Neighborhood poverty, allostatic load, and changes in cellular aging in African American young adults: the moderating role of attachment

ABSTRACT

Attachment experiences are thought to contribute to physical health across the lifespan. Evidence suggests that attachment style may serve as a protective factor for individuals’ physical health by mitigating the negative effects of social and environmental risk factors. In the present study, we evaluated how attachment styles may moderate the link between African American adolescents’ exposure to neighborhood poverty and accelerated cellular aging in young adulthood. Analyses revealed that allostatic load at age 19 mediated the association between neighborhood poverty in adolescence and changes in cellular aging from age 20 to 27. Notably, attachment avoidance (but not attachment anxiety) moderated this association, such that allostatic load was only associated with faster cellular aging for individuals who were high in avoidance. These findings suggest that allostatic load may give rise to faster cellular aging, but these detrimental effects of allostatic load can be offset by young adults’ effective use of attachment figures.

KEYWORDS:

• neighborhood poverty
• attachment
• allostatic load
• cellular aging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants R01 HD030588, P30 DA027827, P50 DA051361, DP2 MD013947, and R03 HD093918 from NIH, by the Jacobs Foundation (Early Career Research Fellowship 2018-1288-07), and by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (Young Investigator Grant #27302).