Attachment style and presence of a romantic partner as moderators of psychophysiological responses to a stressful laboratory situation

The effects of attachment style and presence of a romantic partner on psychophysiological responses to a stressful laboratory situation were examined in a sample of 34 college women involved in serious dating relationships. In two separate laboratory sessions, one with romantic partner present and one with partner absent, participants were led to anticipate a stressful situation. Heart rate and systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels were recorded during baseline and stress periods in each condition. Significant three-way interactions showed that both avoidant and anxious participants in the partner-present condition evinced elevated psychophysiological responses to the stressor (relative to baseline), in contrast to these groups in the partner-absent condition and secure and nonanxious participants in both conditions. Findings are compared to those of previous research on attachment-style differences in proximity-seeking behavior in a similar laboratory situation, and they are interpreted in terms of the approach-avoidance conflict experienced by insecure people when faced with a stressful situation in the presence of their romantic partners.     

Using the relational turbulence model to understand negative emotion within courtship

We employ the relational turbulence model to deduce hypotheses about how intimacy, relational uncertainty, and interference and facilitation from partners predict people’s experience of negative emotion. We test our hypotheses using data from a self‐report, cross‐sectional study of 525 individuals involved in dating relationships. Results indicated that intimacy shared very small convex curvilinear associations with anger, sadness, fear, and jealousy (H1). Relational uncertainty and interference from partners were positively correlated with negative emotion (H2, H3), and facilitation from partners was negatively correlated with negative emotion (H4). Also as expected, relational uncertainty and interference from partners mediated the association between intimacy and negative emotion (H5). We interpret how our findings shed light on people’s experience of negative emotion within courtship.