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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Apr 1.
Published in final edited form as: Attach Hum Dev. 2021 Feb 9;24(2):147–168. doi: 10.1080/14616734.2021.1881983

Attachment and Attitudes Toward Children: Effects of Security Priming in Parents and Non-Parents

Jason D Jones a,b, Jessica A Stern c, Megan H Fitter d, Mario Mikulincer e, Phillip R Shaver f, Jude Cassidy d
PMCID: PMC8349933  NIHMSID: NIHMS1704308  PMID: 33559538

Abstract

The present two-study investigation is the first to examine whether experimentally boosting attachment security (security priming) affects attitudes in the parenting domain for both parents and non-parents. Mothers (n = 72) and childless undergraduates (n = 82) were randomly assigned to a neutral or a secure prime condition and then completed measures of implicit attitudes (a child-focused version of the Go/No-Go Association Task) and explicit attitudes (self-reported) toward children. Following the priming manipulation, mothers in the secure prime condition had more positive implicit attitudes toward their child compared to mothers in the neutral prime condition. Security priming also increased mothers’ positive explicit attitudes toward their children, but only among mothers who scored high on self-reported attachment-related avoidance. No priming effects emerged among non-parents. These results provide the first evidence for a causal link between parental attachment security and parental attitudes toward children.

Keywords: attachment style, security priming, parenting, parental attitudes

When formulating attachment theory, Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980) focused mainly on infants’ attachments to their principal caregivers. He stated clearly, however, that he viewed attachment as a lifespan construct and that the attachment behavioral system guides thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in close relationships in adulthood. In particular, he hypothesized that an adult’s attachment orientation would influence how the adult interacts with and provides care to his or her own children (Bowlby, 1988; for detailed descriptions of the links between the attachment behavioral system and the caregiving behavioral system, see Feeney & Woodhouse, 2016, and Jones et al., 2015). In the decades following Bowlby’s writings, numerous attachment scholars have empirically investigated associations between adult attachment and parenting. Studies using both narrative-based and self-report measures of adult attachment have consistently reported links between adult attachment and a wide range of parenting constructs. In general, the studies indicate that greater attachment security is associated with more positive parenting cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. For example, more secure parents demonstrate more sensitive and responsive parenting behaviors, cope better with the transition to parenthood, report less parenting stress, and report more positive attitudes toward parenthood (see Jones et al., 2015, and van IJzendoorn, 1995, for reviews).

Of particular relevance to the present article, several studies have reported associations between parents’ self-reported attachment style and perceptions of, or attitudes toward, their children. Specifically, more insecure parents perceive their infants as more fearful, negatively reactive, and difficult (Pesonen et al., 2003; Priel & Besser, 2000). In addition, more insecure mothers view their infants as becoming increasingly fussy and difficult from 3 to 9 months old (Scher & Mayseless, 1997). Aside from perceived infant temperament, more insecure parents view their child as interfering with their romantic relationship and leisure activities, view their relationships with their children as less close, and report feelings of jealousy toward their children as competitors for their romantic partner’s time and affection (Rholes et al., 1995; Rholes et al., 2011; Wilson et al., 2007).

Notably, these prior studies assessed links between attachment style and parents’ self-reported attitudes. Dual processing models of cognition propose that information processing occurs at both the implicit and explicit levels (Sturge-Apple et al., 2015). While no measure can be considered entirely implicit or explicit, self-reports involve more explicit processing, which is thought to be under greater conscious control and, as a result, is more susceptible to reporting biases, such as social desirability. The evidence for links between parents’ self-reported explicit parenting attitudes and actual parenting behavior is inconsistent (Holden & Edwards, 1989; Johnston et al., 2017; Rubin et al., 1999). Implicit processing, on the other hand, is conceptualized as more unconscious, automatic, and less prone to reporting biases. Initial evidence indicates that parents’ implicit attitudes toward children and childrearing are associated with parenting behavior. For example, using a child-focused version of the Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT-Child) to measure mothers’ more implicit attitudes toward their children, Sturge-Apple et al. (2015) found that mothers’ positive implicit (but not explicit) attitudes toward their children were associated with greater maternal sensitivity. Similarly, in another study using the GNAT-Child, Martin et al. (2017) found that mothers’ negative implicit attitudes toward their adolescents were associated with harsh and insensitive parenting. Thus, negative implicit or explicit attitudes may lead parents scoring high on measures of attachment insecurity to behave negatively toward their children or in ways that undermine their children’s development. Conversely, positive attitudes toward children may underlie the beneficial effects of attachment security on positive parenting practices and child adjustment.

Security Priming

A limitation of the literature examining how parental attachment style relates to parenting constructs in general and parental attitudes in particular is that all of the studies have been correlational, precluding researchers from inferring causal effects of attachment security on parenting. To overcome this limitation, researchers of other topics in the attachment domain have used security priming methods to induce temporary increases in attachment security and evaluate the effects of increased security on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. According to attachment theory, individuals develop experience-based mental representations of the availability and supportiveness of attachment figures, particularly in times of distress. These mental representations are referred to as internal working models (Bowlby, 1969/1982) or secure base scripts (Waters & Waters, 2006). Securely attached individuals possess mental representations of attachment figures as available and responsive in times of need, whereas insecure individuals possess representations of attachment figures as unavailable or inconsistently responsive. Security priming capitalizes on the notion that by experimentally activating mental representations of available and supportive attachment figures one can temporarily boost an individual’s attachment security and that individual can then reap the psychosocial benefits of attachment security (in the short term), such as improved emotion regulation and more prosocial behavior (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2020). Priming techniques include supraliminal methods, such as guided imagery or visualization of a security-promoting attachment figure, as well as subliminal presentation of attachment-related words or images.

