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2010-05-16 08:39:52
JR Minkel
LiveScience Contributor
LiveScience.com Jr Minkel
livescience Contributor
livescience.com Sat May 15, 4:25 pm ET
Feeling happy and secure in our relationships is a goal many people strive for,
but in times of need the emotionally insecure partners may be doing us a favor
by being more alert to possible danger.
Evolution may have shaped us to consist of groups of emotionally secure and
insecure individuals, researchers write in the March issue of the journal
Perspectives on Psychological Science.
When faced with threats to close personal relationships, people react in
different ways according to their sense of whether the world is a secure place.
The same reaction styles also cause people to be more or less attuned to
dangers of all kinds.
Evolution would have favored a mix of these so-called attachment styles if
mixed groups were more likely to survive than groups of only secure or only
insecure individuals.
"Secure people have disadvantages," experimental psychologist Tsachi Ein-Dor of
the New School of Psychology in Herzliya, Israel, told LiveScience. "They react
slowly and then act slowly because they need to first get organized."
This notion would explain why almost half of all people in the world have
insecure attachment styles, he said, despite the fact that people prefer secure
types as romantic partners.
How we view the world
People who do well in relationships have what's called a secure attachment
style. They tend to view the world as a safe place, and their optimism allows
them to focus on tasks without being bogged down with negative thoughts. They
seek out groups and work well in them.
In contrast are those who exhibit insecure attachment styles. Some people are
anxious types, always clinging to their significant other, and others are
aloof, or avoidant, preferring to deal with problems on their own instead of
relying on their partners.
Attachment behavior is a survival adaptation, said Ein-Dor. Because infants
can't survive on their own, they have to attach themselves to their parents. If
an infant cries and is soothed by its parent, it learns that it can trust other
people for love and support.
Those whose parents don't have time or energy to respond may learn they have to
fend for themselves.
Such traits can take on different meanings in a group setting. When in
immediate danger, people shouldn't necessarily take comfort in the sense of
peace and safety a group can provide.
Benefits of being insecure
To test their idea that mixed groups would benefit survival, Ein-Dor and his
colleagues put students in groups of threes alone in a room with a concealed
smoke machine, which was switched on to simulate a fire. Groups were quicker to
notice the smoke and to react to it if they contained individuals who scored
high for insecure attachment.
Groups that had a member who rated high for the anxious attachment style tended
to notice the smoke faster than other groups, and those that had a member
rating high on attachment avoidance tended to react first, such as by leaving
the room.
"This is the first [paper] I've read that has started to sway me toward the
idea that insecure attachment styles are adaptations," said Paul Eastwick, a
psychologist at Texas A&M University, who was not involved in the current
study. "I have always favored more of a 'side effect' explanation."