Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Dec 31;26(3):703.
doi: 10.4081/ripppo.2023.703.

Attachment orientations and emotion regulation: new insights from the study of interpersonal emotion regulation strategies

Irene Messina  1 , Vincenzo Calvo  2 , Alessandro Grecucci  3
Affiliations

Attachment orientations and emotion regulation: new insights from the study of interpersonal emotion regulation strategies

Irene Messina et al. Res Psychother. .

Abstract

A crucial point for the understanding of the link between attachment and emotion regulation concerns the individual tendency in turning to others to alleviate distress. Most previous studies in this field have considered almost exclusively intra-personal forms of emotion regulation, neglecting the role of social interaction in emotion regulation processes. In the present study, instead, we focused on interpersonal emotion regulation. 630 adults were assessed for their attachment orientations, general difficulties in emotion regulation, and habitual intra-personal and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Results showed that the imbalance between the hyper-activation and deactivation of the attachment system, which characterize unsecure attachment, reflects a correspondent imbalance in the use of emotion regulation strategies, with an exaggerated dependence on other associated with attachment anxiety and pseudo-autonomy associated to attachment avoidance.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: the authors declare no potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Dysregulation/over-regulation respectively associated with attachment anxiety and avoidance.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Armusewicz K., Steele M., Steele H., Murphy A. (2022). Assessing therapist and clinician competency in parent-infant psychotherapy: The REARING coding system (RCS) for the group attachment based intervention (GABI). Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process, and Outcome, 25(1). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Balzarotti S., John O.P., Gross J.J. (2010). An Italian Adaptation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 26(1), 61-67.
    1. Barthel A.L., Hay A., Doan S.N., Hofmann S.G. (2018). Interpersonal emotion regulation: a review of social and developmental components. Behaviour Change, 35(4), 203-216.
    1. Blake J., Norton C.L. (2014). Examining the Relationship between Hope and Attachment: a meta-analysis. Psychology, 5(06), 556-565. doi: 10.4236/psych.2014.56065
    1. Brenning K.M., Soenens B., Braet C., Bosmans G.U.Y. (2012). Attachment and depressive symptoms in middle childhood and early adolescence: Testing the validity of the emotion regulation model of attachment. Personal relationships, 19(3), 445-464.