related or neutral words to check accessibility of proximity themes.
2. Then in a lexical decision task they had to press a computer button to indicate whether strings of letters they saw was a word or not.
3. Priming w/ a threat word lead to faster identification of proximity-related words (words w/ positive attachment connotations) among all participants regardless of their attachment style, suggesting that everyone underwent preconscious system activation.

1. Participants filled out a WHOTO scale to identify names of people who served as security-enhancing attachment figures. In addition they provided names of close people who weren’t listed in the WHOTO scale, names of people they know but weren’t close to (known persons) & names of people they didn’t know at all.
2. Then they performed either a lexical decision task or a Stroop color-naming task to test accessibility according to their reaction time when they were first exposed to either a threat prime (the word failure or separation) or a neutral word (hat, umbrella).
3. They found that threat contexts activated mental representations of attachment figures & nobody else. After subliminal priming of threat words (both attachment related & unrelated) they identified names of attachment figures in the lexical decision task faster while reaction times for naming the colors of the names of attachment figures in the stroop task was slower.

1. Had greater access to thoughts about proximity, love & names of attachment figures only in threatening context.
2. Their reactions to threat primes were limited to attachment themes w/ positive affective connotations.
3. They also had slow access to words of separation & rejection under both neutral & threatening conditions.

1. Showed heightened accessibility of attachment themes & figures in both threatening & non-threatening contexts.
2. Showed heightened access to attachment related threats (ex. separation).

1. Generally their pattern of access to attachment themes was similar to secure people’s.
2. Attachment-related worries were relatively inaccessible even following subliminal priming w/ the word “death”.
3. Attachment-related worried did become accessible when there was an extra cognitive load (an additional cognitively demanding task).
4. Avoidance wasn’t associated w/ the lexical decision reaction times for attachment figures’ names when the threat prime wasn’t attachment-related, the word “failure”, but when it was “separation” avoidance was negatively related to the reaction times of the names. In other words, preconscious activation of the attachment system is automatically inhibited when separation is the threatening issue.

1. New IDF recruits were randomly divided into small groups & performed 3 group tasks.
2. Then external observers rated their instrumental functioning.
3. The soldiers then filled out Smith, Coates & Smith’s group attachment scale.
4. They found that high cohesive groups can contextually activate representations of attachment security while anxiety & avoidance scores were associated w/ poorer instrumental functioning across the groups. The higher the cohesion of the group, the weaker was the association b/w a participant’s attachment anxiety & his/her instrumental functioning. Group cohesion did not however moderate the negative association b/w attachment avoidance & instrumental functioning. Deactivating strategies continue to be used even when actual/symbolic attachment figures are available.

1. They found that people who classified themselves as securely attached conceptualized their love experiences in terms of the optimistic expectations & main goal of security-based strategies- formation of intimate & supportive relationships.
2. They reported that their love relationships were friendly, warm, trusting & supportive.
3. They emphasized intimacy as the core feature of these relationships
4. They believed in the existence of romantic love & the possibility of maintaining intense love over a long time period.

1. Described their romantic relationships as low in warmth, lacking friendly interactions & low in emotional involvement.
2. They believed love fades w/ time.

1. Search for extremely close relationships
2. Exaggerated monitoring of attachment-figure unavailability
3. Intensification of negative emotions
4. Described romantic relationships in terms of obsession & passion, desire for union & proneness to fall in love quickly.
5. Characterized lovers as untrustworthy, non-supportive, reported jealousy & anger towards them & fears about abandonment/rejection.

1. Main goal: Proximity-seeking.
2. Trust-related goal: Intimacy was most important
3. Sense of closeness to partner: Emphasized impact of trust-validation/violation episodes
4. Showed heightened access to thoughts about intimacy in trust-related context (in lexical decision task)
5. Had faster access to trust-validation episodes in their current relationship. Didn’t have ready access to trust-violation episodes. This shows that they use suppression of memories that raise doubts about a partner’s good will & dismiss trust-violation events. This suggests attachment security is related to forgiveness.

1. Main goal: Attainment of sense of security
2. Trust-related goal: Security seeking
3. Episodes in which partner behaved responsively were appraised as contributing to security feelings & betrayal was appraised as hurting these feelings
4. Showed heightened access to thoughts about security in trust-related context
5. Worried & ruminated during trust betrayal episodes & attached high importance to it.

