Women with an avoidant attachment style show attenuated estradiol responses to emotionally intimate stimuli
Highlights
► We examined whether emotional intimacy increases estradiol (E). ► Viewing an emotionally intimate video increased E, but only among single participants. ► Avoidantly attached women showed smaller E responses to emotional intimacy. ► Women's avoidance did not predict E responses to non-intimate video stimuli.
Introduction
Close relationships are an important source of pleasure and support throughout the lifespan. Individuals who are more socially connected and engaged in higher quality relationships also reap benefits in other important life domains; for instance, they have better mental and physical health outcomes and lower rates of mortality (e.g., Cacioppo et al., 2002, House et al., 1988). Although many aspects of social relationships are likely to underlie these beneficial effects, research has emphasized the importance of the quality, rather than simply the quantity, of an individual's social connections (e.g., Amieva et al., 2010, McAdams, 1989). For instance, adult romantic relationships characterized by emotional intimacy (e.g., self-disclosure, mutual responsiveness; Reis and Shaver, 1988) tend to be more satisfying and rewarding than those lacking such intimate qualities (Cordova et al., 2005, Laurenceau et al., 1998). Increases in emotional intimacy also predict increases in couples' marital and sexual satisfaction over time (Greeff and Malherbe, 2001, Rubin and Campbell, in press).
The goal of the current study was to assess neuroendocrine processes associated with emotional intimacy in humans. Despite the importance of this aspect of close relationships, it has received relatively little attention in neuroendocrine research. In the current study, participants viewed movie clips depicting an emotionally intimate parent–child interaction or other, non-intimate themes and we assessed whether depictions of emotional intimacy increased levels of estradiol, a steroid hormone associated with attachment and caregiving processes (Mileva-Seitz and Fleming, 2011). We also examined whether estradiol responses were moderated by individual differences in adult attachment, or people's characteristic approaches to close relationships (Shaver and Mikulincer, 2006).
Research with humans and other animals highlights the central role of estradiol in caregiving behavior (Mileva-Seitz and Fleming, 2011). In females, estradiol levels rise during pregnancy, peak around parturition, and then decline following birth (e.g., Storey et al., 2000); the rise of estradiol prior to delivery is thought to be especially critical for the onset of maternal behavior (Wynne-Edwards and Reburn, 2000). During this period, for instance, pregnant female macaques demonstrate heightened caregiving behavior toward other females' infants, and such behavior is correlated with rising estradiol levels (Maestripieri and Zehr, 1998). In humans, mothers who maintain high levels of estradiol before and after childbirth report feeling more attached to their infants after birth compared to postpartum women with lower levels of estradiol (Fleming et al., 1997). Although research with males is more limited, estradiol has also been linked with paternal caregiving behavior (Wynne-Edwards, 2001). For instance, in humans and nonhuman primates, estradiol levels are higher among expectant fathers compared to non-fathers (Berg and Wynne-Edwards, 2001), particularly those with prior parental experience (Ziegler et al., 2004).
These findings suggest that state levels of estradiol fluctuate in response to both biological processes (e.g., pregnancy) and social contexts (e.g., parental experience) that are relevant to caregiving and bonding. To date, however, there have been very few experimental investigations of contextual influences on human estradiol responses. In one relevant exception, van Anders et al. (2009) showed women an erotic film clip (portraying a heterosexual encounter) and measured pre- to post-manipulation changes in estradiol. Women's estradiol levels increased after watching the erotic movie, suggesting that estradiol may be sensitive to sexual content, at least in women. However, this study did not include a control condition to assess the effects of relational content per se (apart from sexuality), so it is unclear whether women's responses were a function of the sexual content of the film specifically or its intimate nature more generally. Women's estradiol responses were also uncorrelated with their self-reported sexual arousal and with genital arousal (measured with vaginal pulse amplitude), which could suggest that estradiol responses were not uniquely tied to sexual aspects of the film. Finally, it is unclear whether and how male participants would respond to the same erotic stimuli.
Nonetheless, van Anders et al.'s (2009) findings suggest that women's estradiol levels are sensitive to at least one aspect of intimacy—sexuality—in adult relationships. Their findings are also consistent with other studies demonstrating that thematic video stimuli can effectively elicit hormone responses in the laboratory (e.g., López et al., 2009, Schultheiss et al., 2004). In the current study, we expected that participants who viewed depictions of emotional intimacy would show pre- to post-movie increases in estradiol. We also included two control conditions that portrayed non-intimate themes: 1) an emotionally positive movie clip depicting platonic social interactions, to control for the effects of positive emotion and social interaction in general, and 2) an emotionally neutral movie clip depicting non-affiliative themes, to control for the effects of simply watching the videos.
