CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 103Attachment and Relationship DynamicsChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentPsychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research

Infants’ attachment insecurity predicts attachment-relevant emotion regulation strategies in adulthood.

Open access
Girme, Yuthika U., Jones, Rachael E., Fleck, Cory, Simpson, Jeffry A., Overall, Nickola C.·2021·Emotion
DOI 10.1037/emo0000721PMC PMC7343591
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Infant attachment is theorized to lay the foundation of emotion regulation across the life span. However, testing this proposition requires prospective designs examining whether attachment assessed in infancy predicts emotion regulation strategies observed in adult relationships. Using unique data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, we examined whether infant attachment assessed at 12 and 18 months in the Strange Situation were associated with attachment-relevant emotion regulation strategies coded from video-recorded conflict discussions with romantic partners at ages 20, 23, 26, and/or 35. The current research first integrated the developmental and emotion regulation literatures to identify three specific attachment-relevant emotion regulation strategies. Balanced-regulation involves being open, approach-orientated, and engaging in collaborative problem-solving. Hypo-regulation involves suppressing emotions, disengaging from close others, and engaging in superficial problem-solving. Hyper-regulation involves exaggerating emotional expressions, ruminating, and being self-focused in processing issues. Compared to stable secure infants (secure at 12 and 18 months), stable insecure infants (insecure at 12 and 18 months) displayed worse balanced-regulation and greater hypo-regulation strategies, and unstable insecure infants (insecure at 12 or 18 months) displayed greater hyper-regulation strategies, in relationship-threatening situations 20-35 years later. Conceptually replicating these results, greater friendship insecurity at age 16 predicted worse balanced-regulation and greater hypo- and hyper-regulation strategies during relationship-threatening situations in adulthood. These findings highlight that infant attachment insecurity is associated with distinct emotion regulation strategies in adulthood 20-35 years later. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/emo0000721

Cites

49 of 49 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Attachment insecurity in infancy is predictive of emotion regulation decades later in adulthood.

    “Attachment insecurity in infancy has been shown to be predictive of emotion regulation decades later in adulthood [55].”

    From Complex PTSD and borderline personality disorder (2021) · cites this paper as [55]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 25

