an attachment perspective on coping with existencials concerns

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16an attaChment PersPeCtiVe on CoPing With existential

ConCerns

PhilliP r. shaVer and mario mikulinCer

in recent years, attachment theory (e.g., Bowlby, 1973, 1980, 1982, 1988), which was originally formulated to describe and explain infant–parent emotional bonding, has been applied first to the study of adolescent and adult romantic relationships and then to the study of group dynamics and intergroup relationships. to distinguish this elaborated version of the theory, which now has hundreds of studies supporting it, from the original child-oriented theory, we use the term adult attachment theory (mikulincer & shaver, 2007a). in the present chapter, we extend the theory further to apply it to the ways in which people experience and cope with the existential concerns addressed in this volume: mortality, meaninglessness, isolation, and lack of freedom. our main idea is that attachment security—a felt sense, rooted in one’s history of close relationships, that the world is generally safe, other people are generally helpful when called on, and i, as a unique individual, am valuable and lovable, thanks to being valued and loved by others—provides a psychological foun-dation for easing existential anxieties and constructing an authentic sense of continuity, coherence, meaning, connectedness, and autonomy.

We begin by presenting an overview of attachment theory and our theoretical model of the activation and psychodynamics of the attachment

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/13748-016Meaning, Mortality, and Choice: The Social Psychology of Existential Concerns,edited by P. R. Shaver and M. MikulincerCopyright © 2012 American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.

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292 shaver and mikulincer

behavioral system in adulthood (mikulincer & shaver, 2007a). We then apply this model to ways of coping with existential concerns. We show, on the basis of empirical studies, that a heightened awareness of existential concerns (worries about finitude, isolation, meaninglessness, or lack of free-dom) automatically activates what Bowlby (e.g., 1973) called the attachment system. this in turn motivates what he called proximity seeking—moving toward actual others or mental representations of them to bolster feelings of safety and security and thereby reduce existential anxiety. We review studies showing that the availability of a loving and supportive external or internal-ized attachment figure and the resulting sense of security are effective anti-dotes to the four major existential threats. along the way, we explain how individual differences in attachment-system functioning shape the ways in which people experience, think about, and cope with existential concerns.

oVerVieW of adult attaChment theory

the main construct in Bowlby’s (1982) attachment theory is the attachment behavioral system, an innate psychobiological system that moti-vates people to seek proximity to supportive others (attachment figures) in times of need. although the attachment system is most crucial in the early years of life, because of human infants’ extreme immaturity and depen-dence on others, Bowlby (1988) claimed that it is active throughout life and is manifested in thoughts and behaviors related to proximity- and support-seeking and in the resulting sense of security. this idea has now been bolstered by neuropsychological research (summarized by Coan, 2008) indicating that the human brain evolved to function within the context of social relationships.

according to Bowlby (1973), whose ideas were operationalized in land-mark studies by ainsworth and her colleagues (ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978), although all human beings are born with a capacity to seek proximity, safety, and help with the regulation of negative emotions in times of need, important individual differences arise in close relationships that affect psychological and social functioning. When attachment figures are reliably available if needed, are sensitive to one’s attachment needs, and respond warmly to one’s bids for proximity and support, a person feels generally secure and efficacious and can explore the physical and social environment curiously, learn diverse skills, develop cognitively and emotionally, and enjoy life’s challenges, often with other people.

a history of security-enhancing interactions with close others results in the formation of positive expectations about others’ availability and gen-erosity, which Bowlby (1973) called internal working models of self and others.

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an attachment perspective 293

Because a person who is treated well by attachment figures learns to deal effectively with challenges and stressors, he or she can generally marshal effective affect-regulation strategies throughout life (mikulincer & shaver, 2007a). however, when attachment figures are not reliably available and supportive, a sense of security is not attained, doubts about one’s lovability and worries about others’ motives and intentions are formed, and strategies of affect regulation other than confident proximity seeking and effective self-regulation are adopted.

in studies of adolescents and adults, tests of these propositions from attachment theory have focused on a person’s attachment orientation—the systematic pattern of relational expectations, emotions, and behavior that results from a particular history of attachment experiences (fraley & shaver, 2000). Beginning with ainsworth et al.’s (1978) studies of infant attachment, and followed by hundreds of studies of adult attachment, researchers have found that attachment orientations can be measured along two orthogonal dimensions of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance (Brennan, Clark, & shaver, 1998). attachment anxiety reflects the degree to which a per-son worries that relationship partners will not be available in times of need and is afraid of being rejected or abandoned. attachment-related avoidance reflects the extent to which a person distrusts relationship partners’ goodwill and strives to maintain independence and emotional distance from partners. People who score low on both dimensions are said to be secure, or secure with respect to attachment. the two dimensions can be measured with reliable and valid self-report scales and are associated in theoretically predictable ways with many aspects of personal well-being and relationship quality (see mikulincer & shaver, 2007a, for a review).

