Suchergebnisse

Abstract

Purpose
This study examined whether female college students could accurately detect unknown male students' propensity for aggression/intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration in romantic relationships after viewing their online dating profile, as well as whether individual differences in women's IPV victimization history or attachment orientation predicted their accuracy.

Method
Heterosexual adult males (N = 9, Mage = 23.40), selected from a larger sample of N = 41 males, created de-identifiable dating profiles and reported on their history of aggression and IPV perpetration within relationships. Participants (N = 453 heterosexual adult females, Mage = 21.87) then viewed all 9 dating profiles and rated their perception of each male's level of aggression/IPV perpetration risk (naïve to all other information about the person), as well as reported on their own individual characteristics (attachment, IPV victimization history).

Results
Female participants were able to discriminate between males at high/medium/low levels of aggression, but were only able to discriminate between males with high/low levels of IPV perpetration history. Attachment orientation predicted the magnitude of participants' ratings of male aggression: Specifically, females higher in avoidance and lower in anxiety perceived males to be less aggressive. Additionally, participants' attachment orientation was associated with their accuracy of identifying aggression, such that females higher in attachment anxiety and lower in avoidance were found to overestimate males' aggression. Participants' IPV victimization history was unrelated to their ratings of males' aggression/IPV perpetration risk.

Conclusion
Attachment, but not IPV perpetration history, impacts females' perceptions of propensity for IPV risk.

AbstractParents have multifaceted identities, across dimensions like race/ethnicity, gender, and class, which shape their experience of discrimination. However, little is known about how distress from such multidimensional discrimination influences parenting behavior and parent–adolescent relationships. We tested associations between mothers' multidimensional discrimination distress and parental control (overcontrol and conditional regard) and daughters' attachment, among 82 African American (AA), Hispanic/Latina (HL), and non‐Hispanic White (NHW) mother–adolescent daughter dyads in the United States. Additionally, we examined whether these associations vary by race/ethnicity. Mothers reported their distress due to multidimensional discrimination and adolescents reported mothers' overcontrol, mothers' conditional regard, and adolescents' attachment to mothers. Across racial/ethnic groups, more multidimensional discrimination distress was associated with more maternal overcontrol. Additionally, racial/ethnic groups differed in associations between discrimination, maternal conditional regard, and adolescent attachment, such that AA mothers were buffered from the deleterious effects of discrimination on conditional regard and adolescent attachment. HL mothers were buffered from effects on adolescent attachment and conditional regard for anger expression, but not fear expression. Findings suggest that stigmatized racial/ethnic groups may rely on adaptive cultural practices to parent effectively in the face of multidimensional discrimination distress, but these resources may not be available to NHW mothers.

Attachment classification derived from narrative analysis is widely used as a marker of psychological organization. In contrast to this top‐down approach, bottom‐up, word count–based analyses of narratives are also used to measure psychological states. The current study integrates these 2 approaches by examining their overlap in 93 school‐aged children. Participants completed the Child Attachment Interview; transcriptions of this interview were subjected to word count–based linguistic analysis. Compared with secure children, dismissing children showed less and preoccupied children showed more signs of experiential connectedness. Disorganized children decreased in experiential connectedness during loss discussions and used more words related to death during nonloss sections of the interview. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to attachment and relationship research.

AbstractSavoring, or prolonging emotions associated with positive events, improves emotion and life satisfaction; little work, however, focuses on the savoring of interpersonal experiences, termed relational savoring. In a sample of 435 parents, the authors evaluated the impact of relational savoring on emotion and parent–child relationship satisfaction compared to a personal savoring and neutral control condition. Two years later, the authors reassessed parents' feelings of closeness with their children in a subsample of the original participants (n = 64). Both savoring conditions resulted in higher positive emotion for all parents, whereas the effects on negative emotion, relationship satisfaction, and closeness were only present for those higher in attachment avoidance. This study opens new avenues of investigation in both relational savoring and parent–child relationships.

AbstractReunion behavior following stressful separations from caregivers is often considered the single most sensitive clue to infant attachment patterns. Extending these ideas to middle childhood/early adolescence, we examined participants' neural responses to reunion with peers who had previously excluded them. We recorded event‐related potentials among nineteen 11‐ to 15‐year‐old youth previously classified on attachment interviews (11 secure and 8 insecure‐dismissing) while they played a virtual ball‐toss game (Cyberball) with peers that involved fair play, exclusion and reunion phases. Compared to secure participants, dismissing participants displayed a greater increment in the N2 during reunion relative to fair play, a neural marker commonly linked to expectancy violation. These data suggest a greater tendency toward continued expectations of rejection among dismissing children, even after cessation of social exclusion. In turn, the link between self‐reported ostracism distress and neural signs of negative expectancy at reunion was moderated by attachment, such that self‐reports were discordant with the neural index of expectancy violation for dismissing, but not for secure children.A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzoRel5c-4s.

AbstractThis study recruited participants whose partners were deployed for active‐duty military service to examine whether anticipatory relational savoring moderated the association of psychological distress with relationship satisfaction. Two weeks prior to their partner's deployment (T1), participants (N = 73) completed a self‐report measure of relationship satisfaction. Then, 2 weeks into their partner's deployment (T2), participants completed self‐report measures of stress, loneliness, and depression (combined into a composite index of psychological distress), and relationship satisfaction. Participants also completed a stream‐of‐consciousness task at T2 in which they imagined and discussed their partner's return from deployment. We coded the stream‐of‐consciousness task for anticipatory relational savoring regarding their upcoming reunion with their deployed partner. We found that anticipatory relational savoring moderated the association of psychological distress with during‐deployment relationship satisfaction after adjusting for demographics, interpersonal variables, and deployment‐specific variables; the association did not hold after adjusting for pre‐deployment relationship satisfaction, and thus was robust when considering the distress‐satisfaction association during the deployment but was not when considering changes in relationship satisfaction from pre‐ to during‐deployment. We discuss the potential importance of anticipatory relational savoring for this unique population.