  1. Ainsworth MD, & Wittig BA (1969). Attachment and exploratory behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. In Foss BM (Ed.), Determinants of infant behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 113– 136). London: Methuen.
  2. Bolger N & Laurenceau J-P. (2013). Intensive Longitudinal Methods: An Introduction to Diary and Experience Sampling Research. New York: Guilford Press.
  3. Bouthillier D, Julien D, Dube M, Belanger I, & Hamelin M (2002). Predictive validity of adult attachment measures in relation to emotion regulation behaviors in marital interactions. Journal of Adult Development, 9, 291– 305.
  4. Bowlby J (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New York, NY: Basic Books.
  5. Bowlby J (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation. New York, NY: Basic Books.
  6. Bretherton I, & Munholland KA (2008). Internal working models in attachment relationships: Elaborating a central construct in attachment theory. In Cassidy J & Shaver PR (Eds.), Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications (pp. 102– 127). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
  7. Dozier M, Melissa Manni, & Oliver Lindhiem (2005). Lessons from the longitudinal studies of attachment. In Grossmann KE, Grossmann K, and Waters E (Eds.), Attachment from infancy to adulthood: The major longitudinal studies (Chapter 11, pp. 305– 319). New York: Guilford Press.
  8. Fraley CR (2002). Attachment stability from infancy to adulthood: Meta-analysis and dynamic modeling of developmental mechanisms. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 123– 151.
  9. Gross JJ (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271– 299.
  10. Grossmann K, Grossmann KE, & Kindler H (2005). Early care and the roots of attachment and partnership representations. In Grossmann KE, Grossmann K, and Waters E (Eds.), Attachment from infancy to adulthood: The major longitudinal studies (Chapter 5, pp. 98– 136). New York: Guilford Press.
  11. Johnson SM (2015). Emotionally focused couple therapy. In Gurman AS, Lebow JL, and Snyder DK (Eds.), Clinical handbook of couple therapy, 5th Edition (pp. 97– 128). New York: Guilford Press.
  12. Katz LF, & Gottman JM (1991). Marital discord and child outcomes: A social psychophysiological approach. In Garber J & Dodge KA (Eds.), The development of emotional regulation and dysregulation (pp. 129– 155). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  13. Kobak R, & Duemmler S (1994). Attachment and conversation: Toward a discourse analysis of adolescent and adult security. In Bartholomew K & Perlman D (Eds.), Attachment processes in adulthood (pp. 121– 150). London: Jessica Kingsley.
  14. Main M, & Solomon J (1986). Discovery of a new, insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. In Brazelton TB & Yogman M (Eds.), Affective Development in Infancy (pp. 95– 124). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
  15. Marvin RS, Britner PA, & Russell BS (2016). Normative development: The ontogeny of attachment in childhood. In Cassidy J & Shaver PR (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (3rd ed., pp. 273– 290). New York: Guilford Press.
  16. Mikulincer M, & Shaver PR (2016). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford.
  17. Rosenthal R, & Rosnow RL (2007). Essentials of behavioral research: Methods and data analysis (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
  18. Scharfe E (2003). Stability and change of attachment representations from cradle to grave. In Johnson SM & Whiffen VE (Eds.), Attachment Processes in Couple and Family Therapy (pp. 64– 84). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
  19. Simpson JA, & Rholes WS (2012). Adult attachment orientations, stress, and romantic relationships. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 45, pp. 279– 328). Academic Press.
  20. Simpson JA, Rholes WS, & Nelligan JS (1992). Support seeking and support giving within couples in an anxiety-provoking situation: The role of attachment styles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 434– 446.
  21. Sroufe LA, Egeland B, & Carlson EA (1999). One social world: The integrated development of parent– child and peer relationships. In Collins WA & Laursen B (Eds.), Relationships as developmental context: The 30th Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology (pp. 241– 262). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  22. Sroufe LA, Egeland B, Carlson EA, & Collins WA (2005). The development of the person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood. New York: Guilford Press.
  23. Steele H & Steele M (2005). Understanding and resolving emotional conflict: The London Parent-Child Project. In Grossmann KE, Grossmann K, and Waters E (Eds.), Attachment from infancy to adulthood: The major longitudinal studies (Chapter 6, pp. 137– 164). New York: Guilford Press.
  24. Thompson RA (1999). Early attachment and later development. In Cassidy J & Shaver PR (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 265– 286). New York: Guilford.
  25. Zimmer-Gembeck MJ, Webb HJ, Pepping CA, Swan K, Merlo O, Skinner EA, Avdagic E and Dunbar M, 2017. Is parent–child attachment a correlate of children’s emotion regulation and coping? International Journal of Behavioral Development, 41, 74– 93.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Girme, Y. U., Jones, R. E., Fleck, C., Simpson, J. A., & Overall, N. C.
Affiliations
  • Simon Fraser University (CA)
  • University of Minnesota (US)
ORCID
Venue
Emotion
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
2021-03
Volume
21
Issue
2
Pages
260-272
ISSN
  • 1528-3542 (ISSN-L)
  • 1931-1516
DOI
10.1037/emo0000721
PMC
PMC7343591
OpenAlex
W3000257734
Cited by
103
References
46
Citations by year
2026: 15 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 4
FWCI
11.75
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Emotion (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • ResearchSpace (University of Auckland) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institute on Aging (AG039453)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
Keywords
infant attachment, insecure attachment, emotion regulation strategies, overregulation, Strange Situation, romantic relationships, conflict discussions
MeSH terms
Emotional Regulation, Adolescent, Adult, Female, Humans, Infant, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Object Attachment, Prospective Studies, Young Adult

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review