1. Main goal: Attainment of sense of control
2. Trust-related goal: Control seeking
3. Emphasized impact of trust-validation/violation episodes on control they exert over partners’ behavior
4. Showed heightened access to thoughts about control in trust-related context
5. Increased their distance from partner’s following betrayal of trust & dismissed importance of it. However, lexical decision times shoed they experienced activation of the word “worry” indicating their fragile nature.

1. Reported lowest levels of threat appraisal
2. Reported highest levels of perceived self-efficacy
3. Rely on the secure base script- support seeking & problem-focused coping.
4. Stronger tendency to seek emotional & instrumental support, helping them cope.
5. Secure mothers of healthy babies or babies w/ a mild CHD, used support-seeking strategies, but when it was severe, they used both support-seeking & distancing. This shows their flexibility to use distancing coping when the stress could impair functioning.
6. Secure POWs used symbolic proximity w/ internalized attachment figures to cope w/ captivity.

1. Appraised events in highly threatening terms
2. Self-efficacy perceived as low.
3. Emotion-focused coping, intensifying distress.
4. Instrumental conversation worsened state of anxious individuals.
5. Former POWs mainly remembered their pain, suffering & feelings of helplessness in captivity.

1. Depends on contextual characteristic of threat. Ex. Avoidant mothers of healthy infants/those w/ a mild CHD, held optimistic appraisals of motherhood tasks. Mothers of infants w/ severe CHD appraised it as more threatening & viewed themselves less able to deal w/ it than secure mothers. They relied on distance coping only when their kids had a mild CHD or were healthy. They relied more on emotion-focused coping when it was serious.
2. Distancing coping, withdrawal from source of distress.
3. Emotional conversation worsened their affective state.
4. Former POWs were emotionally shallow & provided little info about their emotional experiences during captivity.

1. Participants performed cognitive tasks & received either failure feedback or no feedback.
2. Then they reported on frequency of task-related, ruminative worries experienced during the experiment. Anxious experienced more ruminative worries even after no feedback. Just having to solve a cognitive problem triggered their hyperactivating strategies.

1. Heightened fear of death at both conscious & unconscious levels as well as heightened accessibility of death-related thoughts even when no death reminder was present.
2. Attribute their fear of death to potential loss of social identity (ex. people will forget me).
3. Don’t exhibit increase in desire for proximity or symbolic immortality following death reminders. They rely on “culturally derived defenses”- adherence to cultural worldview & defensive enhancement of self-esteem. Way for them to gain more love & acceptance from the group.

1. Their suppression of death-related thoughts was manifested in their dissociation b/w conscious claims (low-levels of self-reported fear of death) & unconscious dynamics (high death-related anxiety on projective tests).
2. Tend to attribute death fears to not knowing what will be after death (threatened sense of control & self-reliance).
3. As anxious, they also don’t exhibit increase in desire for proximity or symbolic immortality following death reminders & rely on “culturally derived defenses”. For them the major issues may be self-reliance & control, which benefit from the defensive enhancement of self-esteem.

1. Participants wrote continuously about whatever thoughts & feelings they were experiencing while being asked to suppress thoughts about a romantic partner leaving them for someone else.
2. In the 1^st experiment, ability to suppress these thoughts was assessed by the number of times separation-related thoughts appeared in participants’ stream-of-consciousness writing following the suppression period.
3. In the 2^nd experiment, suppression ability was assessed by level of participants’ physiological arousal during the suppression task. The lower the arousal, the higher the ability to suppress distress-eliciting thoughts about separation.
4. Avoidance: Greater ability to suppress separation-related thoughts & lower skin conductance during the task.
5. Anxiety: Poorer ability to suppress thoughts following suppression task & higher skin conductance during the task.

1. Participants listened to an interview about attachment-related threats & were later asked to recall details of the interview either (1) immediately, (2) or at various delays of b/w � hour to 21 days.
2. Forgetting curves showed that over time avoidants initially encoded less info about the interview. They also showed that both avoidants & those low on avoidance forgot the encoded info at the same rate.

1. Participants were asked to imagine being separated from a loved partner & then to perform a word completion task that tapped the accessibility of death-related thoughts.
2. Anxious: reacted to separation reminders w/ heightened accessibility of death- related thoughts. This was particularly so when the imagined separation was long-lasting or final or when it involved a romantic partner. This relates to Bowlby’s idea that attachment system is supposed to protect vulnerable person from death.