AbstractIn this study we investigated the effects of seeking versus avoiding proximity to mother on children's emotional recovery from a stressor. Sixty children 9–12 years underwent a moodinduction procedure and were randomly assigned to seek proximity from or avoid an image of their mothers. The effect of this manipulation on children's self‐reported negative emotions, skin conductance and heart rate variability (respiratory sinus arhythmia) was assessed. Higher levels of attachment anxiety were linked to more self‐reported sadness when children had to avoid mother, but no evidence for such an effect was found on a physiological level. For avoidant attachment, a similar pattern of results emerged, but both for self‐reported sadness and skin conductance.

AbstractLinks between mother‐infant affective matching and attachment security are well‐documented, but research on other types of behavioral matching and attachment security are lacking, as are studies that examine these constructs later in children's development. We examine language style matching (LSM) between mothers and their school‐aged children (N = 68), using interviews with each dyad member. As predicted, regressions revealed that higher mother‐child relational LSM was associated with greater child attachment security (operationalized as high security, low dismissal), and that higher LSM predicted smaller increases in children's electrodermal response to a relational probe 1.5 years later. Further, mother‐child relational LSM was a mediator in the indirect path between children's attachment security and children's reactivity. We discuss the potential utility of LSM as a measure of relationship quality and future studies that could refine our understanding of parent‐child language matching.

Adult attachment classification is traditionally based on qualitative coding of participants' discourse about their attachment history. Word count‐based analyses have proven useful for assessing emotional states from narrative. To expand the understanding of how language is used in emotion regulation processes related to attachment, the authors assess 102 college‐aged adults' language on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Autonomous adults use more emotion words and, in particular, negative emotion words. Preoccupied adults use more anger words. Disorganized adults use more experientially connected language and more death/dying words, but also use more second‐person pronouns when discussing loss. Language use during the AAI explains variability in self‐reported emotional distress above and beyond attachment classifications. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to emotion and attachment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant effects on people worldwide, yet the psychological impact of collective traumas may differ at the individual and societal level. Parents may be exposed to greater pandemic-related stressors, yet also are more likely than non-parents to have social interactions during social distancing mandates. Furthermore, varying degrees of pandemic severity in countries may alter the adverse outcomes of pandemic stressors on psychopathology across nations. The purpose of this investigation was to cross-nationally explore how COVID-19 stress exposure relates to psychological distress and whether the association differed by parental status and nationality. Individuals from the United States (n = 2449) and Italy (n = 579) completed assessments measuring traumatic stress, depressive symptoms, and COVID-19-related stressors. COVID-19-related stressors were positively associated with traumatic stress and depressive symptoms. The association between COVID-19-related stressors and psychological distress did not differ by parental status or nationality. We also found that being a young adult, having a lower educational status, not being a parent, and being Italian were related to exposure to COVID-19-related stressors. We discuss these findings and their implications for our understanding of unique contexts that may pose as risk or resiliency factors during a global collective trauma, particularly on parental psychological distress as a way of promoting whole-family wellness.

Military deployment affects thousands of families each year, yet little is known about its impact on non-deployed spouses (NDSs) and romantic relationships. This report examines two factors–attachment security and a communal orientation with respect to the deployment– that may be crucial to successful dyadic adjustment by the NDS. Thirty-seven female NDSs reported on their relationship satisfaction before and during their partner's deployment, and 20 also did so two weeks following their partner's return. Participants provided a stream-of-conscious speech sample regarding their relationship during the deployment; linguistic coding of sample transcripts provided measures of each participant's (a) narrative coherence, hypothesized to reflect attachment security with respect to their deployed spouse; and, (b) frequency of first person plural pronoun use (we-talk), hypothesized to reflect a communal orientation to coping. More frequent first person plural pronouns— we-talk— was uniquely associated with higher relationship satisfaction during the deployment, and greater narrative coherence was uniquely associated with higher relationship satisfaction post-deployment. Discussion centers on the value of relationship security and communal orientations in predicting how couples cope with deployment and other types of relationship stressors.

AbstractAcross species, kin bond together to promote survival. We sought to understand the dyadic effect of exclusion by kin (as opposed to non‐kin strangers) on brain activity of the mother and her child and their subjective distress. To this end, we probed mother–child relationships with a computerized ball‐toss game Cyberball. When excluded by one another, rather than by a stranger, both mothers and children exhibited a significantly pronounced frontal P2. Moreover, upon kin rejection versus stranger rejection, both mothers and children showed incremented left frontal positive slow waves for rejection events. Children reported more distress upon exclusion than their own mothers. Similar to past work, relatively augmented negative frontal slow wave activity predicted greater self‐reported ostracism distress. This effect, generalized to the P2, was limited to mother‐ or child‐rejection by kin, with comparable magnitude of effect across kin identity (mothers vs. children). For both mothers and children, the frontal P2 peak was significantly pronounced for kin rejection versus stranger rejection. Taken together, our results document the rapid categorization of social signals as kin relevant and the specificity of early and late neural markers for predicting felt ostracism.