Abstract
Attachment theory proposes that representations of attachment figures are transferred between relationships, resulting in stable relational experiences. The current study used a transference paradigm to examine how parental and best friend attachment representations influence perceptions of new relationship partners in emerging adulthood. We discovered that close friendships influenced attachment anxiety and avoidance experienced specifically with friend-like others, while parental relationships affected feelings of anxiety toward a variety of people. Several relationship factors, such as the importance of the friend relationship, moderated the transference process. Our findings suggest that emerging adults’ current relationships have an impact on their reactions toward novel individuals, and emerging adults’ feelings about their existing relationship partners color their future social experiences.
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Notes
There were no significant demographic differences between those who participated in only one session (n = 40) and those who participated in both sessions (n = 90). A series of one-way ANOVAs was conducted to test for differences in general, friend, and parent avoidance and anxiety between the two groups. This analysis found that friend anxiety differed significantly across the two groups, F(1, 128) = 5.58, p = .02. Tukey’s post hoc comparisons indicate that one-session participants experienced significantly greater friend anxiety (M = 2.99, SD = 1.33) than participants who attended both session (M = 2.48, SD = 1.03). It is possible that greater friend anxiety may have led some participants to drop out of the study. However, participants may have also dropped out due to their not needing credit from the second session of the study.
We found no significant differences in transference results between any of the mixed-sex or same-sex friend pairings. Likewise, there were no differences in how parental anxiety and avoidance transferred based on parent type (mother or father). However, participants who reported that their closest parent was their father (n = 21) felt more anxious toward the friend target (M = −.42, SD = .33), compared to participants who reported that their closest parent was their mother, n = 69; M = −.85, SD = .72, p < .01. Additionally, these participants felt more avoidant toward the friend target (M = −.66), compared to participants who reported their mother as their closest parent, M = −2.39, SD = 1.07, p < .01. These findings may indicate that emerging adults with absent or rejecting mothers are more likely to experience insecurity toward friend-like strangers.
This ECR-R was similar to the relationship-specific ECR-R used in session 1, though the wording was in reference to “this person” instead of to a specific relationship partner.
Though 13 participants mentioned when asked during the debriefing that they noticed the resemblance of the targets to their own friend and parent, we included them in the analyses because there were no significant differences between those that reported suspicion and those that did not in terms of the attachment transference findings.
We also collected measures of global attachment, in addition to relationship-specific attachment. In order to examine how global attachment models influenced the transference process, we conducted a series of hierarchical regression analyses in which we held relationship-specific anxiety/avoidance constant to assess whether global anxiety/avoidance still predicted anxiety/avoidance toward the targets. All results were non-significant, suggesting global attachment models do not significantly influence social evaluations of peer and parent-like individuals in the absence of relationship-specific models.
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Ahmed, T., Brumbaugh, C.C. One Foot Out of the Nest: How Parents and Friends Influence Social Perceptions in Emerging Adulthood. J Adult Dev 21, 147–158 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-014-9187-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-014-9187-9