Dozens of studies support the validity of these priming methods and indicate that security priming leads to beneficial effects across a wide range of domains (for reviews, see Gillath & Karantzas, 2019; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007; Rowe et al., 2020). For example, security priming leads to greater responsiveness to a romantic partner disclosing a personal problem (Mikulincer et al., 2013), greater compassion, empathy, and altruism (Cassidy et al., 2018; Mikulincer et al., 2005), and less negative reactions to out-group members (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001).

Many, but not all, priming studies also include a self-report measure of attachment style. Attachment style can be viewed as possessing both trait-like stability (Fraley, 2002; Jones et al., 2018) and state-dependent variability (Bosmans et al., 2020; Gillath et al., 2009). The majority of priming studies have included a measure of trait-like self-reported attachment style (yet see Bosmans et al., 2014, for a priming study that measured state attachment). Self-reported trait-like attachment style is typically conceptualized along two dimensions, attachment-related avoidance and anxiety (e.g., Brennan et al., 1998). Avoidance reflects the degree to which an individual is uncomfortable with intimacy and prefers not to depend on others. Anxiety reflects the degree to which an individual is preoccupied with relationship needs and fears abandonment. Higher scores on these dimensions indicate greater attachment insecurity.

Researchers conducting security priming studies often test whether attachment-related avoidance or anxiety moderates the association between the secure prime and the study outcome. However, the evidence is far from consistent. For example, whereas some studies have found that individuals with higher levels of trait-like attachment anxiety experience larger benefits from a security prime than individuals reporting less anxiety, other studies have found no moderation, and still others have found a reverse pattern of effects (see Gillath & Karantzas, 2019, and Rowe et al., 2020, for reviews of recent studies). Therefore, the question of whether some people are more or less susceptible to security priming effects remains open and more systematic research is needed on this issue.

Despite a rather large security priming literature that includes studies evaluating the effects of priming on diverse outcomes, to the best of our knowledge no study has evaluated the effects of security priming on constructs in the parenting domain. This is a surprising and substantial gap in the literature given how central parenting is to attachment theory. One possible explanation for the absence of priming research on parenting is that the vast majority of priming studies have relied on samples of university students, most of whom do not have children. Yet even when studying university students without children, several investigations have identified associations between self-reported attachment style and parenting constructs. For example, among non-parent university students, greater insecurity is related to less desire to have children, more negative perceptions of parenthood and of oneself as a future parent, and more negative expectations of future children (Nathanson & Manohar, 2012; Rholes et al., 1995; Rholes et al., 1997). In addition, Leerkes and Siepak (2006) showed female undergraduates videos of distressed infants and found that greater insecurity was associated with less accurate identification of infant emotions and more negative attributions for infant distress.

Thus, the literature suggests that adult attachment style is a relevant factor to consider when evaluating constructs in the parenting domain even among non-parents. However, it is unclear whether security priming will result in beneficial effects on parenting constructs among non-parent university students. On the one hand, it is worth noting that several prior security priming studies found significant priming effects when the experimental procedures involved a real or hypothetical stranger as opposed to a close relationship partner (e.g., Cassidy et al., 2018; Mikulincer et al., 2001). On the other hand, some evidence indicates that neural responses to child stimuli differ in parents and non-parents (Piallini et al., 2015; Swain et al., 2007). Moreover, for non-parents, parenting might be an irrelevant, distant, or abstract life domain, rendering attitudes toward children less salient and less affected by security priming. Thus, whether priming will affect parents’ and non-parents’ responses to child-related stimuli differently is an open question.

The Present Studies

The goal of the two studies reported here is to examine how security priming affects implicit and explicit attitudes toward children in samples of parents and non-parents. Study 1 included mothers of children aged 9 to 11. Study 2 employed nearly identical procedures with a sample of university students without children. To evaluate the potential influences of trait-like attachment style on implicit and explicit attitudes, we included a self-report measure of attachment-related avoidance and anxiety in both studies. We examined both the main effects of attachment style and the attachment style X prime interaction. Following previous studies (e.g., Cassidy et al., 2018), we also included measures of two additional individual differences factors (neuroticism and self-esteem) to rule out the potential confounding role of other dispositional characteristics. For both studies, we hypothesized that security priming would lead to more positive and/or less negative implicit and explicit attitudes toward children and that the effect of security priming would be greater among those participants with a more insecure attachment style.

Study 1

Method

Participants.

Participants were 72 mothers of 9- to 11-year old children residing in a large metropolitan area on the east coast of the United States. Maternal age ranged from 27 to 53 years (Mage = 41.54, SD = 5.16). The sample was racially and ethnically diverse, with 50.0% of participants identifying as White, 33.3% as African American, 5.6% as Asian, 4.2% as Latinx/Hispanic, and 6.9% as other race/ethnicity. Eighty percent of the mothers had at least a 4-year degree. This study also enrolled a small number (n = 17) of fathers. Because this is too few fathers for sub-group analyses and the GNAT-Child has been validated only for mothers, fathers were excluded.