We have proposed that a person’s location in the two-dimensional space defined by attachment anxiety and avoidance reflects both the per-son’s sense of attachment security and the ways in which he or she deals with threats and stressors (mikulincer & shaver, 2007a). People who score low on these dimensions are generally secure and tend to use constructive and effec-tive affect-regulation strategies. in contrast, people who score high on either attachment anxiety or avoidance, or both (a condition called fearful avoid-ance), suffer from attachment insecurities. insecure people tend to use sec-ondary attachment strategies that we, following Cassidy and kobak (1988), characterize as hyperactivating or deactivating the attachment behavioral system in an effort to cope with threats.

People who score high on attachment anxiety rely on hyperactivating strategies—energetic attempts to achieve proximity, support, and love com-bined with a lack of confidence that these resources will be provided and with feelings of sadness or anger when they are in fact not provided. these reactions occur in relationships in which an attachment figure is sometimes responsive

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but unreliably so, placing the needy person on a partial reinforcement sched-ule that rewards exaggeration and persistence in proximity-seeking attempts because these efforts sometimes succeed (ainsworth et al., 1978). in con-trast, people who score high on avoidant attachment tend to use deactivating strategies: trying not to seek proximity to others when threatened, denying attachment needs, and avoiding closeness and interdependence in relation-ships. these strategies develop in relationships with attachment figures who disapprove of and punish frequent bids for closeness and expressions of need (ainsworth et al., 1978).

in short, each attachment strategy has a major regulatory goal (insisting on proximity to an attachment figure or on self-reliance) that goes along with particular cognitive and affective processes that facilitate goal attainment. these strategies affect the formation and maintenance of close relationships as well as the experience, regulation, and expression of negative emotions, such as anxiety, anger, or sadness (mikulincer & shaver, 2007a). moreover, the strategies affect the ways in which people experience and cope with threatening events, including existential threats—the focus of the following sections of this chapter.

attaChment orientations and CoPing With existential ConCerns

We propose that the attachment system was “designed,” or selected, by evolution as a regulatory device for dealing with all kinds of stressors and threats, including existential concerns about annihilation or death, which Bowlby (1982) discussed in relation to the threat of predation in early humans’ environment of adaptation. Because of the way the attachment system is constructed, external or internal (symbolic) threats to one’s sense of con-tinued existence, life’s predictability and meaning, social connectedness, or freedom and autonomy automatically activate the goal of approaching an attachment figure and obtaining protection and support. if this strategy regularly evokes the desired responses from sensitive attachment figures, a person learns how to cope with existential threats and restore feelings of safety, continuity, meaning, relatedness, and autonomy. unfortunately, unresponsive, unsupportive attachment figures and the attachment insecu-rities they arouse can leave a person vulnerable to anxieties about mortal-ity, meaninglessness, isolation, and lack of freedom, causing him or her to adopt less constructive ways of coping with these existential concerns. in subsequent sections, we review studies of attachment-system activation and attachment-related individual differences in responses to each of the four major existential concerns.

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Mortality Concerns

as reviewed in several other chapters in this volume (Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10), awareness of one’s mortality is a major cause of existential anxiety, one that automatically activates psychological defenses. according to attachment theory, making mortality salient also activates the attachment system and energizes a person’s attempts to attain care, protection, and safety. this means that a sense of attachment security should be an effective terror management mechanism that restores a person’s sense of value and conti-nuity, rendering other symbolic defenses less necessary. in contrast, lack of available, responsive, and sensitive attachment figures may cause people to rely on other forms of defense against death anxiety.