1. Help optimistic expectations of partner’s responses during anger episodes & made reality-attuned appraisals of partner’s intentions during these episodes.
2. Tended to attribute hostility to another person & to react to him/her w/ anger feelings only when there were clear contextual cues about hostile intent.
3. “Anger of hope”: Recollections of anger-eliciting episodes reflected functional attempts to rectify an undesirable relationship problem.
4. Tended to use constructive goals to repair relationship w/ the instigator of anger.
5. Experienced more positive than negative affect following anger episodes.

1. Held negative expectations of partner’s responses during anger episodes & tended to make undifferentiated negatively-biased appraisals of partner’s intentions.
2. Attributed hostility to their partner & reacted to them w/ angry feelings even when there were ambiguous cues about hostile intent.
3. Their recollections of anger episodes reflected hyperactivation of distress which drew resources away from adaptive coping.

1. Participants were randomly assigned to a negative affect condition (reading article about an accident) or a neutral affect condition.
2. In the 1^st experiment, participants were to then read a booklet w/ positive & negative headlines & then w/o warning were asked to recall as many headlines as possible.
3. In the 2^nd experiment, participants were asked to list causes of a hypothetical negative relationship event. (“your partner disclosed something you asked him to keep secret”)

1. Participants were asked to recall early experiences in which they felt anger, sadness, anxiety, or happiness. Time for retrieving a memory was taken to measure cognitive accessibility. Participants also rated intensity of dominant & non-dominant emotions in each recalled event.
2. Avoidant: Exhibited lowest accessibility of sad & anxious memories. Rated dominant emotions & non-dominant as less intense.
3. Anxious: Greatest access to painful memory & longer to retrieve happy memories. Reported experiencing intense dominant & non-dominant emotions in anxiety, sad & anger memories.
4. Secure: Fell in between, but took more time to retrieve negative emotional memories than happy ones. Rated dominant emotions as much more intense than non-dominant allowing them to process negative memories w/o being overwhelmed by distress.

1. Ready access to both positive & negative self-attributes
2. Possess a highly differentiated & integrated self-organization
3. Have relatively small discrepancies b/w domains & standpoints of the self.

1. Have access to negative self-attributes only.
2. Scored low in differentiation & integration of self attributes
3. Showed a pervasiveness of negative affect in the sorting of these attributes.

1. Had poor access to negative self-attributes
2. Showed low integration b/w these attributes & other self-aspects

1. Participants were exposed to experimentally-induced threatening or neutral situations & appraisals of self were measured w/ self-report scales & other subtler cognitive techniques (reaction times for trait recognition).
2. Secure: No notable bias in their self-appraisals.
3. Avoidant: Reacted to threats w/ suppression of negative self-attribute & self-inflation. Avoidant people’s self-inflation bias is intended to convince other people of the strength of the avoidant self. They attribute failure to less internal causes.
4. Anxious: Reacted to threats w/ self-devaluation (“hopelessness-depressive” pattern of attribution). Anxious people’s self-devaluation bias is to elicit others’ love & compassion.

1. 1^st session: participants generated actual-self traits & unwanted-self traits.
2. 2^nd session: Devoted to assessing impressions of hypothetical people, ease of retrieving memories of actual familiar people & inferences about the learned features of hypothetical people.
3. Avoidant: Projected unwanted traits of the self onto others. They could easily retrieve an example of a known person whose traits resembled those of their unwanted self & make faulty inferences that traits taken from their unwanted self were among the features they learned about a target person whose description resembled their unwanted self-traits.
4. Anxious: Projected traits of their actual self onto others. They were likely to perceive traits that defined their actual self in an unknown person, easily retrieve an example of a known person whose traits resembled their actual-self traits & make faulty inferences that traits taken from their actual self were found among features they learned about a target person whose description resembled their actual-self traits.
5. Secure: Their representations of others were unbiased by projective mechanisms.

1. Higher a person’s sense of chronic attachment security, the weaker his hostile responses to a variety of outgroups.
2. Different experimental priming techniques that momentarily raised the sense of attachment security were found to eliminate hostile responses to outgroups.
3. Sense of attachment security reduced threats elicited by the encounter w/ outgroup members rendered hostile responses towards them unnecessary.