Procedure.

After providing written consent, mothers were seated at a computer with a female experimenter. First, participants completed a set of questionnaires about attachment style, self-esteem, neuroticism, and demographics. Next, participants completed practice trials of the GNAT-Child, assessing implicit attitudes toward one’s child. Following the practice trials, mothers completed a two-minute visualization task (described below) and then completed the remaining trials of the GNAT-Child. Finally, participants completed a questionnaire about explicit attitudes toward their own child. All study procedures were approved by the University’s Institutional Review Board.

Experimental manipulation.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two priming conditions (Secure or Neutral). For the priming conditions, participants were asked to think about either (a) “the person you can most depend on to be there to comfort you in times of trouble” (Secure Prime, n = 30) or (b) “someone in your life who you do NOT know well and rarely think about (for example, a cashier at the grocery store)” (Neutral Prime, n = 42). The experimenter guided participants through a two-minute face visualization procedure developed by Baldwin et al. (1996). This procedure has been used in previous studies examining the effects of attachment security priming on a broad range of outcomes (e.g., Cassidy et al., 2018; Mikulincer et al., 2005).

Measures

Child-focused Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT-Child).

The GNAT-Child is a variant of the Go/No-Go Association Task (Nosek & Banaji, 2001) designed to measure parents’ implicit attitudes toward their children (Sturge-Apple et al., 2015). Go/no-go association tasks measure implicit associations between a target and an attribute. To measure these associations, categories of word stimuli (a target category, and categories consisting of two poles of an attribute, such as good and bad) appear rapidly on a computer screen over the course of multiple blocks of trials. The type of stimuli to which participants are asked to respond, usually by pushing a button on a computer keyboard, depends on the type of trial block.

The GNAT-Child uses three categories of word stimuli: (a) 18 “lovable” words to capture positive implicit attitudes (e.g., wonderful, joyful, happy), (b) 18 “unlovable” words to capture negative implicit attitudes (nasty, annoying, angry), and (c) the participant’s child’s name and nicknames. Before each block of trials, instructions were presented that identified the target categories for that block (i.e., child and lovable to measure positive implicit attitudes and child and unlovable to measure negative implicit attitudes). After two short practice blocks and the priming procedure described above, participants completed the positive and negative blocks in a counterbalanced order. Each block consists of 49 trials, with 18 words belonging to each attribute category (lovable and unlovable), and 13 belonging to the target category (child’s name and nicknames). Words appeared on a computer screen for 650ms each, and participants were asked to press the space bar when they saw target stimuli (go trials) and do nothing for words that were not target stimuli (no-go trials). Participants received visual feedback for 100ms following each trial to indicate a correct (green circle) or incorrect (red “X”) response.

Consistent with previous research using the GNAT-Child (Martin et al., 2017; Sturge-Apple, 2015), we calculated d-prime scores (d′) to quantify mothers’ positive and negative implicit attitudes. Derived from signal detection theory (Green & Swets, 1966), d′ is a commonly used sensitivity parameter that takes into account both the hit rate (proportion of go trials in which the participant correctly hit the space bar) and the false alarm rate (proportion of no-go trials in which the participant incorrectly hit the space bar). To calculate d′ scores, we subtracted the standardized false alarm rate from the standardized hit rate for the positive and negative blocks. Extreme cell values (0 or 1) were corrected using a log-linear transformation, as recommended by Hautus (1995) and Stanislaw and Todorov (1999). Higher d′ scores reflect stronger implicit associations between the target (child) and the attribute (lovable or unlovable).

Explicit attitude toward one’s child.

To capture positive and negative explicit attitudes toward their child, mothers were provided 18 “lovable” characteristics (e.g., “a good kid,” “a happy child,” “loving”) and 18 “unlovable” characteristics (e.g., “hard to satisfy,” “annoying,” “demanding”), and instructed to rate how often their (target) child displayed each characteristic on a scale ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (always). The subscales showed good internal consistency (α = .93 for positive characteristics; α = .92 for negative characteristics).

Experiences in Close Relationships Scale

(ECR; Brennan et al., 1998). The ECR is a self-report measure of trait-like attachment-related avoidance and anxiety in close relationships. The anxiety subscale (18 items) taps individuals’ fears of rejection and abandonment (e.g., “I worry about being abandoned”) and the avoidance subscale (18 items) taps individuals’ feelings of discomfort with close relationships and avoidance of intimacy (e.g., “I get uncomfortable when people want to be very close to me”). Participants rate items on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly). The ECR demonstrates good reliability and validity (Brennan et al., 1998), and good reliability was evident in the present study (α = .91 for anxiety; α = .91 for avoidance).

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

(RSES; Rosenberg, 1979). The RSES is a 10-item measure asking participants to rate their feelings of self-worth by rating items such as, “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself,” on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). The scale demonstrates good reliability and validity in a variety of samples (Gray-Little, Williams, & Hancock, 1997) and strong reliability in the present sample (α = .88)

Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised–Short form, Neuroticism Scale

(EPQR-S-N; Eysenck et al., 1985). The Neuroticism subscale of this brief version of the classic personality inventory contains 12 questions about participants’ emotional tendencies. Participants respond yes (1) or no (0) to items such as, “Does your mood often go up and down?” and “Are you an irritable person?”. Items are summed to derive a total Neuroticism score. The scale shows good reliability and validity (e.g., Francis et al., 1992; α = .79 in the present study).

