To Reveal or Not to Reveal: Attachment Styles and their Correlations with Deception Rules

Problem/Purpose The current study explored individual differences of anxious and avoidant attachment styles and their correlation with endorsement of deception rules in romantic relationships. Roggensack and Sillars (2014) state that each person has their own rules regarding what their partner should tell them and what their partner does not have to disclose. They defined the rules regarding information that should be revealed as obligatory rules and rules regarding the information that does not have to be revealed as discretionary rules (Roggensack & Sillars, 2014). Past research indicates that one predictor of lying to one’s romantic partner is having an avoidant attachment style (Gillath et al., 2010). It was expected that there would be a positive correlation between discretionary rule endorsement and both anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Procedure Data collection was conducted using Amazon Mechanical Turk, where participants (N = 200) received $1.00 for completing an online questionnaire composed of the Adult Attachment Questionnaire (Simpson et al., 1996) and the Deceptive Rule Endorsement Scale (Roggensack & Sillars, 2014). Results A series of Pearson’s r correlational analyses were used to test each hypothesis at a .05 level of significance. Results indicated positive correlations between discretionary rule endorsement and anxious attachment (r = .15, p = .04), as well as avoidant attachment (r = .63, p \u3c .001). On the other hand, a positive correlation was found between obligatory rule endorsement and avoidant attachment (r = .28, p \u3c .001). Implications/Conclusion This research provides insight into correlations between a person’s anxious or avoidant attachment style and the deception rules that they endorse in romantic relationships. This is important as it is expected that conflict occurs in relationships due to disagreements over deception and honesty rules (Roggensack & Sillars, 2014). Understanding what types of rules someone might endorse helps one to understand the information they may expect their partner to reveal