Attachment theory is a system which influences the behaviour of individuals based on their experiences of support and care from their primary caregiver in childhood. The system is not consistently activated but is brought on by situations which results in the individual feeling threatened, vulnerable or distressed (Simpson, Rholes, & Phillips, 1996). These situations tend to fall into three classes, conflict interactions, challenging situations and fear inducing situations (Simpson et al., 1996). The attachment system consists of two dimensions, which divides into three categories, secure, avoidant and anxious/ambivalent. Avoidant individuals evolved a lack of support from their primary caregiver resulting in greater independence and self-reliance. Attachment anxious or anxious /ambivalent individuals evolved from an inconsistent level of care from their primary caregiver, resulting in a system that reflects their underlying uncertainty regarding availability of support (Simpson et al., 1996). This study will focus on anxious-ambivalent individuals and their behaviour towards their romantic partners in response to high levels of stress.

A system with attachment anxiety develops due to an inconsistent level of availability and support from the primary caregiver. This has resulted in an attachment system that is associated with negative self-perception such as feeling helpless and powerless, having low self-esteem and feeling unlovable, unworthy or inadequate (Johnstone & Feeney, 2015). However, there is also a desire for extreme closeness and excessive reassurances from their romantic partner (Johnstone & Feeney, 2015). Attachment anxious individuals also worry of being underappreciated, abandoned or rejected consistent with past experience of unreliable care and support (Simpson & Rholes, 2012). They are also hypervigilant of rejection cues and give more negative attributions towards ambiguous situations. They react to stress with greater emotional distress and respond with more defensive and destructive reactions like anger, hostility and coercion (Simpson & Rholes, 2012).

The attachment system for attachment anxious individuals is activated by signs of threat or stressful situations (Johnstone & Feeney, 2015). This is because when confronted with stressful experiences or threatening events, people will try to seek comfort, support and help from their significant other (Collins & Feeney, 2000). Moreover, it has been found that when faced with potentially stressful situations, anxiously attached people are more likely to appraise the situation as more threatening than would individuals low on attachment anxiety (Johnstone & Feeney, 2015). It has been found that when people who are high in attachment anxiety perceive that they are receiving high levels of social support, they do experience more psychological benefits, however, this does not carry on through to actual health benefits (Stanton & Campbell, 2014). Anxiously attached individuals also react to stress differently as compared to secure or avoidant individuals. For example, when they receive help and support from their significant other, anxiously attached people tend to appraise the support more negatively and view the support from others as inadequate (Johnstone & Feeney, 2015). Moreover, due to past experiences having received deficient and unpredictable levels of support, anxiously attached individuals are more vigilant to cues of rejection or abandonment and have very low thresholds for perceiving threats to relationships (Campbell, Simpson, Boldry, & Kashy, 2005). As such, when facing with what they perceive as a lack of support, it may be cued as a sign to a threat in the relationship.

Individuals high in attachment anxiety would therefore tend to respond to high levels of stress with hostility towards their significant other. There are two possible reasons for the increase in hostile behaviour, the first is because anger and hostility can be used to signal to their significant other that they are distressed and in need of help and comfort (Simpson et al., 1996). The second is due to their fear of rejection and abandonment, anxiously attached individuals would therefore use anger to punish the partner to discourage future psychological separations (Simpson et al., 1996). Another possible reason may be due to the fact that their perception that the level of support they are receiving is inadequate. Thus, anger is used to punish the partner so that they can change their partner’s behaviour into becoming more supportive (Johnstone & Feeney, 2015).
            In previous studies, it has been found that individuals with anxious-ambivalent attachment system have responded to conflict with higher levels of anger or hostility than do individuals with secure or avoidant attachment systems (Mikulincer, 1998); (Simpson et al., 1996). The reason conflict would activate the attachment system is because when in conflict one would feel a sense of threat. When feeling threatened people would try to find help or support hence activating their attachment systems. Though we are focusing on stress not conflict, both are similar circumstances which activates the attachment system. Therefore, we would expect that the behavioural response towards their significant other to be similar.

In our experiment, we are examining the behaviour of individuals with attachment anxiety and how they would behave towards their romantic partner when faced with high levels of stress. We predict that when encountering high levels of stress on high stress days, individuals high on attachment anxiety would behave with higher levels of hostility and anger towards their romantic partner than those with low levels of attachment anxiety. Our rationale for this prediction is that high levels of stress during the day would cause individuals to seek comfort and support from their romantic partner (Collins & Feeney, 2000). This would in turn activate their attachment system and for those high in attachment anxiety, they would perceive the support provided by their partner as insufficient and may deem this as a signal that the relationship is under threat. The individual high in attachment anxiety would thus respond with higher levels of hostile behaviour to both signal the need for support and to try to influence the partner to increase their level of support (Simpson et al., 1996). This rationale also draws from studies which have found that people high in attachment anxiety respond to conflict with hostility as the attachment system is activated as help from partners are being sought. Since stress is also a situation which also activates the attachment system as assistance and comfort is being sought, it is thus inferred that participants high in attachment anxiety will respond with more hostility when encountering high levels of stress. 

