The Empathy In Close Relationship

Attachment theory is a powerful framework for understanding affect regulation as Bowlby put forward it. In this article, we examine the role played by attachment orientation in shaping emotional reactions to interpersonal transactions within close relationships. Using the integrative model of Mikunicer and P.R Shaver’s attachment-system activation and dynamics as a guide, we review relevant evidence concerning how people with different attachment styles are likely to react emotionally to the partners’emotion to relational events. Simply to say, it’s about the empathy ability to the partner.199Undergraduate and graduate students (female103, male96) who have romantic experience attended the experiment. They are divided into four groups:secure attachment group、avoidant attachment group、resistant attachment group、disorganized attachment group using ECR. Everyone were asked to recall an episode in which they hurt their romantic partner and made them unhappy. Then they were asked to finish the SAM after writing the episode simply. To calm the emotion in their memory, they watched a neutral video for2minutes before they recall the happy experience that they made their partners happy. Then wrote down the episode and accepted the SAM. In order to balance the sequence error, half of the participants recalled the positive events first then the negative and the other half recalled the negative events first. The results are showed that:Their emotional reaction is different in three dimensions when they recalled the different events In the dimension of pleasure, attachment style and the nature of event have significant interactive effects on the score. Avoidant and disorganized attachment groups score higher in the degree of pleasure when recalling positive event, however, there is no difference in the memory of negative event. In the dimension of arousal, the main effect is significant in both the nature of the event and the attachment styles. The score is significant lower when recalled the positive event than negative event. What’s more, different types of attachment scores different in the dimension of arousal. Secure and resident attachment groups score significantly lower than avoidant attachment group. However, there is no obvious difference in the dimension of dominance.