Evaluations of Supportive Messages Provided by Friends and Romantic Partners: An Attachment Theory Approach

Abstract

In a questionnaire study of 270 college students we investigated relationships of adult attachment‐style dimensions and perceptions of comforting messages received from friends and romantic partners. We found that comfort with closeness, preoccupied with relationships, and fear of intimacy all associated with factors developed by Bippus (2001) on evaluations of comforting communication. These same three attachment‐style dimensions were significantly related with perceptions of social support, further supporting the link between adult attachment orientations and feelings about others’ supportiveness. Gender differences in evaluations of comforting messages were also examined. These findings will be discussed in terms of attachment theory.

Keywords:

• Attachment Styles
• Supportive Communication Perceived Support

Notes

[1] This analysis considers relationships among two composite variables which are the weighted sum of two variables sets—in this case, the attachment style‐dimensions and the skillfulness variables. To guard against multicollinearity in a set of independent variables, Lewis‐Beck (1980) recommends regressing each independent variable against all others to guard against values close to 1.0. The highest adjusted R ² yielded by this approach was an acceptably low .40.

[2] Though significant at the .01 level, the second canonical correlation was not interpreted for two reasons. First, Stevens (1996) recommends a sample size‐to‐variable ratio of 42/1 if interpreting the first two canonical pairs, but 20/1 if interpreting only the first. The ratio in this study was 27/1. Second, the correlation was a weak .30, which Stevens cautions against attempting to interpret.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Guy Foster Bachman

Guy Bachman (PhD, Arizona State University, 2002) and Amy Bippus (PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 2000) are Assistant Professors in the Communication Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach. A portion of this paper was presented at the 2004 National Communication Association Conference. The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Walter Zakahi for their helpful comments.