Results

Preliminary analyses.

Descriptive statistics and correlations among main study variables are presented in Table 1. One mother had a negative d′ score for negative implicit attitudes. Negative d′ values indicate below chance performance, so this mother’s data were treated as missing. We performed a paired samples t-test to compare mothers’ positive and negative implicit and explicit attitudes. On average, mothers’ positive d′ scores were higher than their negative d′ scores, t(70) = 6.23, p < .001, suggesting more lovable implicit attitudes toward their own children. In addition, mothers reported more positive than negative explicit attitudes toward their own children, on average, t(70) = 22.00, p < .001. As shown in Table 1, the positive and negative d′ scores were significantly positively correlated. This correlation between opposing dimensions has been reported in previous studies using the GNAT-Child (Martin et al., 2017; Sturge-Apple et al., 2015) and is thought to reflect shared method variance. In previous work with the GNAT, researchers have created residualized variables to obtain purer indices of implicit attitudes (Sturge-Apple et al., 2015). To create a residualized positive (i.e., lovable) implicit attitude variable, we regressed d′ positive on d′ negative and saved the unstandardized residuals. We performed the converse operation to create a residualized negative (i.e., unlovable) implicit attitude variable.

Table 1.

Study 1 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Among Main Study Variables

Variable M (SD) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1. Secure prime - - -
2. d′ positive 2.73 (.88) .15 -
3. d′ negative 2.21 (.76) −.13 .58 -
4. Explicit positive 6.03 (.59) .14 −.02 −.03 -
5. Explicit negative 2.68 (.77) −.02 .10 .10 −.78 -
6. Avoidance 2.68 (.92) .02 −.00 −.04 −.12 .19 -
7. Anxiety 2.91 (1.05) .12 −.01 −.05 −.19 .30 .27 -
8. Neuroticism 4.13 (3.03) .11 −.08 −.04 −.09 .25 .36 .60 -
9. Self-esteem 3.41 (.48) −.07 .16 .12 .08 −.13 −.35 −.57 −.56 -
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Note. Correlations in bold are statistically significant (p < .05).

The secure and neutral prime experimental groups did not differ on maternal age, maternal education, child gender, neuroticism, self-esteem, attachment-related avoidance, or attachment anxiety (all ps > .05). Child gender was associated with mothers’ positive d′ scores. On average, mothers had more positive implicit attitudes toward sons than daughters, t(69) = 2.06, p = .04. In addition, neuroticism was significantly correlated with mothers’ negative explicit attitudes, r = .25, p = .04. As such, child gender and maternal neuroticism were included as covariates in the appropriate models. At the bivariate level, maternal attachment anxiety was significantly positively correlated with negative explicit attitudes toward own child, r = .30, p = .01.

Main analyses.

We used hierarchical regression models for our principal analyses. The first step in the models included the main effects of priming condition (a dichotomous variable comparing security priming = 1 and neutral priming = 0), the two attachment style subscales, and the relevant covariates. The second step included two-way interaction terms between security priming and each attachment style subscale and any relevant covariates. Continuous variables were mean-centered prior to creating the interaction terms.

The regression model predicting residual scores of mothers’ positive implicit attitudes revealed significant main effects of priming condition and child gender. No other main effects or interactions were obtained (see Table 2). Mothers in the secure prime condition had more positive implicit attitudes toward their child (after controlling for negative implicit attitudes) compared to mothers in the neutral prime condition. In addition, female child gender was negatively associated with mothers’ positive implicit attitudes. As a follow-up sensitivity analysis, we tested another regression model that included neuroticism and self-esteem as additional covariates; the priming (b = .41, SE = .16, p = .01) and gender (b = −.39, SE = .16, p = .02) main effects remained statistically significant. In the regression model predicting residual scores of mothers’ negative implicit attitudes, the coefficient for the main effect of priming condition was negative and significant; however, the overall F-test for the model was not statistically significant. No other main effects or interactions emerged (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Regression Analyses Predicting Mothers’ Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Own Child

b SE 95% CI ΔR2 p
Model 1: d′ Positive Implicit Attitudes
Step 1 .14 .04
  Secure prime .41 .16 [.09, .73] .01
  Child gender −.39 .16 [−.71, −.07] .02
  Anxiety −.01 .08 [−.17, .15] .90
  Avoidance .003 .09 [−.18, .18] .97
Step 2 .01 .90
  Child gender X Secure prime −.11 .34 [−.78, .56] .74
  Anxiety X Secure prime .11 .16 [−.22, .43] .52
  Avoidance X Secure prime −.08 .19 [−.45, .29] .67
b SE 95% CI ΔR2 p
Model 2: d′ Negative Implicit Attitudes
Step 1 .06 .21
  Secure prime −.32 .15 [−.61, −.02] .04
  Anxiety −.002 .07 [−.15, .14] .98
  Avoidance −.01 .08 [−.18, .15] .89
Step 2 .04 .21
  Anxiety X Secure prime −.22 .15 [−.51, .07] .13
  Avoidance X Secure prime .21 .17 [−.12, .54] .21
b SE 95% CI ΔR2 p
Model 3: Positive Explicit Attitudes
Step 1 .07 .19
  Secure prime .19 .14 [−.09, .47] .18
  Anxiety −.11 .07 [−.24, .03] .13
  Avoidance −.05 .08 [−.21, .11] .53
Step 2 .10 .02
  Anxiety X Secure prime −.003 .13 [−.27, .26] .98
  Avoidance X Secure prime .43 .16 [.12, .74] .01
Model 4: Negative Explicit Attitudes
Step 1 .11 .10
  Secure prime −.09 .18 [−.45, .28] .63
  Neuroticism .02 .04 [−.06, .10] .65
  Anxiety .17 .11 [−.04, .39] .11
  Avoidance .09 .11 [−.12, .30] .40
Step 2 .05 .32
  Neuroticism X Secure prime −.01 .08 [−.18, .16] .91
  Anxiety X Secure prime −.07 .23 [−.54, .39] .76
  Avoidance X Secure prime −.34 .22 [−.78, .11] .14
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Note. Positive implicit attitudes reflect residualized scores after adjusting for negative implicit attitudes. Negative implicit attitudes reflect residualized scores after adjusting for positive implicit attitudes.

