Meeting the Expectations of Your Heritage Culture: Links between Attachment Style, Intragroup Marginalisation, and Psychological Adjustment

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Do insecurely-attached individuals perceive greater rejection from their heritage culture? Few studies have examined the antecedents and outcomes of this perceived rejection – termed intragroup marginalisation – in spite of its implications for the adjustment of cultural migrants to the mainstream culture. The present study investigated whether anxious and avoidant attachment orientations among cultural migrants were associated with greater intragroup marginalisation and, in turn, with lower subjective well-being and flourishing, and higher acculturative stress. Anxious attachment was associated with heightened intragroup marginalisation from friends and, in turn, with increased acculturative stress; anxious attachment was also associated with increased intragroup marginalisation from family. Avoidant attachment was linked with increased intragroup marginalisation from family and, in turn, with decreased subjective well-being

Adult attachment style across individuals and role-relationships: Avoidance is relationship-specific, but anxiety shows greater generalizability

A generalisability study examined the hypotheses that avoidant attachment, reflecting the representation of others, should be more relationship-specific (vary across relationships more than across individuals), while attachment anxiety, reflecting self-representation, should be more generalisable across a person’s relationships. College students responded to 6-item questionnaire measures of these variables for 5 relationships (mother, father, best same-gender friend, romantic partner or best opposite-gender friend, other close person), on 3 (N = 120) or 2 (N = 77) occasions separated by a few weeks. Results supported the hypotheses, with the person variance component being larger than the relationship-specific component for anxiety, and the opposite happening for avoidance. Anxiety therefore seems not to be as relationship-specific as previous research suggested. Possible reasons for discrepancies between the current and previous studies are discussed

An experimental evaluation of the State Adult Attachment Measure: the influence of attachment primes on the content of state attachment representations

Attachment theory predicts cross-contextual stability of attachment representations, but research findings are rather mixed. Recently, it has been suggested that these mixed findings reflect the existence of both state and trait attachment components. The development of the State Adult Attachment Measure (SAAM) has enabled an investigation of this hypothesis. The current study aimed to evaluate the extent to which the SAAM is a useful instrument for studying such state attachment hypotheses. For this purpose, a two-week longitudinal study investigated whether the manipulation of the temporal accessibility of different attachment contents activates different within-person attachment representations. The impact of attachment primes before re-administering the SAAM was investigated in 268 participants. Results showed that the SAAM was meaningfully related to evaluations of self and attachment figures. Moreover, activation of different attachment contexts influenced state attachment towards partners as primary attachment figures. The results provide support for the SAAM as a measure of state attachment towards partners, but data on parent attachment were less straightforward. In all, the current study provided support for contemporary models of attachment as comprising both trait-like stability and context-dependent variability in attachment state

The relationship between adult attachment and coping with brain tumour:The mediating role of social support

From Crossref via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: epub 2019-12-26, issued 2019-12-26Article version: Vo

The Nature of Attachment Relationships and Grief Responses in Older Adults: An Attachment Path Model of Grief

BACKGROUND: Various researchers have theorized that bereaved adults who report non-secure attachment are at higher risk of pathological grief. Yet past findings on avoidant attachment representations and grief have yielded limited and contradictory outcomes. Little research has been conducted with older adults to identify the psychological processes that mediate between self-reported attachment representations and the patterns of grief. OBJECTIVE: To examine the impacts of avoidant attachment and anxious attachment dimensions on emotion and non-acceptance, in response to the loss of a conjugal partner, and the mediating effect of yearning thoughts. DESIGN: Men (N = 21) and women (N = 68) aged 60 years and above who had lost a partner within the last 12 to 72 months were invited to participate. Participants rated their levels of yearning thoughts about the deceased, emotions and non-acceptance on the Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (TRIG-Present), and their type and level of general romantic attachment on the Experiences In Close Relationship questionnaire (ECR). RESULTS: Structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated that individuals who reported higher levels of avoidant attachment reported less emotional responses and less non-acceptance. SEM also showed that individuals who reported higher levels of anxious attachment reported greater emotional responses and greater non-acceptance. SEM further indicated that these relationships were mediated by yearning thoughts. CONCLUSION: People adopt different grief coping patterns according to their self-reported attachment representations, with the nature of their yearning thoughts influencing the process. Grief therapy may be organized according to individual differences in attachment representations

Cultural Aspects of Attachment Anxiety, Avoidance, and Life Satisfaction: Comparing the US and Turkey

Attachment insecurity can interfere with the experience, expression, and benefits of positive emotions, including happiness and life satisfaction (LS). However, both the pattern and effects of insecure attachment orientations on LS vary across cultures. Considering that attachment anxiety is higher in collectivist cultures and attachment avoidance is relatively high in individualistic cultures, the present chapter elaborates on the idea that anxious and avoidant attachment would have varying effects on LS in individualistic and collectivistic cultural contexts. Study 1 (N = 2456) involved a community sample of married couples in Turkey and demonstrated that attachment avoidance was a stronger predictor of LS than attachment anxiety in Turkish collectivist context. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that the roles of attachment anxiety and avoidance in predicting LS would vary between collectivistic and individualistic cultures. Mothers’ adult attachment dimensions and LS in Turkey (N = 89) and the United States (N = 91) were measured. As expected, results indicated that LS was predicted only by attachment avoidance in Turkey and by attachment anxiety in the United States. These findings are in line with the cultural fit hypothesis, suggesting that culturally incongruent attachment orientations have a stronger negative impact on individuals’ LS