Perceived social support as an offshoot of attachment style§

Joao M. Moreira*, Maria de Fatima Silva1, Carla Moleiro2, Patrıcia Aguiar3,Micael Andrez4, Sonia Bernardes3, Helena Afonso

Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciencias da Educacao, Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade,1649-013 Lisboa, Portugal

Received 22 August 2001; received in revised form 22 February 2002; accepted 24 March 2002

Abstract

Questionnaires were completed by college students (N=182), with the purpose of examining the role ofadult attachment and social support as predictors of psychological distress. Factor analyses of the attach-ment and social support measures yielded three factors for attachment (Preoccupation, Avoidance, Dis-missiveness), and two for social support (Intimate, Casual). Both types of support were significant zero-order predictors of distress, but intimate support effects were rendered non-significant when attachmentstyle was controlled for. In contrast, attachment style (Preoccupation) exerted a significant additional effectafter social support was controlled for. Analyses of interactions suggested that Preoccupation reduces theeffect of Intimate Support, while Avoidance enhances the effect of Casual Support. These results supportthe hypothesis that perceived social support, and particularly Intimate Support is, to a large extent, a by-product of attachment style, but also point towards possible moderator effects of attachment style uponthe impact of support. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Perceived social support; Adult attachment style; Distress; Symptoms; Interaction effects

Understanding the causes and correlates of emotional distress has always been one of themajor goals of psychological research. A good portion of this effort has been invested in explor-ing the contribution of personal relationships to adaptation in daily life, from widely divergent

0191-8869/03/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Personality and Individual Differences 34 (2003) 485–501

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§ Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the IV Simposio Nacional de Investigacao em Psicologia(4th National Symposium on Psychological Research), Lisbon, November 1996, and at the Conference of the Inter-

national Network on Personal Relationships, Oxford, Ohio, June 1997.* Corresponding author. Tel.: +351-21-793-45-54; fax: +351-21-793-34-08.E-mail address: jmoreira@fpce.ul.pt (J.M. Moreira).

1 Present address: Hay Seleccao, Portugal.2 Present address: Department of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.3 Present address: Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e da Empresa, Portugal.4 Present address: Instituto de Emprego e Formacao Profissional, Portugal.

theoretical standpoints (e.g. Hobfoll, 1998; Maslow, 1970; Rogers, 1951; Sullivan, 1953). Two ofthe most relevant theoretical concepts in this quest have been social support and attachment.A huge number of studies are available in the literature demonstrating that social support is

negatively related to emotional distress (see Schwarzer & Leppin, 1989, for a meta-analysis), eventhough the actual causal path is still controversial (Dooley, 1985; Schwarzer & Leppin, 1991).One of the factors adding complexity to the research on social support is the multifaceted natureof the construct (Barrera, 1986): social support has been conceptualised as the existence of somekind of intimate tie (e.g. Brown, Bhrolchain, & Harris, 1975), a structural property of one’s per-sonal social network (e.g. Silberfeld, 1978), the provision of specific types of assistance (e.g. Bar-rera, Sandler, & Ramsay, 1981), the feeling that support would be available should it becomenecessary (e.g. Sarason, Levine, Basham, & Sarason, 1983), the satisfaction with received socialsupport (e.g. Sarason et al., 1983), etc. Most of the studies comparing the different facets of thesocial support concept, however, indicate that perceived support, the broad perception thatsatisfactory support is available, constitutes the crux of the concept (Sarason, Shearin, Pierce, &Sarason, 1987) and is most strongly related to adaptation (Schwarzer & Leppin, 1991).Sarason, Pierce, and Sarason (1990) define perceived social support as the set of ‘‘feelings that

you are loved, valued, and unconditionally accepted’’ (p. 110). In addition, it is commonly foundthat perceived social support remains relatively stable across extended periods of time, suggestingthat it would best be seen as an individual difference variable (Sarason, Sarason, & Shearin,1986). Other studies have shown that perceived social support is the result of the operation ofcognitive personality variables such as attributional style, locus of control, or relational schemas(Yee, Santoro, Paul, & Rosenbaum, 1996). Apparently, these variables influence the perceivedsupportiveness of support behaviours received (Pierce, Sarason, & Sarason, 1992), the ease withwhich supportive behaviours are recalled (Lakey & Cassady, 1990), and also the attributionsindividuals provide for unsupportive behaviours (Ross, Lutz, & Lakey, 1999).Meanwhile, interpersonal schemata of the kind hypothesised to explain social support effects