In the model predicting mothers’ positive explicit attitudes, we found a significant interaction between attachment-related avoidance and priming condition (see Figure 1). No other main effects or interactions emerged (see Table 2). We further probed the significant avoidance X priming condition interaction with simple slope tests. For mothers high in avoidance (1 SD above the mean), those exposed to the secure prime reported more positive explicit attitudes toward their children than mothers exposed to the neutral prime, b = .59, SE = .19, p = .003. For mothers low in avoidance (1 SD below the mean), those exposed to the secure prime did not differ from mothers exposed to the neutral prime in reports of explicit positive attitudes toward their children, b = −.24, SE = .19, p = .21. In addition, for mothers in the neutral prime condition, avoidance was significantly associated with lower positive explicit attitudes (b = −.28, SE = .10, p = .01). For mothers in the secure prime condition, the link between avoidance and positive explicit attitudes was non-significant and marginally positive (b = .18, SE = .10, p = .08).

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Significant interaction between mothers’ attachment avoidance and priming condition on explicit positive attitudes toward their own child in Study 1.

As a follow-up sensitivity analysis, we ran another regression model including neuroticism, self-esteem, and child gender as additional covariates. The avoidance X priming condition interaction remained statistically significant with these additional covariates in the model, b = .43, SE = .16, p = .01.The regression model predicting mothers’ explicit negative attitudes revealed no significant main effects or interactions.

Discussion

Study 1 provides initial evidence that attachment security priming enhances mothers’ positive implicit attitudes toward their own children. Further, security priming also increased mothers’ positive explicit attitudes toward their children, but only among mothers high in attachment-related avoidance; moreover, avoidance was associated with less positive explicit attitudes in the neutral priming condition but not in the security priming condition. This suggests a potential buffering role of security priming, in which more avoidant mothers’ tendency to endorse less positive views of their child was mitigated by enhanced feelings of security. Interestingly, security priming had no significant effect on mothers’ negative attitudes. These initial results suggest that experimentally enhancing mothers’ feelings of security can successfully enhance their implicit tendency to associate their child with positive qualities, and may also encourage more avoidant mothers to explicitly endorse such qualities when they might not otherwise do so.

Study 2

Although the results of Study 1 are interesting and compelling, it remains unclear whether such effects are specific to parents, or if they may also be observable in childless young adults (e.g., undergraduate students). The goal of Study 2 was to explore this issue by replicating procedures established with parents in Study 1 but this time with an independent sample of childless undergraduates. In Study 2, given the younger age of this sample (age 19), undergraduates were asked to imagine their own future child at 1 year of age when completing the implicit and explicit attitudes measures. We chose to have students focus on a prospective infant so that they could imagine what their own future child might be like (in terms of appearance, behavior, and other qualities). In addition, infants reliably elicit emotional and attentional responses in childless adults (e.g., Senese et al., 2013), which is likely why infants have been the stimuli used in previous related research (e.g., Leerkes & Siepak, 2006). As noted in the introduction, we viewed Study 2 analyses as exploratory.

Method

Participants.

Participants were 82 childless undergraduate students recruited from psychology courses at a large American university (13 men, 69 women) ranging in age from 17 to 28 years (Mage = 19.44, SD = 1.8). The sample was racially and ethnically diverse, with 43.9% of the participants identifying as White, 25.6% as Asian, 9.8% as African American, 9.8% as Latinx/Hispanic, and 10.9% as multiracial/other. Participants were randomly divided into two experimental priming conditions – security priming (n = 39) and neutral priming (n = 43).

Procedure.

The measures and procedures in Study 2 were nearly identical to those in Study 1, with four exceptions: (a) whereas Study 1 participants completed the questionnaires at the start of the lab session, Study 2 participants completed them online before coming to the laboratory; (b) Study 2 participants completed the short form of the Experiences in Close Relationships scale, instead of the full 36-item version used in Study 1; (c) Study 2 lab sessions were conducted with groups of 1-3 participants instead of individually; and (d) the priming manipulation and the implicit and explicit attitude measures were modified slightly to make them appropriate for student non-parents. Students received course credit for participating.

