Helping insecurely attached people regulate negative emotions: Moderating role of support on the effect of attachment on emotion regulation and eating

Abstract

Insecurely attached people (both anxious and avoidant) have difficulties regulating their emotions and are less likely to use adaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal. Instead, they may rely on eating to regulate their emotions. However, romantic partners can play a pivotal role in helping insecurely attached people reappraise situations. Furthermore, anxiously and avoidantly attached people need different types of support to help them regulate their negative emotions, specifically interdependence and independence support, respectively. Interdependence support focuses more on the relationship and the benefits from the intimacy between the two partners, while independence support focuses more on the person’s autonomy and ability to tackle issues on their own. Prior research has looked at types of support that are more effective for anxiously and avoidantly attached people, but less work has related attachment orientations and emotion regulation patterns to eating behavior. To address this gap in the literature, I conducted two studies. Study 1 was an experimental manipulation of support messages provided to anxiously and avoidantly attached individuals from their romantic partners after participants have been induced to feel negative emotions, and then given an opportunity to eat. Study 2 was a daily diary study across 14 days examining these associations more naturalistically to determine: (a) the degree to which anxiously and avoidantly attached people perceived specific types of support from their romantic partner as more effective in regulating their daily negative emotions, and (b) how these perceptions are associated with their daily eating behavior. For both studies, I hypothesized that anxiously attached individuals who received interdependence support from their partners are more likely to reappraise a negative event and, consequently, less likely to eat compared to those who received independence support. For avoidantly attached individuals, those who received independence support from their partners are more likely to reappraise and, consequently, less likely to eat compared to those who received interdependence support. In Study 1, these hypotheses were not supported. In Study 2, l found that people who reported higher levels of attachment anxiety were more likely to report less use of reappraisal than did those who had lower levels of attachment anxiety. Attachment avoidance was not associated with reappraisal. However, both attachment anxiety and avoidance were positively associated with negative affect. The use of reappraisal was negatively associated with negative affect. In other words, on days when reappraisal was high, negative affect was more likely to be low, compared to days when reappraisal was low. Also, on days when general support received was high, reappraisal and positive mood after receiving support were also high, compared to days when general support received was low. The moderating effect of interdependence support received on the link between attachment avoidance and reappraisal was found to be marginal. Also, there was no association between worse mood after support received and eating. In the general discussion, I review the findings and limitations of both studies.