The Impact Of Secure Attachment Priming On Interpersonal Trust In College Students

"Faith" is a cultural tradition in China from ancient times to the present and has a very important place in Confucianism.Nowadays,trust is also an indispensable component of people’s lives,interpersonal trust is people’s cognitive judgment under uncertain conditions to make positive expectations about the behavior or intentions of the person they are interacting with,and decide to continue to interact.Interpersonal trust plays an important role in a harmonious society.However,in recent years,various dishonest incidents have been exposed on media platforms such as Weibo and short videos,which has severely impacted trust between people.Many studies have shown that individuals’ interpersonal trust is influenced by personality traits and close relationships.Attachment,as a stable internal characteristic,unconsciously affects individuals’ cognition,emotions,and behavior in interpersonal communication;Close relationship is measured by interpersonal distance,which is the degree to which an individual identifies,approaches,or wishes to establish connections with other individuals or groups,and is an important component of social interaction.College students are important members of society,and their interpersonal trust has also been severely affected by incidents such as phone fraud,campus loans,and online fraud.However,few previous studies have focused on college students and explored the impact of attachment and interpersonal distance on interpersonal trust from the perspective of attachment.Safe attachment and appropriate interpersonal distance are crucial for college students’ interpersonal communication and mental health.Therefore,this study focuses on college students,with attachment as the focus,and combines interpersonal distance to conduct indepth research,analysis,and discussion on the impact of different states of attachment on interpersonal trust.Study 1 explored the impact of trait attachment on interpersonal trust among college students.The interpersonal trust scale,intimacy experience scale and interpersonal intimacy scale were used to measure college students,and the relationship between trait attachment and interpersonal trust was verified.The results showed that safe attachment had a significant positive predictive effect on interpersonal trust among college students,attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance had a significant negative predictive effect on interpersonal trust among college students,and interpersonal distance(strangers)played a moderating role in attachment avoidance and interpersonal trust.Study 2 explores the influence of state attachment on interpersonal trust among college students.It includes two experiments.Experiment 1 adopts the trust game task,based on the security base map in attachment theory,to investigate whether the initiation of secure attachment has the same effect on interpersonal trust.The results showed that the initiation of safe attachment can increase the interpersonal trust rate and the level of trust in self reporting of college students.Based on Experiment 1,Experiment 2 added different target cues to explore the impact of safe attachment initiation on interpersonal trust among college students.The results showed that under different target cues,the impact of safe attachment initiation on interpersonal trust among college students was different.People who have a higher interpersonal trust rate towards acquaintances than strangers report a higher level of trust in self reported trust.However,interpersonal distance has no moderating effect on the initiation of secure attachment and interpersonal trust.After statistical and theoretical analysis,the research finally reached the following conclusions:(1)Attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance can significantly negatively affect college students’ interpersonal trust,and interpersonal distance(strangers)plays a moderating role in attachment avoidance and interpersonal trust.(2)Safe attachment initiation can increase college students’ interpersonal trust rate and trust level in self reporting.(3)Under different target cues,there are differences in the impact of safe attachment initiation on interpersonal trust among college students.Whether or not a secure attachment is initiated,the trust rate of the acquaintance group is significantly higher than that of the stranger group;Whether they are acquaintances or strangers,the trust rate of the priming group is higher than that of the non priming group.Under experimental conditions,interpersonal distance does not mediate between secure attachment initiation and interpersonal trust.