Helping Behavior Under Risk Situations: Attachment Effect And Mechanism

Helping behavior is a typical pro-social behavior, and has been achieved fruitful results in thisfield. In recent years, researchers have begun to explore people’s pro-social behavior from theperspective of attachment, Bowlby’s attachment behavioral system and caregiving behavioralsystem caused all the attention. Although previous studies have explored many factors thatinfluence helping behavior, but most of the research is just from one aspect. Attachment theoristsjust to explore how does the attachment behavioral system influence the caregiving behavioralsystem based on Bowlby’s attachment theory. There is no coherent argument and the internalmechanism is not clear about the attachment. Thus, this study tried to examine helping behavior inrisk situations and to investigate the effect and mechanism of attachment by two studies.Study1examined helping behavior in risk situations and explored the role of attachment inhelping behavior by two experiments. Study A, we explored the influence of attachment to helpingbehavior in risk situations by helping scenario in reality; Study B, we discussed whether boost theattachment secure sense of different attachment types of individuals could increase the helpingbehavior in the high-risk situations. The results show that:(1) Secure attachment individuals’helping behavior in high-risk situation is significantly higher than the insecure attachmentindividuals (avoidant-style, anxiety-style); The helping behaviors don’t exist significantdifferences between secure attachment individuals and insecure attachment individuals in the low-risk situation;(2) Boosted attachment security can significantly enhance the insecurely attachmentindividuals’ helping behavior in the high-risk situations; In the secure attachment priming condition,there is no significant difference of different attachment individuals’ helping behavior; In thecontrol group condition, secure attachment individuals’ helping behavior is significantly higherthan the insecure attachment individuals.Study2investigated the influence mechanism of different types attachment individuals tohelping behavior in risk situations by two experiments. Study A, we explored different styles ofattachment individuals’ attention character to negative emotional cues by clues-target attentionparadigm; Study B, we explored different attachment styles of individuals’ empathy features to the plight of others. The results showed that:(3) In the alert phase, insecure attachment of individualsare more sensitive to negative emotional cues compared to secure attachment individuals, exactlythat insecure attachment individuals’ reaction time was significantly less than secure attachmentindividuals; In the maintenance phase, insecure attachment individuals proned to avoid thenegative emotional cues faster compared to secure attachment individuals, exactly that insecureattachment individuals’ reaction time was significantly less than secure attachment individuals;(4)In high-risk situations, the anxiety attachment individuals’ personal distress is significantly morethan secure attachment individuals and avoidant attachment individuals; Avoidant attachmentindividuals’ compassion was significantly less than the secure attachment individuals and anxietyattachment individuals.