We will conduct this experiment by measuring the attachment anxiety levels in participants using a questionnaire, then using a daily diary, we will record participant’s perception of the level of stress that they encounter and how hostile they felt their behaviour was that day. The daily diary will be completed by participants for ten days.

Results

Figure 1.  The degree of hostility towards the romantic partner for groups high and low in attachment anxiety during high and low stress days.

We found that individuals with higher levels of attachment anxiety exhibited higher levels of hostility towards their romantic partner than individuals low in attachment anxiety but only during days where there are high levels of stress. During days where there are low levels of stress, both individuals high and low in attachment anxiety show no difference in levels of hostility towards their romantic partner.

Discussion

We found from our experiment that individuals who are high on attachment anxiety, when encountering high levels of stress tend to respond with higher levels of hostility towards their romantic partner than individuals with low levels of attachment anxiety. However, we also found that during days of low stress, both individuals high and low on attachment anxiety had little difference in levels of hostility. The result supports our prediction that high attachment anxiety individuals will react with more hostility when faced with stressful situations compared with those low on attachment anxiety.

Our results fit with our rationale and the attachment theory that supports it. We have stated that when experiencing high levels of stress, individuals would try to seek comfort and support from their romantic partner (Collins & Feeney, 2000). This would in turn activate their attachment system and for those high in attachment anxiety, they would perceive the support provided by their partner as insufficient. They may then deem this as a signal that the relationship is under threat. As attachment anxious individuals fear rejection and abandonment due to past inconsistent support it has been suggested that they would react with more coercive behaviour when dealing with potential relationship threat (Campbell et al., 2005). An individual high in attachment anxiety would therefore respond with higher levels of hostile behaviour. This is to both signal for the need of additional support and to try to influence the partner to increase their level of support (Simpson et al., 1996).  This rationale explains the findings that we have found, and both our rationale and our results are consistent with the wider attachment theory on anxious-ambivalent individuals.

Moreover, though previous findings do not provide direct empirical support directly for our results, it does provide evidence of anxiously attached individuals responding with higher levels of hostility when faced with conflict situations (Mikulincer, 1998); (Simpson et al., 1996). As conflict and stressful situations both lead to a person seeking assistance and support, both situations would therefore activate the attachment system. Hence, our findings now provide empirical support to link stress and increased hostility for anxiously attached individuals. Thus expanding the current literature alongside conflict and hostility.

It can be said that a limitation of this study was the fact that it was not as extensive in scope as previous studies. Our study did not take into account the perspectives of the romantic partner during days of high stress and low stress. It may be useful to record both partner’s perspectives as having both perspectives can yield more insight into the phenomenon. Other studies have used both partners when studying attachment theory rather than utilising only one perspective (Campbell et al., 2005); (Collins & Feeney, 2000); (Simpson et al., 1996).  For example, we have found that on high stress days anxiously attached people behave with higher hostilities towards their romantic partner than those low on attachment anxiety. It may be interesting to record how their romantic partner perceived this increased hostile reaction and how they responded to it. However, it should be noted that we are interested in the perspective of anxiously attached individuals and their response to high levels of stress and despite using a single sided perspective, data obtained have shown a result consistent with existing theory and literature.

This study through its use of daily diaries have some strengths that help in enhancing its validity. This is because daily diaries allow for the recording of events and perspectives in a natural environment context (Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003). Some studies use data obtained from a lab setting, though while it allows for observation by those performing the study, it can be said that allowing events to unfold naturally rather in a lab setting is an advantage in validity. Moreover, daily diaries reduce the effect of memory distortions by ensuring that data is reported daily (Bolger et al., 2003). This is done by reducing the amount of time between the event or day with high stress and the actual reporting.

A future direction for the study could be to increase its scope to include the romantic partner and their perspectives. In the current study, we only have a single perspective as only one partner is completing the daily diaries. It could be possible for future research to capture data from both perspectives. This would enhance the research as it would allow researchers to observe the interaction between the couple from the perspective of attachment theory. It would for example, allow researchers to see how the romantic partner perceive the hostility and how they perceive their response to be towards the anxiously attached partner.

Moreover, future research can be done by accounting for personality traits when examining attachment anxiety. Similar to attachment theory personality traits also do influence behaviour and there are previous researches that have been done which have made associations between attachment anxiety and the personality trait of neuroticism (Donges, Jachmann, Kersting, Egloff, & Suslow, 2015). Therefore, future research can be done to further examine the interactions between attachment anxiety and personality traits like neuroticism in individuals dealing with high levels of stress. For example, the effect of extraversion in people high on attachment anxiety.

In attachment theory, people with attachment anxiety are associated with a more negative self-perception (Johnstone & Feeney, 2015) along with a fear of rejection and abandonment (Simpson & Rholes, 2012). When encountering threatening situations, they would respond by seeking help and assistance thus activating their attachment system. However, due to their attachment system, they often perceive the support from their romantic partner as inadequate or deficient (Johnstone & Feeney, 2015). They therefore react with higher levels of hostility to signal to their partner the need for assistance and to punish the partner to provide more support (Simpson et al., 1996). Our results in this study supports that rationale and our prediction, showing that individuals high in attachment anxiety do react with higher levels of hostility than individuals low in attachment anxiety but only when encountering days of high levels of stress.

References

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