Attachment with parents and peers in late adolescence: Links with emotional competence and social behavior

Abstract

The goal of this study was to examine whether the links between attachment security and social behavior in late adolescence were mediated by emotional competence. One hundred and seventeen late adolescents completed self-report measures of parent and peer attachment, social behavior, and emotional competence. Attachment security with both parents and peers was significantly related to aspects of adolescent emotional and social competence. A path model revealed that parent and peer attachment had no direct links with social behavior. Instead, the links between parent and peer attachment and social behavior were indirect, mediated through aspects of emotional competence. These findings suggest that secure attachment relationships foster appropriate social behavior by promoting high levels of emotional awareness, empathy, positive expressiveness, and low levels of negative dominant expressiveness.

Introduction

Attachment theory, which was originally developed to explain the bond between infants and their caregivers, has become an important theory to explain the lasting influence of close relationships on an individual’s psychological well-being. The basic premise of attachment theory is that individuals’ experiences with the emotional availability of attachment figures in their lives shape their feelings of felt security and trust in others (Bowlby, 1980). As a result of their early experiences with caregivers, individuals construct internal working models of themselves, others, and relationships that they use to guide their expectations in subsequent close relationships (Bretherton, 1990). Individuals whose caregivers have been emotionally available, especially during periods of stress, construct internal working models of the self as worthy, others as trusting, and relationships as worthwhile and important. Conversely, individuals with a history of caregiver insensitivity construct negative working models of the self, others, and relationships. These models are expected to color an individual’s approach to relationships and views of the self throughout the lifespan (Bowlby, 1980).

Researchers have inferred the existence of internal working models based on the consistent links that attachment styles have had with social behavior, self-worth, and relational expectations across the lifespan (Allen and Land, 1999, Shaver and Mikulincer, 2002, Thompson, 1999). For example, in adolescence, researchers have found that secure individuals are more socially competent and less aggressive (Rice, 1990, Simons et al., 2001). Similarly, in adulthood, secure individuals (compared to insecure individuals) are more optimistic in the face of threats, are more comfortable seeking support when under stress, use more constructive coping strategies, and have more trusting beliefs about the goodwill of others (Shaver and Hazan, 1993, Shaver and Mikulincer, 2003). Thus, research indicates that individuals have different patterns of social behavior based upon their history of attachment experiences.

Researchers have also argued that patterns of emotion expression and regulation are related to attachment styles (Cassidy, 1994). Attachment theorists have argued that children’s early relationships play a primary role in the development of emotion regulation and affect expression, because early on caregivers are responsible for helping children regulate emotions (Thompson, Flood, & Lundquist, 1995). Exposure to emotionally available caregivers in childhood has been shown to foster the open discussion and sharing of emotion, which in turn provides rich opportunities for a child to learn about emotion and emotion regulation (Laible, 2004, Volling, 2001). Research has supported the idea that secure children are more emotionally competent and has found that secure children are capable of maintaining organized behavior in the context of emotional arousal (Crittenden, 1992) and have higher levels of empathy than insecure children (Kestenbaum, Farber, & Sroufe, 1989). Similarly, Kobak, Cole, Ferenz-Gillies, Fleming, and Gamble (1993) found that secure adolescents were more successful at regulating emotion in the context of conflict than were insecure adolescents. Thus, research supports the notion that secure individuals have adaptive patterns of emotional expression and regulation across the lifespan. In contrast, insecure individuals are more prone to being either overregulated or under regulated in their emotional expression (Zimmermann, 1999). These patterns of emotional expression are assumed to be attachment strategies that flow from an individual’s internal working models (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003).

Ultimately, secure adolescents might be more socially competent than insecure adolescents because of the emotional skills that they have learned in close relationships, including empathy, emotional expressiveness, and emotional awareness. Research has consistently linked all of these aspects of emotional competence with appropriate social behavior. High levels of empathy, for example, in adolescence have been linked with more prosocial behavior and less aggressive behavior (Carlo, Raffaelli, Laible, & Meyer, 1999). Similarly, positive emotional expressiveness has also been linked with socially competent behavior in children (Roberts & Strayer, 1996). In contrast, high levels of negative dominant emotional expressiveness, or aversive displays of negative affect, have been linked with aggressive behavior in children (Strayer & Roberts, 2004). Finally, a lack of emotional awareness has been linked with a variety of interpersonal problems in adulthood (Spitzer, Siebel-Jürges, Barnow, Grabe, & Freyberger, 2005).

Lastly, it is important to realize that in adolescence, close relationships with peers, as well as parents, serve attachment needs. Adolescents increasingly turn to friends for emotional support during stress (Furman & Buhrmester, 1992). This is not to say that adolescents no longer rely on the support of parents, because research has not supported this idea. Instead, research has supported that adolescents continue to use parents for some attachment needs (Nickerson & Nagle, 2005) and that attachment security with parents continues to predict an individual’s well-being even into young adulthood (Larson, Richards, Moneta, Holmbeck, & Duckett, 1996). Despite this, research has supported that by adolescence, peers also begin to serve many attachment needs, including serving as sources of emotional support, safe havens, and proximity seeking and that the longer peer relationships last, the more likely peers are to serve these functions (Fraley and Davis, 1997, Hazan and Zeifman, 1999, Nickerson and Nagle, 2005). This may be especially important in early and mid-adolescence when adolescents are striving to seek autonomy from parents. As a result, many attachment researchers do in fact consider peers to be attachment figures in adolescence (Allen & Land, 1999).