Your responses guide me: Decreased attachment anxiety through an online relationship-building paradigm

Johnson, Ben; Bliwise, Nancy G.

doi:10.5964/ijpr.v11i1.254

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Showing that anxiety may bring about a predisposition to perceive the social environment of same-sex others competitively, is in line with the notion that experiencing childhood instability leads to the development of a fast life history strategy and attachment anxiety (Dunkel et al, 2016). On the same line, a recent study of virtual relationship building (Johnson & Bliwise, 2017), found that the effects of building a virtual relationship decreased attachment anxiety but had not effect in attachment security or avoidance, which is consistent with the notion that attachment anxiety is correlated with poor relational skills such as a competitive approach to same sex others.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 65%

Attachment and intrasexual competitiveness in committed individuals from chile

et al. 2019

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The present research examined the association between intrasexual competitiveness (as an adaptive feature of human mating) and adult attachment dimensions (which develop throughout ontogeny and are relatively stable patterns of relationship approaching in adulthood), postulating that the dimensions of attachment will be predictive of intrasexual competitiveness (the negative perception of same sex-others as potential mating rivals), but in particular attachment anxiety should be correlated to intrasexual competitiveness. We assessed intrasexual competitiveness and the attachment dimensions (closeness, dependence, anxiety, and avoidance) in a sample of 323 adult heterosexual men and women which were currently involved in a romantic relationship and were married or in a cohabiting living arrangement. The results show the expected prediction of intrasexual competitiveness by attachment anxiety, but not by any other adult attachment dimension, suggesting that individuals who develop attachment anxiety are characterized by increased same-sex rivalry and competitiveness, which may negatively affect their same-sex close relationships, in addition to other interpersonal realms.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 65%

Attachment and intrasexual competitiveness in committed individuals from chile

et al. 2019

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“…To test Hypothesis 3, multiple linear regression (with contrast coded [for categorical variables] and mean centered [for continuous variables] predictors) was utilized to evaluate interaction effects between attachment dimensions and sex in predicting TBQ scale scores. As attachment anxiety and avoidance were moderately correlated (Undergraduate: r = .31, , .001; MTurk: r = .67, p , .001), we controlled for the other dimension in these analyses, consistent with prior research (Johnson & Bliwise, 2017). We did not make alpha adjustments to the primary models, but used a Bonferroni alpha correction for the posthoc pairwise comparisons of stress response analyzed in the repeated measures ANOVA for interpretation of mean differences.…”

Section: Data Analysis Planmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attachment security predicts tend-and-befriend behaviors: A replication.

Hlay¹,

Johnson²,

Levy³

2023

Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences

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In 2000, Taylor and colleagues proposed the “tend-and-befriend” hypothesis, which posits that women utilize an alternative stress response to fight-or-flight, promoting the survival of themselves and their offspring (tend) through the formation of groups (befriend). Although there has been support for this hypothesis since, Levy and colleagues (2019) demonstrated that while sexes may differentially use tend-and-befriend behaviors, attachment orientation is a more robust predictor of these behaviors. In the current investigation, we aim to replicate Levy et al. (2019) using the same methodology with 2 unique samples: a university sample (N = 557) and an online global community sample (N = 300). Results support previous findings, such that across groups attachment anxiety positively predicts all 3 stress responses, and attachment avoidance negatively predicts tend/befriend responses, all independent of sex. We also found that, after accounting for general stress reactivity, tend-and-befriend response was associated with greater attachment security, unlike fight-or-flight responses. There were no consistent sex differences across the samples until after accounting for general stress reactivity, at which point women endorsed more flight response and men more fight response; however, women and men both endorsed being most likely to engage in tend/befriend behaviors during stress than other responses. Our findings, in addition to Levy et al. (2019), suggest that while sex differences in self-reported tend-and-befriend behaviors may exist, exploration within sex (an important oversight of previous research) indicates a different pattern of results. We found evidence that attachment orientation is a robust predictor of all forms of stress response, even after accounting for sex, indicating the importance of attachment behavior in stress responsivity and largely replicating previous results of Levy et al. (2019).

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