Attachment anxiety and avoidance, emotion dysregulation, interpersonal difficulties and alcohol problems in emerging adulthood

Abstract

Background: Current models of alcohol problems in emerging adulthood (EA) have not fully considered the developmental context and integrated developmental, social, and emotional mechanisms. Attachment styles contribute to the development of emotion regulation and interpersonal functioning, which are both critical for managing periods of transition. The current study tested a model of alcohol problems in EA that considers emotion dysregulation and interpersonal difficulties as mediators of the relationship between attachment anxiety and avoidance and alcohol problems.

Method: Emerging adults (n = 203, ages 18–24, 64.7% female) who drank 2 + times in the past 30 days completed measures at baseline and for 30 days after the baseline assessment.

Results: Path analysis was used to test the indirect relationships between attachment anxiety and avoidance and alcohol problems via emotion dysregulation and interpersonal difficulties. There was a positive indirect relationship between anxious attachment and alcohol problems via both emotion dysregulation and interpersonal difficulties, and between avoidant attachment and alcohol problems via interpersonal difficulties, but not via emotion dysregulation. Follow-up analyzes examining pathways from attachment anxiety and avoidance to alcohol problems via the individual emotion dysregulation subscales revealed different emotion regulation pathways associated with higher anxious and avoidant attachment, but were generally in line with analyzes using a summed total score for emotion dysregulation.

Conclusions: Interventions for alcohol problems in emerging adults should consider anxious and avoidant attachment as precursors to alcohol problems and should include skills training in adaptive strategies for emotion regulation and interpersonal functioning.

Keywords:

• Emerging adulthood
• alcohol problems
• attachment
• emotion regulation
• relationships

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Natalie Vilhena-Churchill for her work on this project.

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts of interest to report.

Notes

1 As previous research indicates that men consume more alcohol and experience more alcohol problems than women, we also ran the model controlling for gender effects on alcohol use and alcohol problems. Although there was a significant effect of gender on alcohol use (β = 0.303, p < .001), there was no significant effect on alcohol problems (β = −0.111, ns) and the pattern of results for the model remained unchanged.

Additional information

Funding

The project was funded by an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (Dr. Goldstein) and the Foundation for Alcohol Research/ABMRF. Dr. Goldstein and Dr. Stewart are supported by the Canada Research Chairs Program.