The current study examined the causal relationship between secure and anxious attachment orientations and pain sensitivity in a pain-free sample. In a double blind repeated measures study, a cold pressor task was used to induce acute pain in 95 participants before and after priming them with a secure or anxious attachment orientation or a neutral prime. Measures of pain threshold, tolerance, catastrophizing and intensity were taken. Compared to the neutral prime, secure and anxious primes resulted in higher tolerance and threshold. The experimental conditions did not differ in reported pain intensity or pain catastrophizing. These findings suggest a causal relationship between attachment experiences and pain sensitivity that may be of interest to those devising and researching pain management interventions.
AndersonD. J.HinesR. H. (1994). Attachment and pain. In GrzesiakR. C.CicconeD. S. (Eds), Psychosocial vulnerability to chronic pain (pp. 137–152). New York, US: Springer Publishing Company.
2.
BartholomewK.HorowitzL. M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of the four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 226–244.
3.
BartzJ. A.LydonJ. E. (2004). Close relationships and the working self-concept: Implicit and explicit effects of priming attachment on agency and communion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 11, 1389–1401.
4.
BaumeisterR. F.DeWallC. N.VohsK. D. (2009). Social rejection, control, numbness and emotion. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 489–493.
5.
BaumeisterR. F.LearyM. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motive. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.
6.
BlackhartG. C.NelsonB. C.KnowlesM. L.BaumeisterR. F. (2009). Rejection elicits emotional reactions but neither causes immediate distress nor lowers self-esteem: A meta-analytic review of 192 studies on social exclusion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13, 269–309.
7.
BowlbyJ. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation, anxiety, and anger. New York: Basic Books.
8.
BrennanK. A.ClarkC. L.ShaverP. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In SimpsonJ. A.RholesW. S. (Eds), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46–76). New York: The Guilford Press.
9.
CarnelleyK. B.RoweA. C. (2010). Priming a sense of security: what goes through people’s minds?Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2, 253–261.
10.
CassidyJ.ShaverP. R.MikulincerM.LavyS. (2009). Experimentally induced security influences responses to psychological pain. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 28, 463–478.
11.
CiechanowskiP.SullivanM.JensenM.RomanoJ.SummersH. (2003). The relationship of attachment style to depression, catastrophizing, and health care utilization in patients with chronic pain. Pain, 102, 627–637.
12.
CrawfordJ. R.HenryJ. D.CrombieC.TaylorE. P. (2001). Normative data for the HADS from a large non-clinical sample. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 40, 429–434.
13.
DeWallC. N.BaumeisterR. F. (2006). Alone but feeling no pain: effects of social exclusion on physical pain tolerance and pain threshold, affective forecasting, and interpersonal empathy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 1–15.
14.
EisenbergerN. I.LiebermanM. D.WilliamsK. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302, 290–292.
15.
GerberJ.WheelerL. (2009). On being rejected: A meta-analysis of experimental rejection research. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 4, 468–488.
16.
HazanC.ShaverP. R. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 511–524.
17.
LukeM. A.SedikidesC.CarnelleyK. B. (in press). Your love lifts me higher! The energizing quality of secure relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
18.
MacDonaldG.KingsburyR. (2006). Does physical pain augment anxious attachment?Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23, 291–304.
19.
MacDonaldG.KingsburyR.ShawS. (2005). Adding insult to injury: Social pain theory and response to social exclusion. In WilliamsK. D.ForgasJ. P.von HippelW. (Eds), The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion rejection, and bullying (pp.77–90). New York: Psychology Press.
20.
MacDonaldG.LearyM. R. (2005). Why does social exclusion hurt? The relationship between social and physical pain. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 202–223.
21.
MasterS. L.EisenbergerN. I.TaylorS. E.NaliboffB. D.ShirinyanD.LiebermanM. D. (2009). A picture’s worth: Partner photographs reduce experimentally induced pain. Psychological Science, 20, 1316–1318.
22.
McWilliamsL. A.AsmundsonG. J. G. (2007). The relationship of adult attachment dimensions to pain-related fear, hypervigilance, and catastrophizing. Pain, 127, 27–34.
23.
McWilliamsL. A.CoxB. J.EnnsM. W. (2000). Impact of adult attachment styles on pain and disability associated with arthritis in a nationally representative sample. Clinical Journal of Pain, 16, 360–364.
24.