have been given particular attention by attachment theory, originated by John Bowlby (1973,1980a, 1980b). In line with previous theoretical statements going back at least to Freud (1912/1961), Bowlby claimed that early meaningful relationships lead to the formation of ‘‘internalworking models’’ of self and others, and that these models are the basis for perception, feelingand behaviour in all later meaningful relationships, extending into adulthood. The study of indi-vidual differences in internal working models, reflected upon behaviour patterns labelled‘‘attachment styles’’, was developed by Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978). Usingobservational methods with infants, these authors identified three attachment styles: secure,avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent. This typology was later applied to adults in a study by Hazanand Shaver (1987), in which the secure style was characterised as feeling comfortable with close-ness and not worrying about abandonment, the avoidant style as feeling uncomfortable withcloseness and thus keeping distance in relationships, and the anxious/ambivalent (or ‘‘pre-occupied’’) style as showing intense desire for closeness, together with worries about partners’feelings and the possibility of abandonment.A purported improvement on this typology was proposed by Bartholomew (1990; Bartholo-

mew & Horowitz, 1991), who differentiated two avoidant styles. Individuals with the fearful-avoidant style admit desire for closeness and intimacy, but interpersonal distrust and fear ofrejection lead to avoidance of closeness. The dismissive-avoidant style is characterised by the

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negation of attachment needs, and so these individuals passively avoid close relationships, valueindependence and autonomy at the expense of intimacy, and consider relationships with others asrelatively unimportant.A fundamental improvement in the measurement of adult attachment style has been achieved

with the appearance of multi-item rating scales, which replaced the typological forced choiceinstrument used in the original Hazan and Shaver (1987) study. These multi-item scalesopened the possibility of using factor analysis techniques to ascertain the dimensionality ofindividual differences in the adult attachment style domain. Factor analytic studies of attach-ment style questionnaires have tended to converge upon two major dimensions of preoccupationand avoidance (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998). However, some authors have found three fac-tors, not always identical (Collins & Read, 1990; Mikulincer, Florian, & Tolmacz, 1990; Mikulincer,Florian, & Weller, 1993). Given that this study is one of the first to employ multi-item attachmentstyle scales in a Portuguese population, we also decided to undertake an exploratory factor analysis.Numerous studies have shown that attachment style is significantly related to psychological

distress. Carnelley, Pietromonaco, and Jaffe (1994) found that both the fearful-avoidant and theanxious/ambivalent styles were related to depression, but only fearful avoidance discriminatedbetween a group of married women recovering from clinical depression and a group of non-depressed married women. However, Pettem, West, Mahoney, and Keller (1993) compared agroup of depressed patients and a group of non-depressed psychiatric controls, and found thatthe depressed patients exhibited intense care-seeking and angry withdrawal from the attachmentfigure, a pattern characteristic of an anxious/ambivalent style. Whiffen, Aube, Thompson, andCampbell (2000) also found that depression was related to both insecure attachment styles, butmost strongly to preoccupation.Disorders other than depression have also been examined in this literature. Cooper, Shaver,

and Collins (1998), in a study with 13- to 19-year-old adolescents, found the secure style to reportlower levels of symptomatology in all of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis & Meli-saratos, 1983) Scales (general anxiety, phobic anxiety, depression, hostility, obsessive-compulsivetendencies, paranoid ideation, psychoticism, somatisation). In addition, the anxious/ambivalentstyle showed higher levels of depression and hostility when compared with the avoidant group.Burge et al. (1997), studying a sample of female college students, found that the preoccupationdimension, as well as comfort with closeness and comfort with depending on others (facets of theavoidant dimension, see Collins & Read, 1990), were significantly correlated with depression andanxiety, while comfort with closeness was also significantly correlated with personality disorderssymptoms. Although none of the attachment styles predicted psychological symptomatologyafter controlling for symptomatology one year before, several significant interactions with pre-vious symptoms were found, showing that women who reported difficulty getting close to otherswere more likely to present increased levels of depression, substance abuse, and eating and per-sonality disorders. For difficulty depending on others, the results were replicated, with theexception of substance abuse. For preoccupation, similar interactive effects were found fordepression and personality disorders, and an unexpected reversed effect was found for eatingdisorders: women were likely to present with less symptoms of eating disorders one year later ifthey felt preoccupied about their partners.Mikulincer et al. (1993) found that attachment style influenced not only the level of distress repor-

ted when in a stressful situation, but also its manifestations: Individuals with an anxious/ambivalent

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style of attachment expressed their discomfort more directly and in a wider variety of ways(anxiety, depression, hostility, somatisation, cognitive intrusions, cognitive avoidance), whileavoidants showed their distress only in the most indirect ways (hostility, somatisation, cognitiveavoidance). Finally, Mickelson, Kessler, and Shaver (1997) studied a large sample, representativeof the national population of the United States of America, and found that the secure style wasnegatively related to the lifetime prevalence of all of the DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders asses-sed, with the exception of schizophrenia (included were major depression, manic episodes, dys-thymia, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, simple phobia, posttraumatic stress disorder,generalised anxiety, alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, drug abuse, drug dependence, conductdisorder, antisocial disorder). In contrast, the avoidant style was positively related to the pre-valence of every single type of disorder. The same positive relation was found for the anxious/ambivalent style, with the exceptions of alcohol abuse and drug abuse.The connection between social support and attachment style has been emphasised by Sarason et