Experimental manipulation.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two priming conditions (Secure or Neutral). The Secure Prime was identical to that in Study 1 (i.e., think about “the person you can most depend on to be there to comfort you in times of trouble”). The Neutral Prime, however, was modified to be appropriate for childless undergraduates (i.e., think about “someone in one of your classes who you do not know well and rarely think about”). The experimenter guided participants through the same two-minute face visualization procedure used in Study 1.

Measures.

Modified-child-focused Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT-Child).

To test undergraduates’ implicit attitudes towards children, participants completed a version of the GNAT-Child used in Study 1 modified to be appropriate for a sample of childless participants. Instead of asking participants to think about their own child, we asked them to imagine that they had a one-year-old baby. We modified the target category of word stimuli to consist of the words “my baby” and “my infant,” instead of the participant’s own child’s name.

Explicit attitudes toward children.

Participants completed a modified version of the explicit attitudes toward one’s own child measure used in Study 1. Instead of rating characteristics about their own child, participants were asked to rate characteristics about their imagined one-year-old baby (α = .92 for positive adjectives; α = .90 for negative adjectives).

Experiences in Close Relationships Scale–Short form.

The ECR-S (Wei et al., 2007) is a widely used 12-item version of the ECR measure of trait-like adult attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. Participants rate the extent to which they endorse each item as describing their feelings in personal relationships on a 7-point scale (1 = disagree strongly, 7 = agree strongly). Six items reflect anxiety and six items reflect avoidance. The ECR-S demonstrated good reliability and validity across diverse samples (Crowell et al., 2016; Wei et al., 2007), and in the present study (α = .76 for anxiety; α = .81 for avoidance). The short form was used because of time constraints.

Self-esteem and neuroticism.

As in Study 1, the RSES (α = .86) and EPQR-S-N (α = .82) demonstrated high internal consistency.

Results

Preliminary analyses.

Descriptive statistics and correlations among main study variables are presented in Table 3. One student had a negative d′ prime score for negative implicit attitudes; this score was treated as missing. On average, students’ positive d′ scores were higher than negative d′ scores, t(80) = 3.17, p = .002, suggesting more lovable implicit attitudes toward their imagined future child. In addition, students reported more positive than negative explicit attitudes toward their future child, on average, t(81) = 20.37, p < .001. As in Study 1, the positive and negative d′ scores were significantly positively correlated. Again, we calculated residualized positive and negative implicit attitude variables. The secure and neutral prime experimental groups did not differ on age, gender, neuroticism, self-esteem, attachment-related avoidance, or attachment anxiety (all ps > .05). In addition, age, gender, neuroticism, and self-esteem were unrelated to implicit or explicit attitudes about their future child. At the bivariate level, attachment anxiety was significantly positively correlated with negative implicit attitudes toward future child, r = .23, p = .04.

Table 3.

Study 2 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Among Main Study Variables

Variable M (SD) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1. Secure prime - - -
2. d′ positive 2.42 (.72) .06 -
3. d′ negative 2.19 (.85) .04 .60 -
4. Explicit positive 5.81 (.73) .02 .10 −.02 -
5. Explicit negative 2.71 (.77) −.06 −.17 −.02 −.68 -
6. Avoidance 2.98 (1.06) .18 −.12 .01 .03 −.17 -
7. Anxiety 3.93 (1.17) .01 .10 .23 .06 −.07 .07 -
8. Neuroticism 5.96 (3.40) −.05 .01 −.01 −.10 .08 .05 .47 -
9. Self-esteem 2.90 (.48) −.07 −.14 .05 .07 −.05 −.06 −.35 −.53 -
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Note. Correlations in bold are statistically significant (p < .05).

Main analyses.

The analytic approach was identical to that used in Study 1. Because Study 1 included only mothers, we conducted the Study 2 analyses both including and excluding male undergraduates. For the complete sample, we found no main or interaction effects of priming condition or attachment style on implicit or explicit attitudes toward participants’ future child (Table 4). Excluding male undergraduates did not appreciably change study results (see Supplemental Materials for detailed results of analyses including only female undergraduates).

Table 4.

Regression Analyses Predicting Undergraduates’ Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Imagined Future Child in Study 2

b SE 95% CI ΔR2 p
Model 1: d′ Positive Implicit Attitudes
Step 1 .02 .64
  Secure prime .04 .13 [−.21, .30] .73
  Anxiety −.01 .05 [−.12, .10] .84
  Avoidance −.08 .06 [−.20, .04] .21
Step 2 .01 .73
  Anxiety X Secure prime .09 .12 [−.15, .32] .45
  Avoidance X Secure prime −.03 .13 [−.28, .22] .80
b SE 95% CI ΔR2 p
Model 2: d′ Negative Implicit Attitudes
Step 1 .05 .29
  Secure prime .01 .15 [−.29, .32] .93
  Anxiety .11 .06 [−.02, .24] .09
  Avoidance .05 .07 [−.09, .20] .48
Step 2 .01 .79
  Anxiety X Secure prime .06 .14 [.−.21, .34] .65
  Avoidance X Secure prime .08 .15 [−.22, .38] .60
b SE 95% CI ΔR2 p
Model 3: Positive Explicit Attitudes
Step 1 .004 .96
  Secure prime .03 .17 [−.31, .36] .88
  Anxiety .04 .07 [−.11, .18] .63
  Avoidance .01 .08 [−.15, .17] .88
Step 2 .01 .77
  Anxiety X Secure prime .04 .16 [−.27, .35] .81
  Avoidance X Secure prime −.11 .17 [−.44, .22] .50
b SE 95% CI ΔR2 p
Model 4: Negative Explicit Attitudes
Step 1 .03 .44
  Secure prime −.05 .17 [−.39, .30] .79
  Anxiety −.04 .07 [−.18, .11] .61
  Avoidance −.12 .08 [−.28, .05] .16
Step 2 .002 .93
  Anxiety X Secure prime .05 .16 [−.27, .37] .77
  Avoidance X Secure prime .05 .17 [−.30, .39] .79
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Note. Positive implicit attitudes reflect residualized scores after adjusting for negative implicit attitudes. Negative implicit attitudes reflect residualized scores after adjusting for positive implicit attitudes.

