The Influence Of Adult Attachment And Social Comparison On Social Self-efficacy

As a subjective expectation and feeling of control on one’s social performance, socialself efficacy plays a key role in interpersonal communication and social contact. Althoughthe previous researchers have found that adult attachment as an internal resource and socialcomparison as an external resource influenced social self efficacy respectively, theresearches on the relationship of adult attachment and social comparison, especially thecommon mechanism of action are limited. So this paper choice the characteristic variableand situational variables of social comparison, in depth explores the influence of adultattachment and social comparison on social self efficacy, and further discusses theinfluence mechanism in them.Study I includes302undergraduate subjects, explores the influence path of adultattachment and social comparison orientation on social self efficacy. The result shows,attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, ability social comparison orientation, conceptsocial comparison orientation can predict the social self efficacy effectively, and theattachment anxiety has the strongest predictive power. And the mediation effect test furtherreveals that attachment anxiety impact social self efficacy through ability comparisonorientation; ability comparison orientation plays a partial mediation effect in the model.Study II includes200undergraduate subjects, using2(attachment anxiety: high, low)×2(attachment avoidance: high, low)×2(social comparison direction: up, down)×2(social comparison pattern: explicit, implicit) between-subjects design, explores theinfluence of adult attachment and social comparison direction, social comparison patternon social self efficacy through the experiment priming. The result shows, attachmentanxiety has significant differences in different social comparison priming conditions. Oncondition of explicit comparison, high attachment anxiety ones appear assimilation effect,but on condition of implicit comparison, low attachment anxiety ones appear contrast effect. Attachment avoidance only show the significant difference in social comparisonpattern, the social self efficacy of high attachment avoidance is significant higher than thelow attachment avoidance’s just in implicit comparison condition.Basic on the above research results, conclusion can be that: adult attachment andsocial comparison orientation can predict the social self efficacy effectively, and in theinfluence of attachment anxiety to social self efficacy, ability comparison orientation playsa partial mediation effect. While attachment anxiety has significant differences in differentsocial comparison priming conditions, attachment avoidance only show the significantdifference in social comparison pattern.