Perceived closeness to multiple social connections and attachment style: A longitudinal examination
Issue Date
2016Author
Lee, Juwon
Gillath, Omri
Publisher
SAGE
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
Published Version
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/social-psychological-and-personality-science/journal201952Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Throughout life people form multiple close connections. These connections play an important role, such as social and instrumental support. Despite this, relatively little is known about how and why closeness to multiple others changes over time. To fill this gap, we examined changes in perceived closeness to multiple social connections and used a well-studied relational individual difference—attachment style—to shed light on those changes. Multilevel analysis and different indexes revealed that attachment avoidance was associated with lower mean perceived closeness and greater fluctuations in perceived closeness over time. These associations were moderated by attachment anxiety, such that low levels of avoidance and anxiety (i.e., security) were associated with greater stability of perceived closeness. Our results demonstrate that perceived closeness in one’s social connections tend to change, even over relatively short periods of time, and individual differences such as attachment style are important correlates of these changes.
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Citation
Lee, J., & Gillath, O. (2016). Perceived closeness to multiple social connections and attachment style: A longitudinal examination. Social Psychological and Personality Science. doi: 10.1177/1948550616644963
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