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Avoidant Attachment and the Processing of Emotion Information: Selective Attention or Cognitive Avoidance?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2015

Panoraia Andriopoulos  and
Konstantinos Kafetsios
Panoraia Andriopoulos*
Affiliation:
Southampton Solent University, Southampton, Hampshire, UK
Konstantinos Kafetsios
Affiliation:
University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE: Panoraia Andriopoulos, Psychology Department, School of Health, Exercise and Social Science, Southampton Solent University, East Park Terrace, Southampton, Hampshire SO14 0YN, UK. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The present study investigated avoidant attachment orientation differences in emotion processing biases under different conditions of attachment schema activation (subliminal, supraliminal or no-activation). After completing a dimensional assessment of adult attachment, 97 participants were randomly assigned to one of the three activating conditions and subsequently performed an Emotional Stroop Task including attachment and emotion positive and negative words. Consistently, in the supraliminal activation condition, avoidant participants demonstrated higher interference of attachment-related and emotional stimuli compared to the no-activation condition; they focused on the task-relevant processes (colour naming), ignoring the semantic meaning of the words (lower interference). The results of the present study suggest that avoidant individuals use both pre-emptive and post-emptive strategies under different activating conditions in the processing of emotion information. The results also highlight interpretation of latencies in the Emotional Stroop Task for avoidant participants.

Keywords

attachment systemprimingactivationavoidant attachmentinformation processingEmotional Stroop
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Relationships Research , Volume 6 , 2015 , e6
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015 

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