Death Awareness and Attachment-System Activation

in a study of the mental accessibility of attachment-related representa-tions, mikulincer et al. (2000) found that even preconscious reminders of death can automatically activate the attachment system. they (mikulincer et al., 2000, study 3) subliminally exposed participants to the word death or a neutral word for 22 ms in each of several trials and found that words related to attachment security (e.g., love, hug, closeness) became more available for processing (as indicated by faster reaction times in a lexical decision task) following the death prime. the word death had no effect on the mental avail-ability of attachment-unrelated positive or neutral words.

there is also evidence that conscious death reminders cause a person to think of seeking proximity to a close other (see mikulincer, florian, & hirschberger, 2003, for a review). for example, experimentally heightened mortality salience is associated with greater psychological commitment to a romantic partner (florian, mikulincer, & hirschberger, 2002), a heightened desire for emotional intimacy with a romantic partner (even if he or she has recently complained or been critical; hirschberger, florian, & miku-lincer, 2003), and a heightened preference for sitting near other people in a group discussion context, rather than sitting alone, even if this seating preference exposes one’s worldviews to potential attack (Wisman & koole, 2003), something people often avoid when mortality has been made salient (see Chapters 3 and 4, this volume).

Attachment-Related Differences in Managing Death Anxiety

attachment-related individual differences are moderators of the effects of mortality salience. for example, mikulincer and florian (2000) and mikulincer, florian, and tolmacz (1990) found that attachment security is associated with lower levels of death-related thoughts and fear of death

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measured by self-report scales, projective tests (narrative responses to the-matic apperception test [tat] cards), and cognitive tasks (completion of death-related word fragments). in contrast, attachment anxiety is asso-ciated with heightened fear of death, as measured by both self-reports and tat responses, and with greater accessibility of death-related thoughts even when no death reminder is present. attachment-related avoidance is related to lower self-reported fear of death but with a higher level of death-related thoughts and anxiety in tat responses. that is, avoidant individuals tend to suppress death concerns and exhibit dissociation between their conscious and unconscious thoughts about death.

secure and insecure people differ in the way they manage concerns related to death. although seeking support for one’s cultural worldview has been considered the normative defense against existential threats (see Chapter 1, this volume), there is evidence that this response is more charac-teristic of insecure than of secure individuals. for example, experimentally induced death reminders produced more severe judgments and punishments of moral transgressors only among insecurely attached people, whether anxious or avoidant (mikulincer & florian, 2000). People scoring higher on secure attachment did not recommend harsher punishments for transgressors fol-lowing a mortality salience manipulation. in contrast, they reacted to mor-tality salience with heightened proximity seeking, a more intense desire for intimacy in close relationships (mikulincer & florian, 2000), and greater willingness to engage in social interactions (taubman–Ben-ari, findler, & mikulincer, 2002). these studies imply that even when mortality is made salient, secure individuals maintain their sense of security and engage in gen-erally prosocial activities, even if these are partially defensive in nature. in contrast, defensively hostile, reality-distorting reactions to mortality seem to result from recurrent failures of attachment figures to accomplish their protective, supportive, anxiety-buffering functions.

Concerns About Life’s Meaning

the perception of coherence and meaning in life is crucial for maintain-ing emotional balance (see Chapters 7 and 8,this volume), and people often react defensively when their sense of meaning is threatened or is shattered by life circumstances (see Chapters 8, 10, and 11, this volume). from the standpoint of attachment theory, we would expect threats to one’s sense of meaning, like any other serious threat to one’s welfare, to trigger a search for comfort, love, and reassurance from attachment figures. as a result, the avail-ability of supportive attachment figures, in actuality or in one’s mind, and the resulting sense of attachment security, should contribute to maintaining a solid sense of life’s coherence, value, and meaning. in contrast, attachment

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insecurity should leave a person vulnerable to threats of meaninglessness and in need of alternative, less constructive ways of creating meaning.

Meaninglessness and Attachment-System Activation

adult attachment researchers have not focused specifically on mean-inglessness and its effects on attachment-system activation. We therefore conducted a study especially for this chapter to examine in a preliminary way the influence of meaninglessness on proximity seeking. sixty israeli under-graduates (66% women) were randomly assigned to one of three meaning-related conditions (a procedure based on king, hicks, & abdelkhalik, 2009, study 3). Participants in a high-meaning condition (n = 20) and a low-meaning condition (n = 20) wrote a brief essay about how the statement “human life is purposeful and meaningful” could be viewed as either true or untrue, respectively. Participants in the control condition (n = 20) wrote an essay on a neutral topic (shopping at a drugstore). immediately after writing the essay, participants completed sharabany’s (1994) 32-item intimacy scale, assessing their desire for honesty, spontaneity, and closeness in relationships. We asked participants to focus on romantic relationships and to rate, on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much), the extent to which each item expressed their wishes in this kind of relationship. for each participant, we computed a total score by averaging the 32 items.

