Introduction : Bowlby (1978) demonstrates the importance of a security base for grow and create precocious attachment links of quality. After several observations, he concludes that child requires a secure attachment to develop, to have exploratory behaviours, and to increase his confidence in himself and in others… Thus, many researchers investigate the existence of a relationship between the attachment style of the child and the development of friendly relationships. Specifically, longitudinal studies show that a secure attachment during infancy is a predictor of quality peer relationships at the age of 10 (Berlin & Cassidy, 1999; Kerns and al., 1996). Similarly, a study finds that early secure attachment is a predictor of seeking and perception of social support in adulthood (Florian and al., 1995). However, very few studies focus on adults.
Objective : That’s why the purpose of the present research was to verify if this link between attachment, friendships quality and perception of social support was found in a sample of young adults. Therefore, as studies in children and adolescents have shown, we expected a secure attachment to be linked to friendly relationships of quality. On the contrary, friendships of poor quality should be observed for participants with insecure attachment. Moreover, secure individuals should have a higher perception of social support than insecure individuals (Florian and al., 1995). Finally, Ainsworth and al. (1978) showed through the paradigm of the strange situation that stress triggers the activation of child attachment system. So, we hypothesized that the induction of stress in the adult would allow access to his attachment system. Consequently, the differences between participants with a secure attachment and participants with insecure attachment should be more accentuated when stress is triggered.
Method : For this, 70 participants completed a Relationship Questionnaire Attachment Scale (Guedeney and al., 2010) to determine their attachment style. They also completed two questionnaires, one measuring the quality of friendships (Friendship Questionnaire, Baron-Cohen and al., 2003) and the other measuring the perception of social support (SSQ6, Bruchon-Schweitzer and al., 2003). Before completion of the different questionnaires and in order to induce stress, they also viewed video extracted from the database FilmStim (Schaefer and al., 2010). Emotional induction was verified by measuring skin conductance of young adults. Finally, 26 participants had a secure attachment and 44 had an insecure attachment.
Results : The results didn’t reveal any differences between the secure subjects and the insecure subjects with regard to the quality of their friendly relationships and their perception of social support. In addition, the induction of stress, which is supposed to trigger their attachment system, had no effect on their friendship and social support scores.
Discussion : In view of the non-significant results obtained, several limitations of the study can be highlight. First of all, the existence of a disproportionate between the number of secure participants and insecure participants is highlight. Second, a bias concerning the attachment measurement tool is also mentioned. Indeed, we have used the Relationship Questionnaire categorically to determine types of attachments, but this tool is designed to be used continuously. The use of a semi-structured interview such as the Adult Attachment Interview Protocol (AAI, George, Kaplan & Main, 1985) can be proposed to overcome this bias. The AAI assesses representations of attachment to adolescence and adulthood by discussing past and current relationships with parents as well as specific memories. In addition, the problem of competition between attachment system and affiliative system can be discussed. Since these two systems can’t be activated simultaneously (Bowlby, 1978), this competition could explain the non-significant results. Moreover, the method of stress induction is also a subject of a reflection in particular with respect to the duration and the intensity of the effect of the induced emotion. Frost and Greene (1982) show effectively that the effect of negative emotion decrease significantly after 10 minutes. However, in the present experiment, the completion of the questionnaires lasted approximately 25 minutes, a time long enough to reduce the stress effect. So, the combination of several induction techniques can help to maintain this effect longer (Mayer, Allen & Beauregard, 1995). Finally, a study perspectiveon gender effect could be put forward. Indeed, several studies shown that women have greater intimacy (Gullone & Robinson, 2005) and better friendships than men (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwhrigth, 2003). As a result, it is possible that women may have a higher secure attachment than men.
Keywords : Attachment theory, friendships, social support, stress induction, adulthood
Words I have learned:
- Bond = link = liens
- A sample = un échantillon
- To trigger = déclencher
- Skin conductance = la conductance cutanée / l’activité éléctrodermale
- A database = une base de données