al. (1990; see also Ptacek, 1996). These authors consider perceived support to be a consequence ofinternal working models of the self and the others, generated in infancy (Sarason et al., 1990,p. 109), and equate it with the secure attachment style. Avoidant and anxious/ambivalent personshave representations of the self and the others which make them prone to encoding and recallinginstances of helpful behaviour as less supportive. These predictions were confirmed in a study bySarason et al. (1991), who found that both the number of perceived potential providers of sup-port and satisfaction with available support were positively related to a favourable view of self,and negatively related to an unfavourable view of self. Both aspects of support perception werealso related to the perception participants believed their significant others to have of them, andalso to the actual views intimate others had of the participant. In addition, this study showedthat social support perceptions were related to a more positive representation of parental atti-tudes during infancy and childhood (see also Lakey & Dickinson, 1994, and Sarason et al.,1986, for other results showing that perceived current social support is related to perceivedparental care). Blain, Thompson, and Whiffen (1993) showed that higher levels of perceivedsocial support occurred among secure individuals, who combine a positive view of self and apositive view of others. Similar results were found by Davis, Morris, and Kraus (1998), whofound that persons selecting the secure style in the Hazan and Shaver (1987) measure reportedgreater global support, as well as more support from their family, friends, faculty advisors, andromantic partners. Ognibene and Collins (1998) also found higher social support perceptionsamong secure individuals, and particularly low levels among those who described themselves asfearful avoidant.Another mechanism through which social support and attachment may be related is by means

of the effects of the attachment style upon the search for support. For example, Wallace andVaux (1993) found that persons with insecure attachment have a more negative support networkorientation, that is, they believe ‘‘it is ill-advised, fruitless, and potentially dangerous to draw onnetwork resources’’ (p. 355). Mikulincer et al. (1993), and Simpson, Rholes, and Nelligan (1992)also showed that secure individuals use social support seeking as a coping strategy to a greaterextent than insecure ones, and Collins and Feeney (2000) found that avoidants were lesseffective in support-seeking when disclosing a personal problem to their dating partners.Moreover, in the Simpson et al. (1992) study, it was found that avoidant males offered lesssupport to their romantic partners when these were faced with an anxiety-provoking situation,

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and Collins and Feeney (2000) found that anxious/ambivalent participants were less effectivesupport providers when responding to their partners’ disclosure. Given that some studies haveindicated that insecure individuals have a greater tendency to be paired with equally insecureromantic partners (Brennan & Shaver, 1995; Collins & Read, 1990; Senchak & Leonard, 1992),this mechanism can also contribute to the relative support deprivation of individuals with inse-cure attachment.Another possibility is that attachment style may exert a moderator effect, modifying the degree

of impact of social support. For example, in an experimental study in which participants wereconfronted with a stressful situation (handling a snake), Mikulincer and Florian (1997) foundthat conversing with a partner about either instrumental or emotional aspects of the task reducednegative affect among secure individuals. In contrast, avoidant individuals only benefited fromthe instrumental conversation, and showed increased negative affect in response to the emotionalconversation. Anxious/ambivalent participants, on the other hand, failed to benefit from theemotional conversation, and showed increased negative affect after going through the instru-mental conversation. In another experimental study (Sarason & Sarason, 1986), it was found thatexperimenter-provided support (offering help with the experimental task if needed) had a greaterimpact upon participants who perceived less support to be available in their personal network.Given the results mentioned above showing a reliable correlation between attachment insecurityand support perceptions, these individuals could be presumed to be insecurely attached. Thus,these results would show that the offer of support had a greater effect upon insecure persons.These ambiguous results encouraged us to explore possible interaction effects between attachmentand social support.Given the numerous points of convergence between perceived social support and attachment

style, we found it legitimate to question whether the presumed effect of perceived social supportupon distress might in fact be an effect of attachment style. In this view, perceived social supportwould be a mere offshoot or manifestation of the individuals’ adult attachment style, with noexplanatory value per se.The study presented herein attempted to test this general hypothesis through the examination

of the explanatory ability of adult attachment and perceived social support upon psychologicalsymptoms. Specifically, we hypothesised that, in a hierarchical multiple regression analysis, theeffect of perceived support would no longer be significant after controlling for attachment style,given that its effect would already have been accounted for by attachment variables. On thecontrary, the effect of attachment style would remain significant even after controlling for socialsupport, given that attachment style exerts effects upon psychological symptoms independently ofits effect upon the perception of support availability.As secondary goals, we undertook a further examination of the dimensionality of our adult

attachment measure in a Portuguese sample. Although there has been, in recent years, a growingconsensus around the two major dimensions of preoccupation (anxiety/ambivalence) and avoid-ance as underlying responses to adult attachment style measures (Brennan et al., 1998), someauthors have found three factors (e.g. Collins & Read, 1990; Mikulincer et al., 1990, 1993). In anycase, the criteria used by previous authors to determine the number of factors do not seem toagree entirely with state-of-the-art knowledge on the issue (Zwick & Velicer, 1986). In addition,we carried out a cluster analysis of individuals, in an attempt to replicate the discrete typologiesproposed by previous authors, as Brennan et al. (1998) have achieved.