a one-way analysis of variance on the reported desire for intimacy was significant, F(2, 57) = 6.54, p < .01. scheffé post hoc tests revealed that partic-ipants in the low-meaning condition reported a stronger desire for romantic intimacy (M = 5.68, SD = 1.31) than those in the high-meaning (M = 4.86, SD = 0.83) and control conditions (M = 4.50, SD = 0.96). no significant dif-ference was found between the latter two conditions. supporting our hypothe-sis, raising the specter of life’s possible meaninglessness led to an increased wish for closeness and intimacy—the motivational signature of attachment-system activation. however, attachment-system activation was assessed only with a self-report measure rather than with an indicator of automatic, preconscious activation of the attachment system or observations of actual proximity-seeking behavior. hence, more probing studies are still needed.

Attachment-Related Differences in the Perception of Life’s Meaning

unfortunately, adult attachment researchers have not yet examined systematically whether people differing in attachment security also differ in their perceptions of life’s meaning and in ways of coping with the threat of meaninglessness. however, there is evidence that feelings of closeness and social support (which are aspects of felt security) are associated with a height-ened sense of life’s meaning (e.g., hicks & king, 2009; steger, kashdan,

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sullivan, & lorentz, 2008). similarly, lambert et al. (2010) reported that perceived closeness to family members and support from them was associated with greater meaning in life among young adults, even when self-esteem, feel-ings of autonomy and competence, and social desirability were statistically controlled. moreover, implicit priming of relational closeness increased the perception of life’s meaning when participants were in a bad mood (hicks & king, 2009). in contrast, experimental manipulations of rejection, social exclusion, and loneliness (which are related to attachment insecurity) reduce people’s sense that life is meaningful (e.g., hicks, schlegel, & king, 2010; stillman et al., 2009; Williams, 2007).

mikulincer and shaver (2005) reported a preliminary study that exam-ined the association between attachment insecurities and perception of life’s meaning. Participants who had previously completed a self-report attach-ment measure were primed with representations of either a security provider (thinking about a supportive other) or a person who did not serve attach-ment functions. they then completed a self-report measure of the extent to which they perceived the world as understandable and life as “making sense” (antonovsky, 1987). lower scores on attachment anxiety and avoid-ance (i.e., greater attachment security) were associated with higher levels of meaning and coherence in life. moreover, compared with neutral priming, security priming increased the sense of meaning and coherence even among dispositionally insecure participants.

more research is needed on the extent to which attachment security helps people find meaning in religious faith (see Chapter 8, this volume), engage in generative activities such as caring for offspring or teaching a new generation (Chapter 9), or enjoy moments of happiness (Chapter 7). future research should determine whether attachment insecurity leaves people vulnerable to threats of meaninglessness; causes them to follow less construc-tive paths to meaning, such as political terrorism (Chapter 11) or disruptive religious fundamentalism (Chapter 8); or encourages self-destructive tenden-cies that may end in suicide (Chapter 18).

Isolation Concerns

experiences of disapproval, criticism, rejection, betrayal, social exclusion, separation, loss of significant others, and loneliness can lead to aggression, social withdrawal, and even suicide (see Chapters 17 and 18, this volume). according to attachment theory, these kinds of experiences erode felt security and automatically activate the attachment system and attachment-related defenses. When sensitive and responsive attachment figures are available, felt security is heightened, one feels stably connected to others, and the threat of isolation is removed. in contrast, lack of security-enhancing attachment

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figures exacerbates isolation-related concerns, erodes the sense of relatedness, and leads insecurely attached people to search for other ways of coping with loneliness and isolation.

The Threat of Isolation and Attachment-System Activation

the idea that the threat of isolation (a relationship partner’s unavail-ability, disapproval, criticism, rejection, or betrayal; separation from or the death of loved ones) is distressing and can activate the attachment system is one of the central tenets of attachment theory. observations of infants who were separated from their mother (e.g., heinicke & Westheimer, 1966) convinced Bowlby (1982) that this threat arouses anxiety, anger, protest, and yearning for proximity, love, and security. an infant, finding itself without an attentive caregiver, cries, thrashes, attempts to reestablish contact with the absent figure by calling and searching, and resists other people’s well-intentioned efforts at soothing. similar reactions are often observed among adolescents and adults following episodes of rejection, disapproval, or criti-cism by close relationship partners (e.g., J. feeney, 2005) or the breakup of a romantic relationship (e.g., sbarra & emery, 2005). in a naturalistic study of behavioral reactions to separation from a romantic partner in the departure lounges of an airport, fraley and shaver (1998) found that couples who were separating were more likely than couples who were not separating to seek and maintain physical contact (e.g., by mutually gazing at each other’s faces, talking intently, and touching).