1. Different priming techniques that momentarily heighten the sense of attachment security were found to improve participants’ mood reports during the experimental session.
2. Some of these priming techniques tend to infuse even formerly neutral stimuli w/ positive affect w/o the intervention of participants’ awareness. Subliminal presentation of security-related pictures or the names of persons who were nominated by participants as security-enhancing attachment figures in the WHOTO scale led to higher liking ratings of unknown Chinese ideographs than subliminal presentation of neutral stimuli.
3. Subliminal activation the sense of attachment security led to more positive evaluations of neutral stimuli even in threat contexts & eliminated the detrimental effects these contexts generally had on the liking of neutral stimuli.
4. Anxious: Diary study: Participants filled out the Rochester Interaction Record every time they had a social interaction that lasted 10 minutes or longer, for one week. They found that attachment anxiety was associated w/ more negative affect during the reported interactions. They also found they have more negative emotions towards task-oriented groups.
5. Avoidance: Diary study of marital interactions: Attachment avoidance was associated w/ less intense emotional responses toward a spouse. Attachment avoidance was also associated w/ less intense positive feelings toward task-oriented groups.

1. Positively associated to well-being, inversely related to distress b/c of their high appraisal of their ability to cope w/ stress & their support-seeking.
2. No notable difference in mental health b/w neutral & stressful conditions.

1. Inversely associated w/ well-being & positively associated to distress due to their exaggerated threat appraisal & reliance on emotion-focused coping.
2. Positive association w/ depression, anxiety & hostility.
3. Reported higher levels of loneliness.
4. Related to measures of trait anxiety & neuroticism reflecting heightened worries & experience of emotions extremes & instability.
5. React to stress w/ heightened depression, anxiety, hostility, somatization & intrusive post-traumatic symptoms.
6. Adjustment problems: eating disorders, drinking behavior, use of drinking as maladaptive means to handle stress, psychoactive substance use & conduct disorders.
7. Maladaptive behaviors explained by hyperactivation, of negative feelings of depression & hostility.
8. Positive association w/ histrionic & dependent personality disorders.

1. Has differential associations w/ mental health, depending on the presence of stressful circumstances.
2. In community samples, weak associations have been found b/w attachment & mental health. However, in stressful circumstances, it’s been strongly associated w/ poor mental health due to their heightened reliance on distance coping.
3. Positive association w/ depression, anxiety & hostility.
4. Reported higher levels of loneliness.
5. React to stress w/ heightened hostility, somatic complaints, & avoidant post-traumatic symptoms.
6. Adjustment problems: as above w/ anxiety.
7. Maladaptive behaviors explained by deactivating that inhibits social interactions & close relations & impoverish their social competences & skills.
8. Positively associated w/ schizoid personality disorder.

1. Report highest level of relationship satisfaction.
2. Reported relatively high family cohesion & flexibility.

1. Scored relatively low on family cohesion & flexibility.
2. Recall more negative memories of group interactions

1. Report lowest level of relationship satisfaction.
2. Reported high family cohesion, but low family flexibility.
3. Recall more negative memories of group interactions

1. Hazan & Shaver proposed that work serves as one form of exploration in adulthood & found that secure individuals reported more positive attitudes toward work & were more satisfied w/ work activities.
2. Perception of work as an opportunity for learning & advancement.
3. Reported more curiosity-proneness.
4. Scored lower on measurements of cognitive closure.
5. Less likely to make judgments about a target person on the basis of early info & to ignore later data (primacy effect).
6. Less likely to make stereotype-based judgments.

1. Anxious & avoidants: Displayed fewer changes in their baseline perceptions of the partner after being exposed to expectation-incongruent info about the partner’s behavior. They were also less able to recall info.
2. Contextual heightening of sense of security increased cognitive openness & led people to revise their conceptions of a partner based on new evidence.

1. Participants were exposed to positive affect inductions (retrieving a happy memory or exposing them to a brief comedy film) or neutral affect conditions. They assessed their creative problem solving performance & the breadth of their mental categorization.
2. Secure: Typical beneficial effects of positive affect induction on creative problem solving & category breadth were observed only among secure. For them positive affect signals all is going well & it’s okay to let down their guard & explore.
3. Avoidant: No significant difference was found b/w positive-affect induction & neutral conditions. Dismissing negative affect is necessary to prevent attachment-system activation, while dismissal of positive affect may be necessary to prevent a loosening of cognitive strategies that can result in uncertainty & confusion & lead to system reactivation.
4. Anxious: Reacted to positive affect induction w/ impaired creativity & a narrowing of mental categories. For them, negative cognitions can begin w/ positive ones, b/c they may remember the down side of previous experiences that began positively & ended painfully.

