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Uncovering and Overcoming Ambivalence: The Role of Chronic and Contextually Activated Attachment in Two‐Person Social Dilemmas
Author(s) -
McClure M. Joy,
Bartz Jennifer A.,
Lydon John E.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2012.00788.x
Subject(s) - ambivalence , psychology , priming (agriculture) , social psychology , dilemma , social dilemma , interpersonal communication , interpersonal relationship , anxiety , social anxiety , social relation , developmental psychology , psychiatry , philosophy , botany , germination , epistemology , biology
Objective Humans face an enduring conflict between desires to affiliate with others but to protect the self; effective social functioning often requires reconciling the resulting ambivalence between these motives. Attachment anxiety is characterized by chronically heightened concerns about affiliation and self‐protection; we investigated how anxious individuals’ chronic relational ambivalence affects interpersonal behavior. Method We used the P risoner's D ilemma and the A ssurance G ame to examine how the ambivalence associated with attachment anxiety affects pro‐social behavior, comparing chronic attachment anxiety with both chronic (Study 1; N = 94) and contextually activated (Study 2; N = 56) security. Results Chronic attachment anxiety was associated with ambivalent behavior in the social dilemma games. Specifically, the chronically anxious were mistrustfully inconsistent in their strategic choices and took more time to make these choices. However, priming the chronically anxious with attachment security decreased ambivalence by promoting more fluent cooperative behavior. Conclusions To our knowledge, these are the first studies to examine the effect of the anxiously attached's chronic relational ambivalence on pro‐social behavior. These findings illustrate that the simultaneous activation of affiliation and self‐protection can have interpersonal consequences, increasing mistrust and hesitance. Importantly, however, we were able to attenuate these effects by priming felt security.