Premium
Social flexibility and anxious attachment
Author(s) -
MILLER JUDI BEINSTEIN
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
personal relationships
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.81
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1475-6811
pISSN - 1350-4126
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6811.1996.tb00115.x
Subject(s) - psychology , flexibility (engineering) , ambivalence , attachment theory , insecure attachment , interpersonal communication , social anxiety , anxiety , social psychology , interpersonal relationship , developmental psychology , statistics , mathematics , psychiatry
Social flexibility was predicted to correlate with anxious/ambivalent attachment among individuals reminded of attachment‐related uncertainties. In the experiment reported here, subjects wrote about positive versus negative relationship events and then responded to a series of interpersonal conflict situations. Correlations between their responses and previously obtained attachment style scores provide supportive evidence for the predictions. The results suggest that anxious/ambivalent attachment may limit social flexibility by interfering with information processing in complex social situations. Results are discussed in terms of models of test anxiety.