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1. Method

1.1. Participants

One hundred eighty-two students of Psychology or Education at the University of Lisbon (151females, 29 males, two participants omitted their gender) volunteered to participate by complet-ing questionnaires at the end of regular class periods. Participants were not compensated in anyway, and there were no refusals. The number of individuals in specific analyses varies slightlydue to missing responses. Ages ranged between 18 and 48 years, with a mean of 21.01 years.Men (M=24.03 years) were significantly older than women (M=20.42 years), t(178)=3.70,P<0.001.

1.2. Measures

Attachment style was measured using an instrument obtained by including every non-redundantitem from Bartholomew’s Relationship Style Questionnaire (RSQ, 30 items; Griffin & Bartholo-mew, 1994) and from Collins and Read’s (1990) Adult Attachment Scale (AAS, 18 items). Thisresulted in the addition of three AAS items to the RSQ. The instructions (from the RSQ) and theitems were then translated into Portuguese, and an independent back translation was obtainedand judged to yield only detail changes, inconsequential as to the meaning of items. Finally, wenamed the resulting instrument ‘‘Questionario de Estilo Relacional’’ (QER; Portuguese for‘‘Relational Style Questionnaire’’). Items were responded to on a five-point scale, from (1) ‘‘Notat all like me’’ to (5) ‘‘Very much like me’’.An item-level factor analysis of the QER was undertaken. The parallel analysis method, cur-

rently considered the most accurate criterion for determining the number of components to con-sider in principal components analyses (Zwick & Velicer, 1986), was used with the help of tablesprovided by Cota, Longman, Holden, Fekken, and Xinaris (1993). The three indicated factorswere clearly interpretable, corresponding to Preoccupation, Avoidance, and Dismissiveness.Scores of items loading above 0.50 were averaged to provide estimates of factor scores, whichyielded internal consistency (alpha) coefficients of 0.88 (11 items), 0.76 (eight items) and 0.63(three items), respectively. Sample items are ‘‘I often worry that my friends or romantic partnersdon’t really like me’’ (Preoccupation), ‘‘I feel comfortable developing close relationships withothers’’ (Avoidance, reverse coded), and ‘‘I prefer not to depend on others’’ (Dismissiveness).A cluster analysis of individuals was carried out using the standardised scores of the three scales

as variables, squared Euclidean distance as the measure of dissimilarity, and Ward’s method ofhierarchical clustering, as used by Brennan et al. (1998; see Borgen & Barnett, 1987, for anexplanation of these methods). However, this did not yield theoretically interpretable clusters,appearing instead to group individuals into clusters of approximately equal size, and with high vs.medium vs. low scores on the three scales. A different approach was then attempted, using stan-dardised item scores as variables. A three-cluster solution was obtained, with one cluster scoringvery high on items characteristic of Preoccupation and somewhat high on Dismissiveness items,another scoring low on Avoidance and Preoccupation items, and a third scoring high on Avoid-ance items. Means of standardised scores for each attachment scale in each cluster are presentedin Table 1. The clusters were interpreted as reflecting, respectively, the preoccupied, secure, and

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fearful avoidant styles. In addition, the proportion of individuals falling in each group weresimilar to the proportions found in studies using the Hazan and Shaver (1987) forced paragraphchoice measure (see Moreira et al., 1998). When four clusters were requested, the largest (secure)cluster split in a way that defied interpretation, and no cluster resembling the dismissive styleemerged, even when larger numbers of clusters were requested.Perceived social support was measured using the Social Provisions Scale (SPS; Cutrona & Rus-

sell, 1987). This 24-item scale attempts to assess the six types of provisions from social relation-ships proposed by Weiss (1974), namely Attachment, Social Integration, Reassurance of Worth,Reliable Alliance, Guidance, and Opportunity for Nurturance. Items are responded to on a four-point scale, from (1) ‘‘Strongly disagree’’ to (4) ‘‘Strongly agree’’. The original English ques-tionnaire was translated into Portuguese and an independent back-translation was obtained, asmentioned for the QER.An item-level factor analysis in which six factors were requested did not result in the expected

distribution of items across the six original scales. Consequently, we undertook a more systematicexploration of the scale’s internal structure. The number of factors to extract was again deter-mined using the Cota et al. (1993) tables, which indicated two as the appropriate number. Thetwo components were then rotated using a Varimax criterion, which resulted, with a singleexception, in the items of the Attachment, Reliable Alliance, Guidance, and Opportunity forNurturance Scales showing a higher loading on the first factor, and the Social Integration andReassurance of Worth items showing a higher loading on the second. This solution is readilyinterpretable: the first factor includes items relating to the feeling of having close and reliablerelationships with persons to whom one can trust one’s deepest concerns; the second factorincludes items relating to the types of support that may come from less intimate relationships,consisting mostly of expressing appreciation and admiration for one’s qualities, and sharinginterests and activities. This dichotomy seems quite similar to the distinction proposed by Weiss(1973) between emotional and social loneliness, and can be illustrated by the two items with thehighest loadings in each factor, respectively ‘‘There is no one I feel comfortable talking aboutproblems with’’ (reverse coding) and ‘‘There are people who admire my talents and abilities’’. Thistwo-factor structure was also confirmed in a scale-level factor analysis. Two scales were constructedaccording to these results, by averaging the Attachment, Reliable Alliance, Guidance, and Oppor-tunity forNurturance items for the first factor, and the Social Integration andReassurance of Worth

