A Study Of The Relationship Of Adult Attachment, Perceived Social Support And Neuroticism With Anxiety

Objective: The aim of the study was to explore the relationships about adult attachment, perceived social support, neuroticism and anxiety, in which adult attachment and neuroticism should be attached as intermediary variables affecting the relations between perceived social support and anxiety.Method: The original version of a set of assessments scales about diathesis-stress of depression was provided by Abela professor in McGill University and these scales were translated into Chinese by investigators. Then, the two bilingual translators in McGill University modified these translations, and final versions were approved by both of them after repeated back-translation. 647 students whose mean age were 20.14±1.14 completed all the assessments scales at one time. Person's Correlation and Biased Correlation were used to explore the relationship between the three factors and anxiety, and Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used to explore the model of relationship between the three factors and anxiety.Result: (1)Result of correlation analysis: neuroticism, avoidant attachment and anxiety attachment were significantly correlated with anxiety positively(r=.424,P<0.01; r=.283,P<0.01; r=.220,P<0.01); perceived social support was significantly correlated with anxiety negatively(r=-.123, P<0.05); neuroticism was not only significantly correlated with insecure adult attachment positively (r=.314, P<0.01; r=.569, P < 0.01 ) , but also with perceived social support negatively(r=-. 137, P<0.01); both avoidant attachment and anxiety attachment were significantly correlated with perceived social support negatively (r=-.210, P<0.05, r=-.104, P<0.05). (2)Result of biased correlation analysis: After controlling the variances of neuroticism and avoidant attachment respectively, the correlation between perceived social support and anxiety declined sharply under the statistical significant level(r=-.0726, P=.088; r=-.0806, P=.058); after controlling the variance of anxiety attachment, the correlation between perceived social support and anxiety also declined sharply (r=-.0982, P=.021), even though coefficient of which still achieved the statistical significant level. (3)The result of structural equation model showed that neuroticism and insecure attachment affected anxiety directly, and perceived social support affected anxiety indirectly through neuroticism and insecure attachment(anxiety attachment and avoidant attachment), and neuroticism and insecure attachment played total intermediary roles between perceived social support and anxiety.Conclusion: The result of the study implied that neuroticism affected anxiety directly, and fully mediated the effect of perceived social support on anxiety.