McWilliamsL. A.MelzakR. (1987). The short-form McGill pain questionnaire. Pain30, 191–197.
25.
MeredithP. J.OwnsworthT.StrongJ. (2008). A review of the evidence linking adult attachment theory and chronic pain: Presenting a conceptual model. Clinical Psychology.Review, 28, 407–429.
26.
MeredithP. J.StrongJ.FeeneyJ. A. (2006a). The relationship of adult attachment to emotion, catastrophizing, control, threshold and tolerance, in experimentally-induced pain. Pain, 120, 44–52.
27.
MeredithP. J.StrongJ.FeeneyJ. A. (2006b). Adult attachment, anxiety, and pain self-efficacy as predictors of pain intensity and disability. Pain, 123, 146–154.
28.
MikailS. F.HendersonP. R.TascaG. A. (1994). An interpersonally based model of chronic pain: An application of attachment theory. Clinical Psychology Review, 14, 1–16.
29.
MikulincerM.FlorianV. (1998). The relationship between adult attachment styles and emotional and cognitive reactions to stressful events. In SimpsonJ.RholesS. (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 143–165). New York: Guilford.
30.
MikulincerM.FlorianV. (2000). Exploring individual differences in reactions to mortality salience: Does attachment style regulate terror management mechanisms?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 260–273.
31.
MikulincerM.ShaverP. R. (2001). Attachment theory and intergroup bias: Evidence that priming the secure base schema attenuates negative reactions to outgroups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 97–115.
32.
MikulincerM.ShaverP. R. (2003). The attachment behavioral system in adulthood: Activation, psychodynamics, and interpersonal processes. In ZannaM. P. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 35, pp. 53–152). New York: Academic Press.
33.
MikulincerM.ShaverP. R. (2006). The behavioral systems construct: A useful tool for building an integrative model of the social mind. In van LangeP. A. M. (Ed.), Bridging social psychology (pp. 279–284). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
34.
MikulincerM.ShaverP. R.Bar-OnN.Ein-DorT. (2010). The pushes and pulls of close relationships: Attachment insecurities and relational ambivalence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 450–468.
35.
MitchellL.MacDonaldR.BrodieE. (2004). Temperature and the cold pressor test. The Journal of Pain, 5, 233–238.
36.
NaranjoJ. R.FuentesJ. A. (1985). Association between hypoalgesia and hypertension in rats after short-term isolation. Neuropharmacology, 24, 167–171.
37.
MykletunA.StordalE.DahlA. A. (2001). Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) scale: Factor structure, item analyses and internal consistency in a large population. British Journal of Psychiatry, 179, 540–544.
38.
PeyronR.LaurentB.Garcia-LarreaL. (2000). Functional imaging of brain responses to pain. A review and meta-analysis. Neurophysiological Clinics, 30, 263–288.
39.
RosentielA.K.KeefeF. J. (1983). The use of coping strategies in chronic low back pain patients: Relationship to patient characteristics and current adjustment. Pain, 17, 33–40.
40.
RoweA. C.CarnelleyK. B. (2003). Attachment style differences in the processing of attachment-relevant information: Primed-style effects on recall, interpersonal expectations and affect. Personal Relationships, 10, 59–75.
41.
SnaithP. (2003). The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 1, 29–32.
42.
SufkaK. J.WeedN. C. (1994). Construct validation of behavioural indices of isolation stress and inflammatory nociception in young domestic fowl. Physiology and Behavior, 55, 741–746.
43.
SullivanM. J. L.BishopS. R.PivikJ. (1995). The pain catastrophizing scale: Development and validation. Psychological Assessment, 7, 524–532.
44.
UhelskiM. L.FuchsP. N. (2010). Maternal separation stress leads to enhanced emotional responses to noxious stimuli in adult rats. Behavioural Brain Research, 212, 208–212.
45.
von BaeyerC. L.PiiraT.ChambersC. T.TrapanottoM.ZeltzerL. K. (2005). Guidelines for the cold pressor task as an experimental pain stimulus for use with children. Journal of Pain, 6, 218–227.
46.
WilliamsK. D.CheungC. K. T.ChoiW. (2000). CyberOstracism: Effects of being ignored over the internet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 748–762.
47.
ZigmondA. S.SnaithR. P. (1983). The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 67, 361–370.
48.
ZhongC. B.LeonardelliG. J., (2008). Cold and lonely: Does social exclusion literally feel cold?Psychological Science, 19, 838–842.