1. Attachment anxiety & avoidance associated w/ low levels of altruistic empathy.
2. Contextual heightening of the sense of attachment security lead to increased reports of altruistic empathy whereas the contextual activation of attachment anxiety or avoidance reduces this.
3. Anxiety: Associated w/ more intense personal distress responses during encounter w/ others’ needs, b/c they’re so overwhelmed w/ self-related negative cognitions & emotions that they can’t offer assistance & comfort.
4. Avoidant: Emotionally detached while witnessing the other’s plight. Low endorsement of values of universalism (concern for welfare of all people) & benevolence (concern for welfare of close people).

1. Secure adolescents were openly to mutually satisfying sexual exploration in the context of a stable relationship & said they engaged in sex primarily to show love for their partner.
2. If both partners were secure initiation of sexual activity was mutual & physical closeness was enjoyed.
3. Attachment insecurity in adults contributed to the construction of sexual experience in negative & aversive terms.

1. Tended to remain emotionally detached even during heterosexual intercourse & scored low in scales of pleasure-related feelings & feelings of love towards the partner during sex.
2. Avoidants are often promiscuous. They are more likely to approve of casual sex. They may do “mate poaching” (trying to attract someone already in a relationship) & may be open to being poached by others in short-term, but not long term relationships.
3. Avoidant adolescents gave more self-defining, self enhancing reasons for having sex (ex. losing their virginity) than relationship-focused reasons.

1. Scored relatively high on scales of desire for partner’s emotional involvement during hetero intercourse & attempts to please/satisfy the partner during sex.
2. Anxious adolescents engage in sex to please partners, feel accepted & avoid abandonment.
3. Worry about losing their partners & had actually lost them more than less anxious people.
4. Do not succeed as much at “poaching”
5. Anxious women especially are more likely to have cosmetic surgery to make themselves more acceptable to potential relationship partners.

1. Positively associated w/ self-reports of sociability
2. Secure adolescents placed high value on both attachment goals (support, security) & affiliation goals (accomplishment of joint projects, having fun together) in their same-sex friendships.
3. Responsive to activation of both the attachment & affiliation systems & changed their goals in accordance w/ contextual cues that activated these systems.

1. Presented positive & negative attachment-related words in left & right visual fields of more & less avoidant people. They needed to make a quick decision about positivity & negativity.
2. Avoidant: Were less accurate than non-avoidants in detecting positive words when they were presented in the right hemisphere (frontal lobe which has been associated w/ negative affect & withdrawal).

1. Activation of other behavioral systems following attachment-figure availability results in the broadening of perspectives & capacities. Person learns to distance himself from attachment figures & explore on his own. Ex. Activation of the caregiving system allows them to learn how to help regulate others’ distress, which can be applied to their own distress.
2. “Expansion of the self”- inclusion of a partner’s resources & strengths in one’s self-concept.
3. “Transmuting internalization” (Kohut): internalization of regulatory functions that were originally performed by the attachment figure w/ the individual gradually acquiring the capacity to perform these functions autonomously.

1. Failure of attachment behaviors to achieve a positive result (closeness, love) & the receipt of punishment (inattention, rejection, anger) following these behaviors: The main threat here is proximity to the attachment figure. The individual becomes afraid of failure & punishment in future proximity-seeking attempts. Person is forced to adopt a strategy that minimizes the experience of non-reward/punishment (i.e. deactivating strategy).
2. Failure to co-regulate distress & the need to deal w/ threats alone: This is based on beliefs that attachment-figure unavailability or insufficiency leaves one helpless & vulnerable in a threatening world (ex. attachment figure may provide compulsive caregiving unrelated to their request/need for help then sometimes be unavailable, or punishment for engaging in autonomous activities). Therefore they try harder to attain a protective relationship (i.e. hyperactivating strategy). They seek even minimal signs of attachment-figure availability & become angry when they don’t see these signals.

1. Attachment strategies can be directed toward non-romantic partners.
2. Although all children are attachment to their primary caregivers romantic partners don’t necessarily function as attachment figures for each other. Formation of an attachment bond w/in a romantic relationship depends on both partners’ attachment styles & the extent to which one person serves attachment functions of safe haven & secure base for the other.
3. Even when partners function as attachment figure some dyadic interactions reflect the underlying action of other behavioral systems rather than the attachment system.

1. Attachment insecurity in adulthood was related to childhood experiences where at least one parent had a serious drinking problem.
2. Found that fearful avoidant attachment was related to childhood experiences of physical & sexual abuse.
3. Experiencing father’s death or parents divorcing early in childhood, was associated w/ self-reports of insecure attachment in adulthood.