Table 1Questionario de Estilo Relacional: means of standardised attachment scale scores in each cluster

Cluster Preoccupation Avoidance Dismissiveness Number classified

M SD M SD M SD

1 (Preoccupied) 1.33a 0.62 0.29a 1.04 0.53a 0.81 38 (22%)2 (Secure) �0.56b 0.69 �0.38b 0.89 �0.14b 1.02 99 (57%)3 (Avoidant) 0.02c 0.58 0.74a 0.72 �0.14b 0.98 37 (21%)

F (2, 171) 115.77 23.63 7.10P <0.01 <0.01 <0.01

Means with different letters in the same column are significantly different in a Tukey HSD test with P<0.05.

J.M. Moreira et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 34 (2003) 485–501 491

items for the second factor. The resulting scales provided results with Cronbach alphas of 0.86and 0.71 respectively, and were labelled ‘‘Intimate Support’’ and ‘‘Casual Support’’.Psychological symptoms were measured with the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis &

Melisaratos, 1983), a 53-item inventory. Sample items are ‘‘Nervousness or shakiness inside’’ and‘‘Feeling others are to blame for most of your troubles’’, with responses requested on a five-pointscale of distress, ranging from (0) ‘‘Not at all’’ to (4) ‘‘Extremely’’. The Portuguese version of theBSI was developed by Helena Afonso and was approved by the original authors. Given that wecould not obtain interpretable factors with this scale, we scored it by averaging all of its items.This score is designated by the original authors as the General Severity Index (GSI), and theyclaim it ‘‘is the single best indicator of current distress levels, and should be utilised in mostinstances where a single summary measure is required’’ (Derogatis & Melisaratos, 1983, p. 597).Cronbach’s alpha for the GSI scores was 0.95.

2. Results

The correlation matrix for all of the main variables in the study is presented in Table 2, togetherwith the means and standard deviations.

2.1. Attachment and perceived support as predictors of distress

The main hypothesis, that the commonly found effect of social support in the reduction ofpsychological symptoms is actually an effect of attachment style, was tested using two hier-archical multiple regression analyses. In both analyses, gender and age were introduced in the firststep as control variables. Attachment style and social support variables were then introduced astwo blocks in the second and third steps, with their orders reversed from the first to the secondanalysis. Our prediction was that, in the first analysis, the introduction of attachment style vari-ables in the second step would yield a significant increase in R2, while the introduction of per-ceived support variables in the third step would not yield a further increase. In contrast, in the

Table 2

Correlation matrix of the main variables in the study

Preoccupation Avoidance Dismissiveness Intimate

Support

Casual

Support

GSI

Avoidance 0.15Dismissiveness 0.09 0.15

Intimate Support �0.43* �0.35* �0.04Casual Support �0.29* �0.27* 0.08 0.56*GSI 0.53* 0.15 0.08 �0.33* �0.32*

M 2.67 2.29 4.00 3.45 3.25 0.89SD 0.79 0.58 0.76 0.37 0.35 0.54

* P<0.01, two-tailed.

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second analysis, it was predicted that the introduction of perceived support variables in the sec-ond step would yield a significant increase in R2, and the introduction of attachment variables inthe third step would yield a further significant increase.In the first step, age was found to be significantly correlated with preoccupied attachment

(r=�0.16) and the GSI (r=�0.15), in the sense that older participants were less preoccupied andless distressed. None of the variables was significantly related to gender.The introduction of the three attachment dimensions in the second step of the regression ana-

lysis (Table 3) yielded a significant increase in predictive ability. However, inspection of thestandardised regression coefficients showed that Preoccupation was the only important predictor.The introduction of support in a third step did not yield a significant increase in R2. It should benoted that the Casual Support Scale, though not the Intimate Support Scale, still presented asignificant beta coefficient after the contribution of attachment style had been accounted for.The second analysis (Table 4) produced a significant incremental effect of support when it was

introduced in the second step, after Gender and Age. In contrast with the first analysis, however,attachment dimensions still added a significant amount to R2 when introduced in the third step.Again, Preoccupation with attachment was the only significant predictor among attachmentscales. Thus, these results confirm our predictions.

