Both PTSD-related cognitions and adult romantic attachment cognitions have been linked to level of symptomatology and can be conceptualized as interpersonal cognitive schemas that may increase vulnerability to the development of psychological symptoms. The present study examined PTSD-related cognitions and adult romantic attachment as moderators of symptom development after interpersonal trauma...

The purpose of this study was to examine the potential universality of age differences in romantic attachment. Relatively few studies have investigated attachment processes beyond young adulthood and very little is known about age differences in romantic attachment orientations in geographic regions outside North America. We examined attachment anxiety and avoidance among 90,904 Internet respon...

Recent findings associate attachment insecurity (assessed as levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance) with poor emotion regulation. In turn, emotion regulation has been shown to be associated with hippocampus (HC) functioning and structure. Clinical disorders such as depression and PTSD, which have been previously associated with attachment insecurity, are also known to be linked with reduce...

We used actor-partner interdependence modeling to explore associations among attachment-related dyadic processes, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in war veterans, and secondary traumatic stress (STS) in their wives. A sample of 157 Israeli couples (85 former prisoners of war and their wives and a comparison group of 72 veterans not held captive and their wives) completed self-report scales...

Young men were subjected to laboratory inductions of anger and anxiety after undergoing a physiological assessment of vagal tone, an index of parasympathetic nervous system functioning that has been associated with emotion regulation in prior research. We tested whether: (i) young men’s emotional reactivity and recovery were associated with their global attachment style or their perceptions of ...

The present study examined the relation between attachment cognitions, stressors, and emotional distress in a sample of Chinese adolescents. Specifically, it was examined whether negative attachment cognitions predicted depression and anxiety symptoms, and if a vulnerability-stress or stress generation model best explained the relation between negative attachment cognitions and internalizing sy...

Attachment theory provides a framework for understanding and predicting critical aspects of aggression in the personality disorders. An association between borderline personality disorder (BPD) and insecure forms of adult attachment marked by high relationship anxiety has been repeatedly observed in the empirical literature. Aggression also has been linked to insecure attachment. The present st...

Even though generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is one of the most common of the anxiety disorders, relatively little is known about its precursors. Bowlby's attachment theory provides a framework within which these precursors can be considered. According to Bowlby, adult anxiety may be rooted in childhood experiences that leave a child uncertain of the availability of a protective figure in tim...

Trust is essential to the development of healthy, secure, and satisfying relationships (Simpson, 2007a). Attachment styles provide a theoretical framework for understanding how individuals respond to partner behaviors that either confirm or violate trust (Hazan & Shaver, 1994). The current research aimed to identify how trust and attachment anxiety might interact to predict different types of j...

BACKGROUND Impaired capacity for emotion regulation is associated with a broad spectrum of psychiatric disturbances; however, little is known about treatment response in emotion regulation functioning among patients with severe mental illness. This study examined treatment response and the role that experiential avoidance plays in mediating the relationship between attachment anxiety/avoidance ...