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Adult Attachment Orientation and Implicit Behavioral Mimicry

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Abstract

We investigated whether adult attachment orientation predicted the extent to which individuals engaged in implicit behavioral mimicry of a confederate presented by video. Results demonstrated that following an attachment threat prime: (1) those low in attachment anxiety and high in attachment avoidance showed less mimicry of face-rubbing gestures than individuals low in both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety; (2) those high in attachment anxiety and low in attachment avoidance showed less mimicry of face-rubbing gestures than individuals low in both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety. Importantly, attachment orientation did not predict baseline levels of face-rubbing gesturing, demonstrating that attachment orientation had an effect on mimicry rather than overall behavior expression. Attachment anxiety was positively related to attraction to the confederate such that those higher in attachment anxiety rated the confederate as more attractive. The findings are discussed with reference to both the mimicry and attachment literatures.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. Readers may wonder whether this task was more difficult for those participants not in a relationship. We compared the number of thoughts and feelings generated by those participants in and not in relationships following the imagined attachment threat. There was no significant difference in the number of thoughts and feelings generated following the imagined threat manipulation t (95) = −.67, p > .51. This provides some evidence that the task difficulty did not differ dependent on the participant’s relationship status.

  2. We note that face-rubbing is an adaptor behavior and that this class of behavior has been associated with anxiety. However, to our knowledge adaptor behaviors have not been shown to be expressed more by individuals higher on attachment anxiety and our baseline measure suggests that this is not the case.

  3. No participants reported that they did not believe the video-link interaction was live, or that the other person was not a real participant.

  4. Readers may think that this is a small variance explained by this predictor. However, within moderated multiple regression analysis, Evans (1985) suggests that a statistically significant R 2 change of 1–2 % demonstrates an effect worthy of consideration. The current results meet these criteria and suggest a result worthy of consideration.

  5. Readers may wonder whether relationship status was included as a factor in our regression analysis. We speculatively recomputed the regression analysis including relationship status as a predictor in block 1. Correlations conducted as part of the regression analysis assessed the relationships between the predictor variables (attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, Attachment anxiety × Attachment avoidance and relationship status) and the outcome variable (mimicry measure of gesturing). As expected there was a significant correlation between Attachment anxiety x Attachment avoidance and mimicry. In addition there was a significant correlation between relationship status and attachment avoidance r (96) = −.319, p = .001, which meant that those participants not in a relationship had higher attachment avoidance scores. This weak correlation provides some question about whether our variables of attachment avoidance and relationship status are independent of each other. Furthermore, from a theoretical standpoint it is not unreasonable to think that higher attachment avoidance would be predictive of not being in a relationship. The regression analysis revealed that relationship status was not a significant predictor of implicit behavioral mimicry (t (92) = −.069, β = −.007, p > .05). Furthermore, Attachment anxiety × Attachment avoidance remained the only significant predictor t (92) = 2.42, β = .24, p < .05 and the Attachment anxiety x Attachment avoidance interaction still explained 3.4 % of the variance (R 2 adj = .034) and the R 2 change for the second block remained at 5.8 % and was still significant (F change (1, 92) = 5.86, p < .05). Taken together these results suggest that the inclusion of relationship status did not improve the predictivity of the model and therefore we have presented the most parsimonious model in the main text.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a Nuffield Foundation Social Sciences Small grant SGS36596 to Natalie Hall and Abigail Millings. The authors would like to thank Lia Emanuel and Lauren Cousins for their help with data coding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Whiteknights Road, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6AL, UK

    Natalie R. Hall & Sofia Barbosa Bouças

  2. Ultrasis UK Ltd., London, UK

    Abigail Millings

  3. University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Abigail Millings

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  1. Natalie R. Hall
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  2. Abigail Millings
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  3. Sofia Barbosa Bouças
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Correspondence to Natalie R. Hall.

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Hall, N.R., Millings, A. & Bouças, S.B. Adult Attachment Orientation and Implicit Behavioral Mimicry. J Nonverbal Behav 36, 235–247 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-012-0136-7

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