In contrast to prior work (e.g., van Anders et al., 2009), we were specifically interested in the extent to which emotional, rather than sexual, aspects of intimacy would elicit hormone responses. Few studies have examined emotional aspects of intimacy or closeness in relation to hormones (but see Brown et al., 2009, Schultheiss et al., 2004) and, to our knowledge, none have examined estradiol responses specifically. Further, sexual stimuli are known to elicit hormone responses (Hamilton and Meston, 2011, Hellhammer et al., 1985), including increases in estradiol as just described (van Anders et al., 2009). To ensure that any hormonal responses we observed were due to the emotionally intimate nature of the stimuli rather than any sort of sexual content, we chose a portrayal of a parent–child relationship (described in more detail below), rather than that of a romantic relationship.
We additionally examined whether estradiol responses were moderated by individual differences in adult attachment, which are generally conceptualized as differences in attachment avoidance and anxiety (Shaver and Mikulincer, 2006). Attachment avoidance reflects people's comfort with closeness and intimacy (Edelstein and Shaver, 2004). Individuals with an avoidant attachment style dislike both physical and emotional aspects of intimacy in close relationships (Brennan et al., 1998).1 Attachment avoidance is also associated with negative feelings about physical touch in both romantic and parent–child relationships (Edelstein et al., in preparation). Moreover, there is evidence that avoidant adults have lower endogenous estradiol levels, particularly if they also have a low desire for emotional intimacy (Edelstein et al., 2010). We therefore expected that, in the current study, more avoidant participants would show attenuated estradiol responses to depictions of emotional intimacy.
Attachment anxiety, in contrast, reflects people's concern about abandonment in close relationships. Highly anxious individuals tend to be hypervigilant to relationships and relationship partners (Mikulincer et al., 2002), and they typically desire more closeness from their relationship partners than those partners are willing to give (Mashek and Sherman, 2004). At the same time, anxious individuals' concern about rejection can interfere with their ability to achieve the closeness they so desire (Shaver et al., 2005). Perhaps because of these competing motivations, attachment anxiety generally does not show clear associations with caregiving behavior (e.g., Edelstein et al., 2004, Simpson et al., 1992), and anxiety was unrelated to endogenous estradiol levels in our prior research (Edelstein et al., 2010). We therefore did not expect attachment anxiety to be associated with estradiol responses to emotional intimacy. However, for exploratory purposes, and because anxiety and avoidance tend to be positively correlated (Del Giudice, 2011), we included attachment anxiety in our analyses as well.
In addition, we included relationship status as a covariate and tested whether relationship status moderated the effects of attachment avoidance on estradiol responses to emotionally intimate stimuli. Relationship status shows important associations with endogenous hormones, with partnered individuals typically having lower testosterone and higher cortisol levels compared to single individuals (e.g., Gettler et al., 2011, van Anders and Siciliano, 2010). Although there is less direct evidence for associations between relationship status and baseline estradiol levels or estradiol responses (e.g., Berg and Wynne-Edwards, 2001, van Anders et al., 2009), several studies have documented stronger associations between estradiol and measures of personality among single versus partnered women (e.g., Schultheiss et al., 2003, Stanton and Edelstein, 2009).
There are also reasons to expect that responses to emotional intimacy would differ according to participants' relationship status. Greenwood and Long (2011), for instance, found that single participants imagined more intimacy with opposite-sex media characters compared to partnered participants, which could be a way of compensating for perceived deficits in closeness (Greenwood and Long, 2009). Finally, it is important to note that avoidant adults are much less likely than their less avoidant counterparts to be in a romantic relationship at any given time (e.g., Noftle and Shaver, 2006), and there is evidence that associations between avoidance and behavioral outcomes differ for single versus partnered individuals (e.g., Birnbaum, 2007, Edelstein and Gillath, 2008). Taken together, these findings suggest that relationship status may be an important factor to consider in the context of avoidant individuals' neuroendocrine responses to emotionally intimate stimuli.
Section snippets
Participants and procedure
Participants were 229 undergraduate students (51% female), ranging in age from 18 to 37 (M = 19.50 years, SD = 2.47), who received course credit or monetary compensation for their participation.2
Preliminary analyses
Descriptive statistics and correlations among the primary study variables are presented in Table 2. As shown in Table 2, estradiol levels were higher among women compared to men at both time points (see also Table 3). In addition, Time 1 and Time 2 estradiol levels were significantly positively correlated, demonstrating rank-order stability of estradiol levels over time. Attachment anxiety was higher among women, M = 3.77, SD = .98, compared to men, M = 3.50, SD = .94, t (210) = 2.00, p < .05, but
Discussion
Findings from the current study provide novel experimental evidence that emotional intimacy can elicit estradiol responses in humans. We found that single participants showed increases in estradiol after watching a movie depicting an emotionally intimate parent–child relationship; such changes were not observed after participants watched movies depicting non-intimate themes. Further, changes in estradiol were moderated by participants' gender and level of attachment avoidance, such that more
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by a Rackham Faculty Research Grant from the University of Michigan. William Chopik was supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. The funding sources had no further role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. We are grateful to Dara Greenwood for her comments on an earlier version of this manuscript and to Kelly
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