Are Past Relationships at the Heart of Attachment Dynamics? What Love Has to Do With It

The ways in which a sense of attachment security can be primed and the consequences that follow from this for self-, interpersonal, and intergroup perception are the subject of this insightful target article (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). The model and research supporting it move well beyond early trait-like conceptions of attachment styles to conceiving them as malleable and context-dependent. They do so by making extensive use of the models and methods of social cognition to explore the manner in which a sense of security can be evoked consciously or unconsciously through “security priming. ” Such representations offer the person an “inner resource” that, when used, results in various positive outcomes ranging from the intrapersonal to the interpersonal and the intergroup. The work is timely given the ever-increasing interest in the field in understanding the links between these levels of analysis and also of special value given the still limited research on these precise linkages. Within each level, the reviewed research points to potential mechanisms through which a wide variety of positive outcomes may arise based on security priming and suggests broader, long-term effects beyond the immediate situation. Intrapersonally, security priming appears to make individuals more open to learning about their weaknesses, as they rely less on defensive mechanisms to establish or maintain their sense of self-worth. This should contribute; the authors argue, to increased competence, to stable, non-defensive high self-esteem, to self-actualization, and to more authenticity. While these predictions remain to be tested in longitudinal or mini-longitudinal work, they are provocative. The authors also assume that security priming evokes positive affect, and may thus contribute to improved mental health over time. Interpersonally, security priming promotes “pro-relational behaviors,” apparently primarily by influencing expectations about relationship partners. This should contribute to forming lasting positive relationships, to increased compassion, prosocial values, and helping behavior (by decreasing personal distress and allowing attention to others’ distress). It should also lead to stronger bonds with fellow human beings. At the intergroup level, security priming reduces intergroup bias via an appraisal of the outgroup as less threatening, realistically and symbolically, and by reducing anxiety. This should contribute to more positive intergroup behavior, the authors argue, and even to more peaceful relations societally and on the international stage. In addition to these claims, the evidence shows that the security priming effects observed cannot simply be reduced to the priming of a positive concept. Security priming does increase positive evaluation of neutral stimuli, but does so in both neutral and stressful contexts, whereas positive concept priming (not attachment-related) increases positive evaluation only in the absence of stress. Moreover, even though positive affect or mood arises in consciousness based on security priming, it does not appear to mediate the observed effects. Instead, security priming seems to work primarily by reducing threat appraisal and by facilitating effective regulation of distress in the face of threat, strengthening people’s sense of efficacy that threats can be overcome, that security will not be compromised. Indeed, even when an individual believes his/her ingroup has been insulted by an outgroup member, security priming still reduces intergroup bias. The process may thus be robust and nonredundant with other effects. Part of the authors’ theoretical argument is that experiences with available, supportive attachment figures lead to a “reservoir of core cognitive representations” relevant to security which can then become accessible via security priming. The authors have conceptualized these core representations mostly as generalized knowledge. In our work, we have emphasized specific dyadic relationships. That is, we argue that any kind of felt security or comfort is necessarily grounded in specific relationships and is thus linked in memory to distinct significant-other representations. We highlight below how our own model is theoretically relevant to the authors’ point of view on attachment-related phenomena and a sense of security, and emphasize our view that it is mainly the love one feels (or once felt) for a significant other – and the love received in return – that matters.