Discussion

In contrast to the mothers in Study 1, childless adults in Study 2 showed no effect of attachment security priming on implicit or explicit attitudes toward future children, suggesting that effects may be specific to parents. Moreover, attachment style did not emerge as a significant predictor or moderator in this student sample. Thus, attachment security—whether self-reported or experimentally enhanced—does not appear to meaningfully influence childless adults’ attitudes toward their imagined future child. Given that the majority of previous priming studies have demonstrated significant effects of security priming among similar undergraduate samples on a variety of outcomes (see Gillath & Karantzas, 2019), it is notable that such effects do not extend to attitudes toward children. Notably, minor methodological differences between Study 1 and Study 2 (timing of measurement of attachment orientations, brief vs. full ECR, specific instructions in the control condition) are important to consider and prevent us from making direct statistical comparisons between the two studies. We discuss potential implications of these findings in the following section.

General Discussion

The present studies are the first to examine the impact of temporarily enhancing individuals’ felt sense of security (via security priming) on implicit and explicit attitudes toward children. In extending the priming literature to examine parenting constructs, we tested effects in independent samples of parents and childless young adults. Overall, findings suggest that security priming influences the attitudes of parents thinking about their own child, but not of young adults imagining their future child. Security priming affected mothers’ positive (but not negative) attitudes: Mothers primed to feel secure showed more positive implicit attitudes toward their children (e.g., viewing them as more lovable), whereas no such effect emerged for students. Further, among mothers high in dispositional attachment-related avoidance, security priming significantly enhanced explicit positive attitudes toward their child, whereas no such interactions with dispositional attachment emerged for students.

With regard to implicit attitudes, both parents and childless young adults showed more positive than negative implicit attitudes toward children, on average, consistent with previous findings using this method with parents (Sturge-Apple et al., 2015). Only parents, however, showed enhanced positive (relative to negative) implicit attitudes in response to security priming: Controlling for variation in trait-like attachment style, boosting mothers’ felt sense of security increased the tendency to associate their own children with positive attributes (e.g., “wonderful”). In contrast, childless adults’ implicit attitudes were unaffected (we discuss possible explanations for this in the following paragraphs). Such a link may emerge in parents because security is thought to entail more positive mental representations of close others (Bowlby, 1969/1982).

The observed positive effects of priming on mothers’ implicit attitudes toward their children are important in light of evidence demonstrating that such implicit maternal attitudes predict more sensitive parenting behavior when observed concurrently and over time (Sturge-Apple et al., 2015). Thus, enhanced security may have downstream implications for parenting behavior via improved implicit attitudes, although such a cascade of effects has yet to be examined. Our results are the first to demonstrate a causal link between attachment security and implicit parental attitudes, which is important for ruling out social desirability biases in parent self-report, and for establishing causal pathways for theoretically based correlational evidence.

With regard to explicit attitudes, both parents and childless young adults also showed more positive than negative attitudes toward their real or imagined children, on average, consistent with the implicit findings. For explicit attitudes, it was only in relation to positive attitudes that priming effects emerged (i.e., neither parents nor childless adults showed reductions in negative explicit attitudes toward children following priming); moreover, again, effects emerged only for parents. In this case, however, security priming increased mothers’ explicit endorsement of positive attributes in their children only among mothers scoring high on attachment-related avoidance, and maternal avoidance was associated with less positive explicit attitudes only in the neutral priming condition. Thus, security priming appeared to buffer more avoidant mothers against the tendency to endorse less positive attitudes toward their children. Results mirror a growing body of work demonstrating moderation of priming effects by dispositional attachment style, and perhaps avoidance in particular (see Gillath & Karantzas, 2019). For example, security priming has been found to reduce the dissolution of social network ties among more avoidant individuals (Gillath et al., 2017). Relatedly, in a study of an attachment-based parenting intervention, only mothers higher in avoidance showed positive intervention effects on key outcomes such as child attachment security and disorganization (Cassidy et al., 2017); given consistent links between avoidance and negative parenting cognitions and behavior (e.g., Pesonen et al., 2003; Priel & Besser, 2000; Jones et al., 2014), avoidant mothers may stand to benefit more from the supportive environment provided by a therapeutic intervention. Similarly, more avoidant mothers in the present study may have more to gain from enhanced feelings of security. More broadly, one mechanism by which security priming is thought to operate is by reducing attachment-related defensive barriers to caregiving processes, such that more avoidant mothers become more open to seeing their child’s positive qualities (for a similar discussion, see Cassidy et al., 2018).

