Do episodic self- and partner-uncertainty mediate the association between attachment orientations and emotional responses to relationship-threatening events in dating couples?

Abstract

This study examined relational-uncertainty perceptions (a form of cognitive appraisal) to investigate how partners in 272 heterosexual couples responded emotionally to a relationship-challenging event. Participants rated themselves on attachment anxiety and avoidance. Then, after listing a challenging event, they rated how uncertain it made them about their own and their partner's continued involvement in the relationship. Participants also rated how angry and fearful the event made them. An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model yielded three sets of results. First, actor effects from insecure attachment orientations to episodic relational uncertainty emerged. Second, proposed mediation between attachment orientations and emotional reactions by uncertainty was partially supported (perceived partner-uncertainty partially mediated the positive association of anxious attachment and fear, and self-uncertainty partially mediated the positive relation between avoidant attachment and anger). Finally, a partner effect was found between one couple member's avoidant attachment and the other's perceived partner uncertainty. Men and women exhibited similar findings.

Keywords:

• Anger
• Attachment theory
• Dating relationships
• Episodic relational uncertainty
• Fear

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplementary Appendix I and Appendix II is available via the ‘Supplementary’ tab on the article's online page (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2015.1050999).

Notes

¹ We are studying only episodic relational uncertainty based on specific events, and not global relational uncertainty (Knobloch & Solomon, 2002, 2003). Global relational uncertainty would inform about individuals’ general or characteristic tendencies to perceive uncertainty in routine circumstances. However, we were interested in whether case-by-case (i.e., episodic) uncertainty perceptions were related to attachment. For the ease of exposition, we interchangeably use the terms uncertainty, relational uncertainty and episodic relational uncertainty throughout the article. Note also that relational uncertainty is an umbrella term that encompasses relationship uncertainty.

² Equality constraints of men's and women's solutions were not applicable in the bootstrap analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Department of Human Development and Family Studies and the College of Human Sciences at Texas Tech University