2.2. Interactions between attachment and perceived support in the prediction of distress

We tested possible interaction effects of attachment style and perceived support dimensions inthe prediction of psychological symptoms by adding one further step to the regression analysisreported in Table 3 (or, for that matter, in Table 4). We started by standardising all predictorsand the dependent variable, in order to reduce multicollinearity and render the resulting coeffi-cients easier to interpret. We then calculated six multiplicative components by multiplying thestandardised values of each of the attachment dimensions by each of the perceived support di-mensions. These six components were added to the previous predictors, and yielded a non-significantincrease in R2, F(6, 146)=1.82, P=0.10. We decided, however, to proceed with the analysis of the

Table 3Regression analysis predicting distress from attachment style and perceived support

Step Variables Beta R2 R2 change F change

1 Age �0.26** 0.06 0.06 5.26**Gender 0.05

2 Preoccupation 0.49** 0.33 0.27 20.70**Avoidance 0.10Dismissiveness 0.03

3 Intimate support 0.02 0.35 0.02 2.76

Casual Support �0.18*

* P<0.05.** P<0.01.

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individual interaction components, given that two of them were significant and theoreticallyplausible, and our sample was not so large as to make us confident in our ability to detect inter-action components, which do not reach statistical significance easily when continuous variablesare used (McClelland & Judd, 1993). In any case, we believe the results obtained in this sectionshould best be considered as exploratory, that is, subject to replication.The regression coefficients, t and probability values are presented in Table 5. As mentioned

before, two of the interaction components reached statistical significance, corresponding to theinteractions between Preoccupation and Intimate Support, and between Avoidance and Casual

Table 4Regression analysis predicting distress from attachment style and perceived support, with support entered before

attachment

Step Variables Beta R2 R2 change F change

1 Age �0.26** 0.06 0.06 5.26**Gender 0.05

2 Intimate support �0.19* 0.18 0.12 11.17**

Casual Support �0.20

3 Preoccupied 0.45** 0.35 0.17 13.72

Fearful 0.06Dismissive 0.05

* P<0.5.** P<0.01.

Table 5Regression analysis predicting distress from attachment style and support, with interaction components

Variables B t

Gender 0.05 0.73Age �0.25 �3.13**

Preoccupation 0.46 6.56**Avoidance 0.05 0.73Dismissiveness 0.02 0.38

Intimate Support �0.03 �0.36Casual Support �0.11 �1.39

Preoccupation�Intimate Support 0.14 2.03*

Preoccupation�Casual Support �0.11 �1.64Avoidance�Intimate Support 0.09 1.21Avoidance�Casual Support �0.15 �2.00*

Dismissiveness�Intimate Support 0.07 0.89Dismissiveness�Casual Support �0.02 �0.27

* P<0.05.** P<0.01.

494 J.M. Moreira et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 34 (2003) 485–501

Support. The form of these interaction effects can be interpreted using the regression coefficients(Jaccard, Turrisi, & Wan, 1990; recall that these were obtained with all variables, except theinteraction components, standardised). The Preoccupation and Intimate Support interactioncomponent has a positive sign, meaning that the higher the level of Preoccupation, the higher(more positive, or less negative) the effect of Intimate Support upon the GSI. The available fig-ures allow us to determine the standardised effect of Intimate Support upon distress at differentlevels of Preoccupation. When Preoccupation is at its average level, the standardised regressioncoefficient is that presented in Table 5 (�0.03), but when Preoccupation is high (1 SD above themean), the standardised regression coefficient can be estimated by adding the value obtained forthe interaction component, yielding 0.11. That is, among more preoccupied individuals, the pre-sence of perceived Intimate Support would actually predict greater distress. However, given thevery low values obtained, we would prefer to claim that Intimate Support has little effect uponpreoccupied individuals. On the contrary, for less preoccupied individuals, the standardisedregression coefficient can be estimated by subtracting the value obtained for the interactioncomponent, yielding �0.17, and showing that Intimate Support has a detectable effect upondistress, in addition to the other variables present in the model, only among individuals low inPreoccupation.The picture for the other significant interaction component is quite different. Using the same

interpretative procedure, we found that, among individuals low in Avoidance (z=�1), CasualSupport has virtually no effect upon the GSI (0.04). Conversely, among those high in Avoidance(z=�1), it has a recognisable effect (�0.26).These conclusions, that Intimate Support has a lesser effect for preoccupied individuals and

that Casual Support has a greater effect for avoidant ones, could also be tested using the attach-ment style clusters previously mentioned. We thus examined the correlations between distress andthe two perceived support scales, separately for each of the clusters (Table 6). This analysis con-firmed our interpretation. Although none of the correlations approached zero as much as pre-dicted by the regression analyses, which can be due to the presence of error in the clusteringprocedure, it is clear that Intimate Support has a greater effect on individuals in the secure thanon those in the insecure clusters, and that Casual Support has a greater effect on those in theinsecure than on those in the secure clusters. In addition, this effect was more pronounced in thecase of Intimate Support for the preoccupied cluster, and in the case of Casual Support for theavoidant cluster. It should, however, be kept in mind that none of these differences in correlationsbetween the secure and the insecure clusters reached significance, again pointing toward the needfor more focused studies in larger samples.

