Effects of Repeated Security Priming on WellBeing: LongTerm Aspects

1
Effects of Repeated Security Priming on
Well-Being Long-Term Aspects

• Gurminder Sandhu
• McNair Scholars Program
• Mentors Dr. Phillip R. Shaver Dr. Omri Gillath
• Department of Psychology
• University of California, Davis

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Introduction

• Attachment Theory
• Bowlby (1969/1982)
• Attachment system
• Other behavioral systems e.g., exploration,
  caregiving
• Ainsworth (1978)
• Attachment styles
• Secure
• Avoidant
• Anxious
• Disorganized/Disoriented

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Introduction

• Adult Romantic Attachment
• Hazan and Shaver (1987)
• Same patterns seen in children (secure, anxious,
  avoidant)
• Bartholomew (1994)
• Adding a fourth category (fearful avoidant)
• Brennan, Clark, and Shaver (1998)
• Scales to measure two dimensions (anxiety and
  avoidance) underlying the four categories

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Attachment patterns are best conceptualized as
regions in a two-dimensional space
HIGH AVOIDANCE
DISMISSING- AVOIDANT
FEARFUL- AVOIDANT
HIGH ANXIETY
LOW ANXIETY
ANXIOUS / PREOCCUPIED
SECURE
LOW AVOIDANCE
Adapted from Bartholomew Horowitz (1991) and
Fraley Shaver (2000)
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Attachment-Style Change?

• A persons scores on the two dimensions are
  fairly stable over months and years
• Their scores predict many aspects of their
  personal feelings, social behaviors, and
  relationship outcomes
• But they can definitely change as a result of
  experiences (good vs. bad relationships, therapy,
  etc.)
• How might this change process be studied
  experimentally?

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Priming

• Priming (subliminal or supraliminal)
• Makes certain thoughts and feelings more readily
  available for cognitive processing (by activating
  relevant associations)
• Previous studies
• Mikulincer Shaver (2001) Mikulincer, Gillath,
  Shaver (2002)
• Priming can increase or decrease security
• Increased security facilitates other behavioral
  systems (e.g., compassionate caregiving)
• Effects have been measured for only short periods
  of time (minutes)

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Introduction (cont.)

• To our knowledge, no published studies have
  examined the long-term effects of security
  priming.
• The current study explores whether repeated
  security priming raises peoples self-esteem and
  increases their compassion (caregiving) and
  creativity (exploration).

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Hypotheses

• Hypothesis 1 Subliminal security priming
  administered repetitively (3 times a week for 3
  weeks) will have positive effects on self-esteem,
  compassion, and creativity.
• Hypothesis 2 These effects, if they exist, will
  persist even after the priming procedure is
  discontinued.

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Sample

• Participants
• 50 undergraduates (32 women, 18 men), ranging in
  age from 18 to 22 (Md 20)
• Recruited through their classes, participated for
  class credit (no other reward)
• Ethnicity
• Caucasian 28
• African-American 6
• Asian 42
• Hispanic 6
• Other 14
• Marital status
• 86 Single

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Procedure

• Surveys
• Baseline measure (week 1)
• On-line survey consisting of several
  questionnaires including the following
• State Self-Esteem (as an indicator of well-being)
• Compassion Scale (as an indicator of caregiving)
• Creativity Test (creative uses of objects, as an
  indicator of exploration)

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Procedure (cont.)

• Cognitive task (weeks 1-3)
• 3 times per week for 3 weeks
• Priming occurred before each of 40 trials
• Participants were exposed for 26 ms to either 5
  different attachment-security-related words
  (secure) or to 5 neutral words (e.g., funnel).
• Type of tasks
• Judging similarity of pairs of words (e.g.,
  television chair)
• Judging category belongingness (e.g., Category
  computers Item keyboard)
• Rating the likeability of various images

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Results

• To test the two hypotheses in a preliminary way,
  we used repeated measures ANOVAs, controlling for
  anxiety and avoidance.
• 16 people (9 from the experimental group, 7 from
  the control) were deleted from the analyses
  because they said at the end of the study they
  could sometimes see the primes.
• The ANOVAs revealed several significant effects
  of priming.

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Self-esteem as an example of well-being
Security Prime
Neutral Prime
Interaction F (1, 27) 4.48, p lt .05
Self-Esteem
14
Compassion as an example of caregiving
Security Prime
Neutral Prime
Interaction F (1, 27) 5.51, p lt .05
Compassion
15
Creativity as an example of exploration
Security Prime
Neutral Prime
Interaction F (1, 27) 1.05, ns
Creativity
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Discussion

• We do see positive effects of security priming in
  our initial analyses, suggesting that the
  phenomenon is worth studying further.
• The effects do seem to persist for at least a
  week, even without further priming. In fact, they
  seemed to get stronger during the last week.
• Often, the control group displayed negative
  effects over time, probably because the study was
  annoying for many of the participants.
• There were effects of attachment anxiety and
  avoidance, but the sample was too small to
  examine interactions with these variables.
• We still have many more analyses to do, but we
  can already see a need for changes in subsequent
  studies.

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Issues and Limitations

• The N was small (and there were few men),
  especially after dropping people who seemed able
  to see the primes (which were presented for only
  26 milliseconds, but repeated many times).
• In future studies, the exposure time will have to
  be shortened.
• The survey seemed too long, so in future studies
  shorter and perhaps fewer measures should be
  used. And there should be more cognitive tasks
  (for variety). One benefit of the tedium,
  however, was the evidence for buffering effects
  of security.

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Conclusions and Future Directions

• Security priming had sustained, beneficial
  effects on well-being, care for others, and maybe
  creativity. This is worth pursuing.
• We plan to run a similar study in the fall
• 3 conditions (including one to rule out an
  alternative interpretation positive affect)
• Neutral priming
• Secure attachment priming
• Positive emotion priming
• Shorter questionnaires, more task variety
• Incentive for participants to increase N
• More effort to recruit equal numbers of men and
  women

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Acknowledgements

• Mentors
• Dr. Phillip R. Shaver
• Dr. Omri Gillath
• McNair Scholars Program
• Ellen Robert
• Ray Shiraishi

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Effects of Repeated Security Priming on
Well-Being Long-Term Aspects

• Gurminder Sandhu
• McNair Scholars Program
• Mentors Dr. Phillip R. Shaver Dr. Omri Gillath
• Department of Psychology
• University of California, Davis