Dismissing attachment and global and daily indicators of subjective well-being: An experience sampling approach

Attachment researchers have largely assumed that people who are dismissing (i.e., high on attachment avoidance and low on attachment anxiety) are maladjusted. Specifically, dismissing adults are construed as defensively suppressing their desire for intimacy at the expense of their emotional health. The present dissertation aims to empirically examine the association between dismissing attachment and two indicators of subjective well-being: Global life satisfaction and daily affect. Self-reports of attachment and overall life satisfaction were collected from 257 adults. Additionally, experience sampling methodology was used to gather repeated measurements of affect and social context over 8 days (up to 4 times a day). The findings indicated that dismissing adults were relatively satisfied with their lives and that they experienced close to as much positively valenced affect as their secure counterparts. For example, attachment avoidance was not associated with the valence of people’s daily affect, even though attachment anxiety was negatively associated with it. Moreover, the findings regarding affect were maintained across different social contexts, and all findings were maintained when commonly associated risk-factors, such as neuroticism and internalizing symptoms, were controlled. Contrary to common assumptions, the present study demonstrates that people who are dismissing are not necessarily dissatisfied with life or prone to negative affective experiences.U of I OnlyAuthor requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste