I am Because You Are: Other Group Members' Attachment Avoidance and Individual Experiences of Negative Affect in Intergroup Dialogue

We investigated the relationships between attachment style and session-level process and outcome variables (i.e., group members’ perceptions of group climate, session depth and smoothness, and positive and negative affect) among 94 participants in 17 intergroup dialogues (IGD). Each participant completed an measure of adult attachment style prior to the first IGD, and measures of group climate, session depth and smoothness, and positive and negative affect following each session. We used the actor-partner interdependence model (Kenny, Mannetti, Pierro, Livi & Kashy, 2002) to examine relationships between actor (i.e., an individual group member’s attachment) and partner (i.e., the attachment scores for the other individuals in the group, excluding the focal individual group member) scores on attachment anxiety and avoidance and the session-level variables using hierarchical linear modeling. Neither the actor nor partner effects of anxious attachment was significantly associated with the session-level variables. We found a significant positive relationship between the other group members’ (OGMs) attachment avoidance (i.e., partner effect) such that higher levels of avoidance OGMs predicted an individual member’s experience of negative affect. Results are discussed in relation to the literature on attachment in intergroup relations and group interventions.