such activations of the attachment system can be detected even at an unconscious level. mikulincer, gillath, and shaver (2002) found that, as compared with subliminal priming with neutral words, subliminal priming with the word separation produced (a) faster identification in a lexical deci-sion task of names of people whom participants had identified as security-enhancing attachment figures and (b) slower reaction times for naming the colors in which attachment figures’ names were presented in a stroop (color-naming) task. in both cases, fast lexical decisions and slower color naming indicated heightened activation of mental representations of attachment figures in response to an implicit separation threat. Priming with the word separation had no effect on mental representations of people who did not serve attachment functions.

Attachment-Related Differences in Managing Isolation-Related Threats

although isolation-related threats automatically activate the attachment system and motivate most people to restore their sense of security by seeking contact with attachment figures, attachment insecurities seem to distort this process and encourage other coping strategies. for example, whereas

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attachment-anxious individuals react to temporary separations from a roman-tic partner, or to divorce, with excessive rumination, catastrophizing, and distress, avoidant individuals emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally dis-tance themselves from their partner and suppress tendencies to vocalize their distress (e.g., Birnbaum, orr, mikulincer, & florian, 1997; davis, shaver, & Vernon, 2003; J. feeney, 1998). similar findings have been obtained in studies in which mere thoughts of hypothetical or actual separation were aroused (e.g., meyer, olivier, & roth, 2005).

the distortion of attachment-system activation produced by anxious attachment was observed by mikulincer, florian, Birnbaum, and malish-kevich (2002), who found that anxiously attached people mentally equated separation with death. Participants were asked to imagine being separated from a loved partner and then to perform a word completion task that mea-sured accessibility of death-related thoughts. those who scored higher on attachment anxiety reacted to separation reminders with more death-related thoughts. this may help to explain why anxious individuals tend to experience intense distress following separations.

a conceptually similar pattern of results was reported by hart, shaver, and goldenberg (2005), who examined defensive reactions to separation and reminders of death. undergraduates were asked to think about their own death, separation from a close relationship partner, or a control theme and then to report their attitudes toward the writer of a pro-american essay. Peo-ple who scored relatively high on attachment anxiety rated the pro-american writer more favorably not only in the death condition—the typical defensive reaction to mortality salience (see Chapter 1, this volume)—but also in the separation condition. in other words, anxious individuals exhibited the same defensive reaction to reminders of death and separation.

in a pair of experimental studies, fraley and shaver (1997) asked par-ticipants to write about whatever thoughts and feelings they experienced while also trying not to think about their romantic partner leaving them for someone else. anxious individuals were less able to suppress separation-related thoughts, as indicated by more frequent thoughts of loss following the suppression task and higher skin conductance during the task. in contrast, more avoidant people showed less frequent thoughts of loss following the suppression task and lower skin conductance during the task. gillath, Bunge, shaver, Wendelken, and mikulincer (2005) documented related differences in patterns of brain activation (using functional magnetic resonance imag-ing) when people were thinking about breakups and losses or attempting to suppress such thoughts.

in a recent laboratory experiment, Cassidy, shaver, mikulincer, and lavy (2009) examined the ways in which attachment insecurities shape cognitive and emotional reactions to episodes of rejection, criticism, or betrayal in

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close relationships and explored whether security priming could reduce these reactions. Participants wrote a description of an incident in which a close relationship partner criticized, disapproved, rejected, or ostracized them. they then completed a short computerized task in which they were repeat-edly exposed subliminally (for 22 ms) to either a security-enhancing prime word (love, secure, affection) or a neutral prime (lamp, staple, building). imme-diately after the priming trials, participants were asked to think again about the hurtful event they had described and to rate how they would react to such an event if it happened in the future: how rejected they would feel, how they would feel about themselves, and how they would react to these events.

in the neutral priming condition, the findings fit well with previous cor-relational studies of attachment-related differences in response to isolation-related threats. avoidance was associated with less negative appraisals of the relational threat, less intense feelings of rejection, less crying, and more defensive or hostile reactions; attachment anxiety was associated with more intense feelings of rejection, more crying, and more negative emotions. these typical findings were dramatically reduced in size (most approached zero) in the security-priming condition. in other words, security priming reduced the tendency of avoidant people to dismiss relational threats and distance them-selves from a hurtful partner and the tendency of anxious people to intensify distress and ruminate.

