Abstract
This study explored relationships between insecure attachment styles (avoidant attachment and anxious attachment) and task performance. We conducted a three-wave survey of 216 employees (42.10% of the participants are females) in China and adopted a moderated mediation model grounded on attachment theory and trait activation theory. Results indicated significant and positive associations between insecure attachment styles and facades of conformity, and facades of conformity mediated the negative relationships between insecure attachment styles and task performance. Task interdependence moderated the relationship between facades of conformity and task performance such that the relationship was weakened when task interdependence was higher. Furthermore, task interdependence moderated the indirect negative relationships between insecure attachment styles and task performance via facades of conformity, such that the negative indirect relationships were attenuated when task interdependence was higher. The results from our study indicate that facades of conformity may serve as a values-regulation explanatory mechanism in the relationships between insecure attachment styles and task performance.
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Data Availability
The dataset has been made freely available to ensure greater transparency and better reproducibility in Open Science Framework (OSF). The view-only dataset can be found here. https://osf.io/ahc4p/?view_only=47668acf01874ca7be1679eaae6ce73f.
Notes
We received responses from 271 participants, including 55 participants who didn’t finish the three stages survey but filled in their demographic variables in the first stage. To examine whether the attrition and non-participation were random, we constructed a dummy variable representing the status of non-participation and attrition by assigning 1 to the 55 participants and signing 0 to the 216 participants who finished all three stages. Then, we used demographical variables (gender, age, education level, tenure, years of working with supervisor, and position) to predict the “non-participation and attrition” variable via logistic regression analysis. The results showed that the coefficients of gender, age, tenure, and years of working with a supervisor were not significant. In contrast, the education level (β = 0.65, Exp(β) = 1.92, significance = 0.014) and position (β = 0.365, Exp(β) = 1.44, significance = 0.039) were positively related to non-participation and attrition variable. This might be explained as participants with higher education and positions were more sensitive to their privacy (Milne & Rohm, 2000; Culnan, 1995) and, therefore, more likely to quit the survey. Given the relatively satisfying attrition rate of 20.29% (55/271) in multi-point design, we treated the responses from the 55 participants with the listwise deletion method for lacking key variables.
According to trait activation theory (Tett & Burnett, 2003), the features of task interdependence that come with coworkers’ support and help might also help release the interpersonal distress and therefore constrain insecure attachment styles expression in proximal outcomes such as behavior, in this paper decreasing the creation of facades of conformity. We examined the moderating role of task interdependence in the first stage. Results showed that task interdependence plays no significant effect on the relationship between avoidant attachment and facades of conformity (β = − 0.03, S.E. = 0.07, p = .654) nor the relationship between anxious attachment and facades of conformity (β = 0.08, S.E. = 0.09, p = .371). One possible explanation is that insecurely attached employees still feel the need to conform to others to achieve the desired and expected exchange in a high task interdependent situation (Girme et al., 2021).
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This study was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province in China [2018A030313555].
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Appendix Table 1
Appendix Table 1
Summary of Standardized Path Coefficients from Path Analyses.
Dependent Variable | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Facades of Conformity | Task Performance | |||||||
Independent Variables | β | S.E. | p-value | 95% CI | β | S.E. | p-value | 95% CI |
Gender | 0.01 | 0.06 | 0.875 | [-0.11, 0.13] | 0.07 | 0.07 | 0.289 | [-0.07, 0.20] |
Age | − 0.14 | 0.08 | 0.088 | [-0.30, 0.03] | − 0.06 | 0.07 | 0.399 | [-0.21, 0.08] |
Education | 0.01 | 0.07 | 0.933 | [-0.13, 0.15] | 0.06 | 0.08 | 0.460 | [-0.10, 0.20] |
Tenure | 0.06 | 0.09 | 0.537 | [-0.12, 0.24] | 0.01 | 0.11 | 0.943 | [-0.21, 0.21] |
Years of Working with Supervisor | 0.06 | 0.09 | 0.524 | [-0.11, 0.23] | 0.11 | 0.09 | 0.233 | [-0.08, 0.29] |
Position | 0.23 | 0.07 | 0.001 | [0.09, 0.36] | 0.01 | 0.07 | 0.917 | [-0.13, 0.13] |
Avoidance Attachment | 0.17 | 0.07 | 0.011 | [0.03, 0.30] | − 0.11 | 0.06 | 0.077 | [-0.23, 0.01] |
Anxious Attachment | 0.24 | 0.07 | 0.001 | [0.10,0.38] | − 0.14 | 0.08 | 0.102 | [-0.31, 0.02] |
Facades of Conformity | − 0.14 | 0.07 | 0.053 | [-0.28, 0.01] | ||||
Task Interdependence | 0.22 | 0.07 | 0.001 | [0.10, 0.36] | ||||
Facades of Conformity × Task Interdependence | 0.17 | 0.07 | 0.009 | [0.05, 0.30] | ||||
R square | 0.18 | 0.05 | <0.001 | 0.17 | 0.05 | <0.001 | ||
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Cheng, W., Huang, J. & Xie, J. Facades of conformity: a values-regulation strategy links employees’ insecure attachment styles and task performance. Curr Psychol 42, 31758–31774 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04061-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04061-3