Marieke Dewitte

Different Perspectives on the Sex-Attachment Link: Towards an Emotion-Motivational Account

Although the link between sex and attachment was made decades ago (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), theories on sexual and attachment functioning have been developed in relative isolation. Recent efforts to integrate both literatures have been complicated by the fact that the sex–attachment link has been approached from very different perspectives, including biological, evolutionary, developmental, cognitive, and social psychology approaches. Also, at the empirical level, research on sex and attachment lacks overarching synthesis. This article gives an overview of the most important theoretical ideas and empirical insights on sex and attachment. It starts with describing general models that approach the sex–attachment link from an evolutionary and neurobiological perspective. Then, it summarizes theoretical and empirical ideas of attachment theory and describes how attachment style differences are manifested in intimate and sexual relationships. Research so far has been limited to studying the predicted link between sex and attachment in terms of broad descriptives, and it would benefit the literature to specify the processes and pathways that mediate the sex–attachment link. After a short discussion of the functional similarities between the sexual and the attachment systems, the article describes some specific—dynamical—models that focus on the emotional and cognitive-motivational processes through which attachment schemas influence sexual experiences. Such an emotion–motivational perspective on sex and attachment can help to organize theoretical ideas and empirical findings and eventually promote an integrative view on how attachment dynamics can interact with sexual experiences.

Parental catastrophizing about children’s pain and selective attention to varying levels of facial expression of pain in children: A dot-probe study

&NA; The attentional demand of pain has primarily been investigated within an intrapersonal context. Little is known about observers’ attentional processing of another’s pain. The present study investigated, within a sample of parents (n = 65; 51 mothers, 14 fathers) of school children, parental selective attention to children’s facial display of pain and the moderating role of child’s facial expressiveness of pain and parental catastrophizing about their child’s pain. Parents performed a dot‐probe task in which child facial display of pain (of varying pain expressiveness) were presented. Findings provided evidence of parental selective attention to child pain displays. Low facial displays of pain appeared sufficiently and also, as compared with higher facial displays of pain, equally capable of engaging parents’ attention to the location of threat. Severity of facial displays of pain had a nonspatial effect on attention; that is, there was increased interference (ie, delayed responding) with increasing facial expressiveness. This interference effect was particularly pronounced for high‐catastrophizing parents, suggesting that being confronted with increasing child pain displays becomes particularly demanding for high‐catastrophizing parents. Finally, parents with higher levels of catastrophizing increasingly attended away from low pain expressions, whereas selective attention to high‐pain expressions did not differ between high‐catastrophizing and low‐catastrophizing parents. Theoretical implications and further research directions are discussed. Parental attentional processing of child pain is dependent on parental catastrophizing about the child’s pain, child facial expressiveness of pain, and the interaction between the two.

Understanding sexual pain: A cognitive-motivational account

Article in press: Dewitte M et al. Understanding sexual pain: A cognitive-motivational account. PAIN (2010), doi:10.1016/j.pain.2010.10.051

A multi-modal approach to the study of attachment-related distress

The present study aimed at providing a comprehensive analysis of individual differences in the regulation of attachment distress as measured through different components of the emotional response, including neuroendocrine reactions, subjectively experienced affect, and proximity seeking behaviour. Emotional responses were measured before, during, and after the induction of attachment distress in a sample of couples. Analyses using multi-level modelling revealed that, in both men and women, attachment anxiety was related to physiological (i.e., cortisol) and subjective emotional distress responses, whereas attachment avoidance most consistently predicted subjective and behavioural responses to distress. In addition to ones own attachment style, partners attachment style was also found to modulate emotional and behavioural responses to relational stress, in both couple members. Attachment style was also found to moderate the interrelations between emotional indices, revealing interesting information on the regulatory strategies underlying attachment anxiety and avoidance.

On the Interpersonal Dynamics of Sexuality

To date, theory and research on the interpersonal dynamics of sexuality is scarce. This is remarkable because people most often have sex in a relationship. To create more valid models of sexual functioning, it is important to go beyond the study of individual factors and take into account relational and contextual variables, which may act as risk and protective factors for developing, maintaining, and exacerbating sexual problems. This article describes theoretical ideas on how sexuality and relationships can be linked through motivation and emotion regulation. First, the sexual system is conceptualized as an emotion regulation device that involves a dynamic interplay between cognitive, affective, and motivational responses. Then, it is illustrated how partner variables, relationship processes, and sociorelational context may interact with these different responses and eventually shape how sexual emotions are generated and regulated. The author continues with explaining the implications of such emotion-motivational perspective for studying determinants of sexual responding, the role of coregulation in tuning sexual responses in the couple, and the interrelation between the sexual and relational goals of both partners. Linking sexual and nonsexual aspects of relationships and including data of both couple members is necessary for a clearer insight into the nature of sexual dysfunctions.