Concerns About Freedom and Autonomy

as with the other existential threats discussed so far, threats to freedom and autonomy should activate the attachment system, along with character-istic affect-regulation strategies related to different attachment orientations. according to attachment theory, the sense of attachment security allows people to tolerate necessary separations from attachment figures and to use them, when they are present or held warmly in mind, as secure bases from which to explore the world, acquire new skills, and eventually operate auton-omously with confidence that support will be available if needed. in contrast, insecurity causes people to adopt either an overly cautious and dependent stance (in the case of anxiously attached people) or to compulsively pursue self-reliance (in the case of avoidant people).

unfortunately, there is little research on attachment-system activation following actual or imagined threats to the sense of personal freedom and autonomy. however, research has shown that more secure people tend to engage in more relaxed and confident exploration and learning of new activi-ties and ideas and that security priming supports exploration (e.g., green & Campbell, 2000; mikulincer, 1997). in the domain of career choice, it has been found that adolescents with more supportive parents or friends have

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more positive attitudes toward career-related exploration and a stronger sense of autonomy and mastery in choosing a career (e.g., Blustein et al., 2001; schultheiss, kress, manzi, & glasscock, 2001).

studies of the extent to which a person’s goals and plans are inter-nally, autonomously regulated also point to the importance of other people’s supportiveness (see Chapters 12 and 13, this volume). for example, ryan, stiller, and lynch (1994) found that children who felt securely attached to parents and teachers displayed greater internal, autonomous regulation of school-related behaviors. in addition, some studies have established a link between attachment security and intrinsic motivation, the tendency to extend and exercise one’s capacities and to enjoy exploration and learning (elliot & reis, 2003; ryan & deci, 2000). for example, hazan and shaver (1990) found that securely attached people were more likely than insecure ones to perceive work as an opportunity for learning, and elliot and reis (2003) found that self-reports of attachment security were associated with stronger endorsement of mastery goals in academic settings (goals focused on learning and on expanding one’s capacities). interestingly, roth, assor, niemiec, ryan, and deci (2009) found that adolescents who perceived their parents as providing a more secure base for exploration and autonomy had a higher sense of personal freedom and reported more interest-focused aca-demic engagement (see also Chapter 13, this volume).

this association between the availability of supportive attachment figures and the sense of autonomy has also been examined in romantic relationships. in a behavioral observation study, B. C. feeney (2007) examined the extent to which one’s partner’s availability and supportiveness affects the other partner’s independent pursuit of personal goals. B. C. feeney found that reports of a part-ner’s availability and supportiveness were associated with a person’s perceived independence and self-efficacy, engagement in independent exploration, and ability to achieve independent goals. in addition, one partner’s availability and supportiveness during a videotaped discussion of personal goals for the future was associated with the other partner’s autonomous functioning (e.g., confi-dent exploration of independent goals). finally, participants whose partners were available and supportive (as observed at one point in time) experienced increases in independent functioning over 6 months, and were more likely to achieve an important independent goal by the end of the 6-month period.

ConCluding remarks

although existential threats are obviously real and of great conse-quence, it would be a mistake to conclude that human beings are insufficiently equipped to deal with them or cannot do so without erecting psychologically

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distorting and socially damaging defenses. a host of studies have shown that people who have developed dispositional attachment security deal effec-tively with the fact of mortality, the need for meaning, and the challenges of freedom and independence. moreover, they deal with these threats while remaining relatively open, optimistic, internally integrated, and well-connected socially. We had space here to focus on only a few examples, but there are other relevant and important studies of attachment security and honesty, authenticity, and creativity (e.g., gillath, sesko, shaver, & Chun, 2010; mikulincer, shaver, & rom, 2011). overall, a coherent body of research indicates that people who are treated well by others, beginning early in life, find life engaging, enjoyable, and meaningful.

Because research on adult attachment has grown up under the strong influ-ence of prior research on infant–parent attachment, existential concerns that emerge later in development have not been systematically tackled by attach-ment researchers. there are many indications, however, that if we consider adult attachment research in the context of theories and bodies of research regarding existential concerns, the two lines of research are compatible and have a great deal to offer each other. for scientists as well as nonscientists, realizing that there is more to explore, more to learn, and numerous engaging and supportive companions with whom to share these activities goes a long way toward fending off existential anxieties and providing life with enriched meaning.

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an attachment perspective on coping with existencials concerns

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