Attachment style, current relationship security, and negative emotions: The mediating role of physiological regulation

Abstract

Young men were subjected to laboratory inductions of anger and anxiety after undergoing a physiological assessment of vagal tone, an index of parasympathetic nervous system functioning that has been associated with emotion regulation in prior research. We tested whether: (i) young men’s emotional reactivity and recovery were associated with their global attachment style or their perceptions of security in specific, current attachment relationships; (ii) such associations were mediated by vagal tone; and (iii) such effects were moderated by the physical presence of romantic attachment figures. As predicted, vagal tone was negatively associated with attachment anxiety and positively associated with perceptions of security in current attachment relationships. Men with high perceptions of security in current relationships showed more effective recovery from laboratory-induced anger, and vagal tone mediated this association. In contrast, the physical presence of romantic attachment figures showed no association with emotional reactivity or recovery and did not moderate the aforementioned effects.