Your Love Lifts Me Higher! The Energizing Quality of Secure Relationships

Abstract

Three studies tested and confirmed the hypothesis that secure attachment relationships lead to feelings of security and energy, as well as willingness to explore. In Study 1, priming a secure attachment relationship increased felt security and energy. In Studies 2 and 3, felt energy mediated the effect of (primed) secure attachment relationships on willingness to explore. In Study 3, the effect of (primed) secure attachment relationships on felt energy and willingness to explore was independent of general positive affect. Secure attachments energize partners, thus enabling exploration.

Energized by love: Thinking about romantic relationships increases positive affect and blood glucose levels

“…The finding that partner reflection yields eustress responses also fits with research linking happy, secure relationships to psychological energy and desire for exploration (see Luke et al., ). It seems that, when happy, partner reflection triggers physiological outcomes consistent with the idea that romantic partners are secure bases, inspiring people to explore their environment.…”

“…In particular, we hypothesized that reflecting on relationship elements involving romantic love would trigger bodily stress responses, consistent with prior research (e.g., Loving et al., ). We further predicted that these responses would reflect eustress (stress linked with positive affect) as opposed to distress (stress linked with negative affect), given the established associations between romantic love and positive and euphoric feelings (see Bianchi‐Demicheli et al., ; Kim & Hatfield, ; Luke et al., ).…”

“…Consistent with this idea, women experiencing higher passion who are subliminally primed with their partner's name (vs. a friend's name or control) respond more quickly to positive emotion words than neutral words in a subsequent lexical decision task (Bianchi‐Demicheli, Grafton, & Ortigue, ). Additionally, other studies suggest that reminding people in long‐term relationships of their love for their partner can be uplifting, filling them with psychological vitality and leading them to be more open to exploration (Luke, Sedikides, & Carnelley, ). Any stress responses associated with the experience of romantic love, therefore, may reflect eustress rather than distress.…”

“…Guided by findings indicating that love triggers SAM (e.g., Fisher, 1998) and HPA (e.g., Loving et al, 2009) pathway responses, and that activation of these systems mobilizes blood glucose (Sapolsky et al, 2000), we hypothesized that individuals who reflected on their current romantic partner would exhibit higher blood glucose levels over time compared to individuals who reflected on their morning routine or an opposite-sex friend. Additionally, because love can be experienced psychologically as positive and energizing (Luke et al, 2012), we also predicted that increases in glucose would be uniquely associated with positive affect for those thinking about their romantic partner.…”

Enhancing the “Broaden and Build” Cycle of Attachment Security in Adulthood: From the Laboratory to Relational Contexts and Societal Systems

“…For example, Green and Campbell [34] asked people to read generic sentences describing secure or insecure close relationships and found that a secure prime, compared with an insecure prime, led to greater endorsement of exploration-related behavior and greater liking for novel pictures. Moreover, Luke, Sedikides, and Carnelley [35] found that security priming, as compared with neutral priming, increased both vitality and willingness to learn and that these effects could not be explained by positive effect. Additionally, Mikulincer, Shaver, and Rom [36] found that implicit exposure to the name of a security provider (nominated in the WHOTO) led to better performance on a creative problem-solving task than implicit exposure to the names of others who were not nominated as attachment figures.…”