Adult attachment styles and negativistic beliefs about the social world: The role of self-image and other-image

• Authors: Krystyna Skarżyńska , Piotr Radkiewicz
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article is concerned with the relationship between adult attachment styles and generalized negativistic social beliefs (i.e. pessimistic expectations concerning human nature and interpersonal relations). Two general dimensions of attachment styles, avoidance and anxiety, are considered to be manifestations of an individual’s image of other people and of the self, respectively. We suggest that both dimensions may be a substantial basis for formulating negative beliefs about the social world. Firstly, we believe that a high level of negativistic social beliefs can be positively predicted by the growth of avoidance (negative image of others) and anxiety (negative image of self). Secondly, we formulate an expected interaction effect. Although the nature of such an interaction is ambiguous, it may be argued as having a synergistic as well as antagonistic pattern. These hypotheses were tested and supported (in favor of an antagonistic pattern of interaction in the case of the second hypothesis) on a representative sample of adult Poles (N = 853).

Keywords

EN

attachment styles; self-image/other-image; avoidance; anxiety; negativistic social beliefs

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 511-520

Dates

published

2014-12-01

online

2014-12-16

Contributors

author

Krystyna Skarżyńska

• Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences

author

Piotr Radkiewicz

• Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/ppb-2014-0061