Proximity and distance goals in adult attachment

We used a variant of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and explicit reports to examine the assumption that attachment anxiety and avoidance are related to proximity and distance goals. Results confirmed that attachment avoidance was associated with a stronger implicit motivation for and positive evaluation of distance goals in attachment relationships. This was found both at the implicit and explicit levels and both in a threat and non‐threat context. Attachment anxiety was associated with proximity goals only when measured explicitly, but not when goal activation was measured implicitly. Our findings highlight the importance of considering both implicit and explicit goal representations when studying motivational processes in the context of attachment, and suggest that the IAT can provide a useful tool for investigating implicit motivational constructs. Copyright

Proximity seeking in adult attachment: Examining the role of automatic approach–avoidance tendencies

In two experiments, participants made symbolic approach and avoidance movements towards or away from attachment figure- and acquaintance-related cues after being primed with a distressing or a non-distressing context. Results showed that automatic approach responses towards the attachment figure were stronger in a distressing than in a non-distressing context, regardless of whether the source of distress was attachment-relevant or -irrelevant and regardless of ones attachment style. Individual differences in attachment anxiety and avoidance were associated with the predicted patterns of approach-avoidance tendencies: attachment anxiety heightened the tendency to approach the attachment Figure (Experiments 1 and 2), whereas attachment avoidance reduced this tendency (Experiment 2). Findings are discussed as providing first evidence on the role of automatic action tendencies in adult attachment.

On the Role of the Implicit Self-Concept in Adult Attachment

We report a study that was designed to investigate attachment-related differences in the implicit self-concept and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in the context of attachment research. Two variants of the IAT were used to assess implicit relational self-esteem and relational anxiety after stress induction. Results showed that both the relational self-esteem and relational anxiety IAT (1) were meaningfully related to individual differences in attachment style and (2) predicted cognitive and affective reactions to attachment-related distress in addition to and beyond self-report measures of attachment. The results provide evidence for the reliability and validity of the IAT as an index of the implicit attachment self-concept.

What's in a name? Attachment-related attentional bias.

Participants completed a dot probe task that presented pairs of first names: the participants own name and a neutral name (Experiments 1-4), the name of their attachment figure and a neutral name (Experiments 1-4), or the name of a known person and a neutral name (Experiments 2-4). A significant attentional bias effect was found for the attachment name in attachment-related contexts, whether they were threatening or positive. The results of Experiments 2 and 4 showed that the attentional bias effects for the attachment name were not driven by familiarity effects and could not be interpreted in terms of salience. Attachment anxiety was associated with hypervigilance toward the attachment name in threatening and positive attachment contexts. Attachment avoidance was unrelated to any attentional bias effects.

Automatic and deliberate affective associations with sexual stimuli in women with lifelong vaginismus before and after therapist-aided exposure treatment

INTRODUCTION The intense fear response to vaginal penetration in women with lifelong vaginismus, who have never been able to experience coitus, may reflect negative automatic and deliberate appraisals of vaginal penetration stimuli which might be modified by exposure treatment. AIMS The aim of this study is to examine whether (i) sexual stimuli elicit relatively strong automatic and deliberate threat associations in women with vaginismus, as well as relatively negative automatic and deliberate global affective associations, compared with symptom-free women; and (ii) these automatic and more deliberate attitudes can be modified by therapist-aided exposure treatment. METHODS A single target Implicit Association Test (st-IAT) was used to index automatic threat associations, and an Affective Simon Task (AST) to index global automatic affective associations. Participants were women with lifelong vaginismus (N = 68) and women without sexual problems (N = 70). The vaginismus group was randomly allocated to treatment (n = 34) and a waiting list control condition (n = 34). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Indices of automatic threat were obtained by the st-IAT and automatic global affective associations by the AST, visual analogue scales (VAS) were used to assess deliberate appraisals of the sexual pictures (fear and global positive affect). RESULTS More deliberate fear and less global positive affective associations with sexual stimuli were found in women with vaginismus. Following therapist-aided exposure treatment, the strength of fear was strongly reduced, whereas global positive affective associations were strengthened. Automatic associations did not differ between women with and without vaginismus and did not change following treatment. CONCLUSIONS Relatively stronger negative (threat or global affect) associations with sexual stimuli in vaginismus appeared restricted to the deliberate level. Therapist-aided exposure treatment was effective in reducing subjective fear of sexual penetration stimuli and led to more global positive affective associations with sexual stimuli. The impact of exposure might be further improved by strengthening the association between vaginal penetration and positive affect (e.g., by using counter-conditioning techniques).