Caregiving History and Emotional Information Processing: Experimental Effects of Priming Negative Memories of Caregiving Relationships

Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982) suggests that the nature of parent-child relationships influences how individuals interpret social and emotional information during adulthood, which in turn influences the caregiving they provide to the next generation. This study examined whether young adults' self-reports of maternal caregiving, assessed by the care scale of the Parental Bonding Instrument, are associated with differential responses to negative affect expressed by children in pictures and audio through a ratings task. Further, the study examined whether potential emotion processing biases are more evident when caregiving relationships are brought to mind. A sample of 301 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of three priming tasks, in which they were asked to write about a negative memory in either a caregiving relationship, a negative memory in a peer relationship, or a neutral topic that did not involve interpersonal content. Writing task content was coded to identify potential mediators of the relationship between maternal care history and emotion processing outcomes. Maternal care was associated with emotion processing biases only in the group primed to think of negative caregiving relationships. The nature of these biases was to minimize or play down the distress of children displaying negative affect. Analyses of narrative content did not identify any mediators of the relationship between maternal care and emotion processing outcomes, but did detect similar associations between maternal caregiving history and emotional content in the narratives. Results are discussed in the context of attachment theory and defensive strategies to regulate the experience of negative affect.