Managing one’s emotions is a critical skill, as it determines a person’s psychological well-being. And this is true no matter the age of the person. From birth onward, individuals manage the negative emotions generated by the separation from the people that they love. For exemple, babies cry when their mothers go away, which, according to Bowlby’s attachment theory, is a strategy aimed at restoring physical proximity with the mother. More generally, the attachment theory states that the very first emotion regulation strategy implemented by very yound children consists in managing the negative emotions generated by the separation from the attachment figure (generally, the caregiver). As children grow up and experience a variety of emotional situations, they progressively internalize the way their attachment figure responds to their needs, which in turn shapes the attachment style that they develop (secure, anxious, avoidant), and thus, the type of emotion regulation strategy that they will use preferably. Some of these strategies are focused on attention. They consist in either diverting one’s attention from certain types of information, or on the contrary, demonstrating an increased vigilance towards these pieces of information. In my research (« TER ») (which is part of a collective project conducted by several master’s students and supervised by three professors), I focus on the relationship between an individual’s attachment style, attentional biases and difficulties in emotional regulation. My hypothesis states that an individual’s attentional biases (his/her propensity to either divert or grant his/her attention to attachment-related information) mediates the relationship between his/her attachment style and difficulties in emotional regulation. I focus on a specific target, teenagers. Adolescence is a turning point in the development of an individual’s emotional regulation capacities, characterized by significant physical and biological changes, as well as an increased emotional reactivity. Brain areas associated with emotion sensitivity (especially the amygdalia) and emotion regulation (the pre-frontal cortex) undergo significant changes. But because these changes do not occur in a linear manner, they pave the way for possible emotional regulation difficulties. In parallel, adolescents tend to both gain independance from their parents and get closer to their peers. Friends and romantic partners become more and more important to their emotional stability. These moves translate into an ajustment of the internal working models that adolescent use to manage and regulate their emotions.
My study involves a sample of 112 adolescents between 15 and 18 years old. It shows that contrary to previous studies conducted on adults, insecure adolescents do not preferably direct attention to or away from attachment-related pieces of information. Concretely, they equally process emotional words, non-emotional words, attachment-related words and non-attachment-related words. In other words, unconscious avoidance and vigilance strategies do not seem to come into play. However, adolescents’ attachment styles (whether they are avoidant or anxious) partially determine different forms of emotional regulation difficulties. More precisely, attachment anxiety is positively related to almost all forms of emotional regulation difficulties (only the consciousness dimension does not reach significance). The attachment avoidance, on the contrary, is negatively related to emotional regulation difficulties. Thus, it seems that avoidant adolescents are particularly efficient when it comes to read, understand and manage their emotions.