Table 6Correlations between perceived support dimensions and distress, per attachment cluster

Intimate Casual

1 (Preoccupied) �0.10 �0.212 (Secure) �0.23* �0.16

3 (Avoidant) �0.16 �0.39*

* P<0.05.

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3. Discussion

Our results appear to bring some important new elements to research on adult attachment andsocial support. The considerable attenuation of social support effects when attachment contri-butions are partialled out seems to support the idea that perceived social support and its effectsupon psychological distress are in reality effects of attachment security. The fact that support incasual, but not intimate, relationships remains significant is also in agreement with this theo-retical prediction. An encompassing conclusion would be premature, however, because thedemonstration that main effects of social support can be accounted for by attachment style doesnot prove that the same is true of an eventual buffering effect (Cohen & Wills, 1985). In addition,it must be kept in mind that our conclusion applies to effects of perceived social support, that is,the feeling that sources of satisfactory support would be available if needed. It does not neces-sarily follow that effects of other facets of social support would be wiped out by attachment style.The fact that support from casual relationships maintained a significant effect illustrates thispoint.It should also be noted that the results are not compatible with perceived social support playing

the role of a mediator of attachment style effects. The two initial conditions proposed by Baronand Kenny (1986), namely that attachment style must be a significant predictor of support anddistress, are verified. However, the path from attachment (Preoccupation) to distress is virtuallyunaltered (from 0.49 to 0.45) when support variables are included in the equation. It would bestatistically more plausible to consider attachment style to be a mediator of intimate social sup-port effect but, given that attachment style has a status akin to that of a personality trait variable(Davila, Burge, & Hammen, 1997; Scharfe & Bartholomew, 1994), while perceived supportshould vary, at least moderately, according to social circumstances, we consider this mechanismto be theoretically indefensible.Intriguing and theoretically provocative interactions were also found between attachment style

and social support dimensions. Although the lack of statistical significance of the global set ofinteraction effects should make us cautious in terms of interpretation and makes replication anabsolute necessity, the results indicate that support provided within an intimate relationship hada lesser effect among individuals with an insecure attachment style, particularly if this was of thepreoccupied type, while support provided within more casual relationships had a stronger effectamong insecure individuals, particularly if these were of the avoidant type. These results mightnot only help explain the apparently contradictory results found by previous studies examiningthe interactive effects of attachment style and social support (Mikulincer & Florian, 1997; Sar-ason & Sarason, 1986), but also raise a number of important theoretical issues.The fact that support within close relationships has less of an effect among preoccupied indivi-

duals could easily be explained by the lack of congruence between the interpersonal schemataknown to be related to a preoccupied attachment style and the provision of support by closepartners. Although the specific mechanisms of this effect remain to be explored in further studies,it would appear theoretically plausible that support provision is viewed by preoccupied indi-viduals as less sincere, less selfless and less likely to be consistently provided in the future. Thisprocess would parallel the known inability of anxious/ambivalent infants to profit from the pre-sence of their mothers as a secure base, which makes them particularly difficult to calm downwhen distressed (Ainsworth et al., 1978). It also agrees with the Feeney and Kirkpatrick (1996)

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finding that, among anxious and, to a lesser extent, avoidant women, the return of the partnerfailed to reduce the physiological arousal caused by a previous separation at the time a stressfultask was about to be undertaken.The greater effect of more casual types of support among avoidant individuals can also be

subject to different interpretations. It could be that either these types of support are seen as lessbinding, requiring less emotional involvement and less need for intimate self-disclosure, or thatthey might be seen as the only type of support others (as seen through a negative interpersonalschema) can be hoped to provide. These possible interpretations undoubtedly open wide groundfor further research.It should be recognised that the interpretation we advanced, which assumes that attachment

style moderates perceived support effects, is not the only possible way of looking into theseinteractions. It is equally plausible, at least from a statistical point of view, that the levels ofperceived support modify attachment style effects upon distress. However, this alternative inter-pretation seems less defensible to us, for two reasons. First, given that attachment style is consideredto be a more stable variable than social support, it is more plausible that the most stable constructmodifies the effect of the less stable one, than vice versa. Second, our interpretation of the effectsseems to make more theoretical sense than the alternative, which would imply that the presence ofgreater Intimate Support increases the effect of attachment Preoccupation in inducing psycho-logical distress, and that the presence of greater Casual Support turns Avoidance into a protectivefactor against distress. Even though these interpretations might eventually prove to be theoreticallyplausible, it seems to us that they would be much more far-fetched than the ones we have offered.One logical implication of the acceptance of these interactions, however, is that they are

