Maladaptive daydreaming describes excessive fantasy activity that interferes with an individual's life. Surprisingly, the precursors of maladaptive daydreaming and its role in excessive involvement in virtual worlds have been scarcely investigated. In the current study, we examined the relationships among attachment styles, maladaptive daydreaming, and problematic social media use (PSMU) in a sample of community-dwelling adults. Eight hundred seventy-seven participants between 18 and 68 years old were recruited via an online survey and asked to fill out self-reported measures on attachment styles, maladaptive daydreaming, and PSMU. Mediation analyses showed that maladaptive daydreaming is a significant mediator in the relationships between preoccupied and fearful attachment styles and PSMU, suggesting that maladaptive daydreaming partly explains the established link between insecure attachment styles and excessive use of social media. Individuals with PSMU fostered by maladaptive daydreaming may benefit from clinical interventions that promote the use of adaptive regulatory strategies to develop feelings of security and self-confidence that may serve to reduce the excessive involvement in social media.

Insecure attachment is linked to mentalizing difficulties and psychopathology. The current study aimed to examine if failures in mentalization, as observed in the form of uncertainty about mental states, mediated the relationship between attachment styles and global psychopathology in a group of 812 adults (66.5% females) from the community. Participants completed measures on attachment styles, uncertainty about mental states, and clinical symptoms. The authors found that uncertainty about mental states was a partial mediator of the associations between attachment styles and psychopathology. Furthermore, the findings supported the role of secure attachment in protecting from mentalization failures and psychopathology; on the contrary, increased scores on attachment styles involving a negative view of the self (preoccupied and fearful attachment styles) predicted high levels of uncertainty about mental states and psychopathology. Accordingly, clinicians may wish to promote mentalizing abilities in individuals who display a negative view of the self embedded in their attachment styles.

No abstract