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Attachment styles in adulthood describe individual approaches to interacting and behaving interpersonally, or patterns of secure and insecure attachment orientations in romantic relationships (Bowlby, 1969). While previous research has demonstrated that insecure attachment styles are related to difficulties with regulating emotions (Gross & John, 2003; Owens et al., 2018; Winterheld, 2016), present literature has not addressed these associations in both members of relationship dyads using counterbalanced self-report measures. The current study will examine the associations between insecure attachment styles and emotion dysregulation among couples in romantic relationships. This study will employ a cross-sectional survey design with a sample of approximately 84 dyads of college students to obtain a medium effect size (r = .30) and a power level of 80% (Faul et al., 2007). It is hypothesized that individuals with lower levels of anxious and avoidant attachment tendencies will also report fewer difficulties with emotion regulation strategies, and couples are expected to report a high degree of similarity on both measures relative to each other. These anticipated findings would align with the similarity hypothesis that individuals choose dating partners with the same attachment style as themselves (Strauss et al., 2012) and the concept of assortative mating, that individuals seek partners with similar traits to their own (Macrae et al., 2008). Results will be analyzed with a series of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) tests to examine associations between variables at the individual level and to determine the degree of nonindependence, or the extent of similarity between the two members of the dyadic unit.

Faculty Mentor: Thomas Holtgraves

Psychological Sciences

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