incompatible with a full account of perceived support effects by attachment style. If perceivedsupport were entirely determined by the interpersonal schemata associated with individual dif-ferences in attachment, then it would not be possible for perceived support to have different levelsof impact according to the individual’s position on attachment style dimensions. In fact, thedemonstration that perceived support did not show a statistically significant effect after attach-ment style dimensions were controlled does not imply that this effect is completely absent, onlythat it is much reduced and insufficient to reach conventional statistical significance levels givenour sample size. In addition, the low values found for the regression coefficients of distress onperceived social support measures are valid only when ignoring interactions, that is, for indi-viduals with mean levels on the attachment dimensions. The two main conclusions of our studyare, thus, not entirely contradictory.In addition to results directly relevant to our main hypothesis, a number of other issues have

been explored in this study. First, we have obtained a theoretically consistent two-factor solutionfor the SPS scores, corresponding to the type of support provided within close relationships andthe type that can be equally provided by casual relationships. This empirical distinction, and thefact that both types of support were independently related to distress, converges with Weiss’(1998) theoretical proposal of the existence of two types of significant relationships, namedattachments and affiliations, of widely different characteristics and functions, but each fulfilling aspecific type of need, as manifested in the parallel varieties of emotional and social loneliness(Weiss, 1973).Another important result was the three-factor solution obtained for the QER, including a separate

factor for the dismissing avoidant style, which is not coherent with the prevalent two-dimensional

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models of attachment (Brennan et al., 1998; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994), nor with the three-factor solutions obtained by other authors (Collins & Read, 1990; Mikulincer et al., 1990, 1993).However, the theoretical status of this third factor remains doubtful, due to several empiricalshortcomings and unexpected results. In addition to the very small number of items loading onthis factor, all of them refer to independence and self-sufficiency. Hence, based upon item contentonly, one’s inclination would be to interpret this factor as referring to desire for autonomy,without any direct connection to attachment issues. A further inconsistent aspect is the high meanendorsement level obtained for the items in this factor, revealed by their global mean (Table 2),the highest of all attachment factors, while the dismissive style is the least often chosen in forcedchoice paragraph questionnaires (e.g. Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). Unexpected connectionswere also found between this Scale and that of Preoccupation. The only significant differencefound among the three attachment style clusters for the Dismissiveness Scale was due to thehigher level of Dismissiveness among individuals classified as preoccupied. This result is at oddswith Bartholomew’s model, which assumes Dismissiveness to be the polar opposite of Pre-occupation, and thus anticipates a clearly negative correlation between measures of the two con-structs. In contrast, our data provided a very low (0.09) positive correlation. All of these aspectscould potentially lead one to consider these items as representing an adaptive dimension ofautonomy, without any connotations of avoidance. At the same time, however, a suggestive,although nonsignificant, correlation of 0.15 was obtained between the Dismissiveness andAvoidance Scales, when a negative correlation with both of the other insecure attachmentdimensions would be expected if this factor were actually representing an adaptive, autonomydimension. Our third factor might thus not be entirely alien to the construct of avoidance after all.In sum, although a relatively consensual solution on the dimensionality of adult attachment

style has been provided by Brennan et al. (1998), we believe the issue should not be prematurelyclosed, especially considering that the criteria used by Brennan et al. (1998, p. 55) to determine thenumber of factors to consider were not made explicit, and do not seem to have been based uponstate-of-the-art knowledge in this domain. We believe that additional research into the factorstructure underlying responses to adult attachment questionnaires is still needed, even if the furtherdimensions found are eventually proven to be minor or subsumed by the two larger factors in ahierarchical structure. Our Dismissiveness factor seems to be one of the dimensions worth exploring.On the other hand, the cluster analysis did not yield a distinctive dismissive-avoidant group.

This, however, might have been due to (1) the low percentage of male participants, given that thisstyle seems to be more prevalent among males, and to (2) the low number of Dismissivenessitems, given that most of the items extracted from Bartholomew’s original dismissive-avoidantvignette (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) ended up in other factors. Nevertheless, the replicationof the three classical attachment styles in our clusters suggests that the three basic attachmentpatterns proposed by Ainsworth et al. (1978) have some empirical basis, and that the abandon-ment of the categorial approach to individual differences in attachment style (Fraley & Waller,1998) might be premature.Our results also confirm the common finding that Preoccupation with attachment is the best

predictor of emotional distress in normal, college-aged populations (Cooper et al., 1998; Pettemet al., 1993; Whiffen et al., 2000), even though this does not necessarily exclude effects of theAvoidance dimension, that might have been detected had a different methodology been employed(Burge et al., 1997).

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Before closing, a few limitations of this study should be acknowledged. Our relatively smallsample, composed of psychology and education college students, and with a small proportion ofmen, may limit the generalisability of results. It has also hindered the analysis of interactioneffects, known to be harder to detect in continuously distributed data (McClelland & Judd, 1993).Design limitations, such as the cross-sectional nature of the study and the absence of a measure ofstress, also precluded further clarification of the causal paths involved and of eventual additionalinteractive effects. The self-report nature of the measures employed also limits the theoreticalimplications that can be extracted, given the existing knowledge of the different types of mani-festations of distress among individuals with different attachment styles (Mikulincer et al., 1993).

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