The Mechanism of the Effect of Secure Attachment Priming: the Synergistic Effect of Emotion and Cognition Under the Moderating of Insecure Attachment Styles

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2020, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (3) : 718-725.

PDF(402 KB)
PDF(402 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2020, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (3) : 718-725.

The Mechanism of the Effect of Secure Attachment Priming: the Synergistic Effect of Emotion and Cognition Under the Moderating of Insecure Attachment Styles

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Abstract

secure attachment priming has been shown to have a series of positive effects. There are both universality and specificity of these positive effects coexisted. The universality of these effects refers to the fact that secure attachment priming can promote the performance of individuals at the cognitive, emotional and behavioral levels, which regardless of personal attachment styles. In addition to these general positive impacts, the priming effects were also regulated by individual's insecure attachment styles, which may be related to the differences in attachment strategy preference and degree of conceptual connection between the dependent variable and insecure attachment styles. For the preference of attachment strategy, the priming effects of attachment security was likely to be affected by individual’s own attachment security levels, namely more secure individuals may have more experiences about secure attachment interactions and memories, which makes it easier for them to backtrack the similar experiences, so that the secure attachment representation among these individuals were highly accessible in the priming context. While non-secure attachment individuals showed relative difficulty in activating such secure attachment representation due to the absence of such experiences. More specifically, individuals with high attachment anxiety were accustomed to the use of hyper-activation strategies, and may have excessive emotional responses and increased cognitive regulatory demands in the process of secure attachment priming. However, the deactivation strategies used by individuals with high attachment avoidance may lead to the failure of the security priming, because of the defensive tendency of these people. When the cues used in the priming were secure attachment related words, such as “HUG”,”LOVE”, the secure attachment priming process would inevitably activate the individual's semantic associative network, and the moderating effects of attachment styles on the priming may be caused by the difference in the connection strength between the two concepts (The dependent variable and attachment anxiety(more negative self-representation related)/attachment avoidance(more negative others-representation related)) in the semantic associative network. At present, the discussions of the internal mechanism underlying the priming of attachment security have focused on the emotion buffer process and cognitive control process. We reviewed the existing interpretations of underlying mechanism of secure attachment priming, including the threats buffering hypothesis, activating and spreading hypothesis as well as transfer of learning hypothesis, meanwhile integrated the neural basis of secure attachment priming as well as the insecure attachment styles which play the role of moderating factors, we tried to propose an emotion and cognition synergistic effect model. This model depicts that the emotional buffering process and cognitive control process initiated by secure attachment priming act on the behavioral response together, as well as the individual's personal insecure attachment styles play moderated roles in this process respectively. These processes may jointly shape the mechanism of the secure attachment priming. Finally, the key issues that need to be further explored in future studies are prospected, including the identify of cognitive components of secure attachment priming, the development of specific priming methods for high attachment anxiety or high attachment avoidance individuals, and confirmation of the positive interpersonal cycle which may triggered by secure attachment priming.

Key words

The Effect of Secure Attachment Priming / Attachment Styles / Moderated Factors / Internal Mechanism / Emotional/Cognitive Synergistic effects

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The Mechanism of the Effect of Secure Attachment Priming: the Synergistic Effect of Emotion and Cognition Under the Moderating of Insecure Attachment Styles[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2020, 43(3): 718-725
PDF(402 KB)

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