Beyond self-reported attachment style, it is interesting to note the role of other personality traits in predicting individuals’ attitudes toward children. Self-esteem was unrelated to all outcomes across all studies, suggesting that individuals’ views of their own worth did not color their implicit or explicit attitudes toward children. Neuroticism, on the other hand, was linked to more negative explicit attitudes among mothers but not childless adults, suggesting that neuroticism may specifically bias parents’ perceptions of their own children. Notably, the effects of security priming on mothers’ attitudes were observed over and above the contributions of personality-related covariates, including neuroticism.

Results in parent and non-parent samples

To further test potential security priming effects on child-related stimuli in non-parents, we conducted a related study of childless undergraduate students examining whether security priming influenced a different outcome: responses to an imagined crying infant. Replicating Study 2, we again observed no priming effects in this independent sample of childless young adults (see Supplemental Materials for study details).

Why did security priming effects emerge among parents thinking about their own child, but not among childless young adults thinking about their imagined future child? One possibility is that the influence of attachment security on attitudes toward children emerges only for adults who have lived (rather than simply imagined) experiences of parenthood. Although parents and non-parents alike reliably respond to child-related stimuli (e.g., Senese et al., 2013), the neural signatures of such responses differ (e.g., Piallini et al., 2015; Seifritz et al., 2003). For example, ERP data show that compared to non-mothers, mothers respond more strongly and habituate more slowly to infant cries (e.g., Purhonen et al., 2001). Further, childbearing and childrearing are associated with dramatic developmental changes in parents’ neural, hormonal, and behavioral systems (e.g., Bornstein, 2013). Together, these findings suggest that child-related stimuli may activate the caregiving system more strongly among parents. In the present studies with undergraduates, imagining one’s own future child may elicit a more heterogeneous mix of responses (including aversion, anxiety, curiosity, affiliation) that are not necessarily part of the caregiving system. The nature of such responses may depend on the complex interaction of adults’ gender, relationship status, prior experiences with children, desire (or lack thereof) for a future child, mood, and personality (e.g., Cohen-Bendahan et al., 2014). Thus, the potential impact of security priming on adults’ caregiving systems and attitudes toward children may differ in parents vs. non-parents, perhaps mediated by parent-specific neurobiological responses to child stimuli.

A second possibility is that the observed effects of security priming on attitudes toward children are relationship-specific, such that parents asked to think about a child other than their own would be unaffected. Empirical evidence suggests that parents show neural responses and increased attention allocation to images of their own vs. unfamiliar children (Bornstein et al., 2013; Grasso et al., 2009); moreover, variation in mothers’ neural and attentional responses to images of their own child predicted maternal views of the parent-child relationship as positive (Grasso et al., 2009). Security priming may act on these relationship-specific neural networks to promote more positive implicit attitudes toward one’s own child, but not an unfamiliar or imagined one. Relatedly, at the representational level, because parents possess rich internal working models of their child (Vreeswijk et al., 2012), security priming may activate associated positive memories and emotions such as joy, love, and gratitude.

It is interesting to note that, among parents, security priming enhanced implicit and explicit positive attitudes but did not reduce implicit or explicit negative attitudes. This suggests that the mechanism by which security priming may impact parental attitudes is by “accentuating the positive”—including bringing to mind the positive qualities of one’s child and of the parent-child relationship—but not by “eliminating or reducing the negative.” Previous research in childless adults has shown that attachment security priming enhances positive emotion (e.g., Liao et al., 2017), as well as attention to positive emotional stimuli and increased activation in brain regions associated with the retrieval of happy memories (Tang et al., 2017); still, much previous work also demonstrates reductions in negative emotions and cognitions as a result of priming (see Gillath & Karantzas, 2019, and Rowe et al., 2020). It is possible that for parents, security promotes a balanced view of their child that involves accepting certain negative attributes (i.e., not over-idealizing or denying the child’s imperfections), or that a child’s real-world difficult behaviors may anchor the extent to which parents’ negative attitudes can be modified without also modifying children’s behavior. Alternately, given that on average parents gave low ratings to negative attributes and substantially higher ratings to positive attributes, it may be that parents are reluctant to endorse explicitly negative items about their children, and that for those who feel strongly enough to do so, a brief prime is insufficient to alter their views.

Importantly, we cannot rule out the possibility that the different pattern of findings across the parent and non-parent samples is due to differences in sample characteristics and methodology. Studies 1 and 2 differed along dimensions other than participants’ parental status. First, Study 2 also included male participants, as is typical for undergraduate samples; importantly, however, results of Study 2 were not substantively different when males were excluded to make the samples comparable in terms of sex (see Supplemental Materials). Second, compared to Study 2, the sample for Study 1 was substantially older, more likely to be married, and included fewer participants who identified as Asian and more who identified as African American. Third, attachment anxiety and avoidance were lower, on average, and consequently more highly intercorrelated in Study 1; this movement toward greater average security among older, more coupled adults is consistent with previous studies (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016, for a review) and may alter the way that security priming operates (in this case, it may have enhanced the effects of priming on attitudes toward children). Future research could address these differences in sample characteristics.

Several minor methodological differences merit mention as well: First, Study 1 used the full self-reported attachment style measure, administered during the lab visit, whereas Study 2 used the short form, administered online prior to the lab visit. Future research with parents should assess attachment style prior to the priming lab visit to avoid the possibility that reporting on one’s typical patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in close relationships will influence study outcomes. Second, the age of the target child differed between Studies 1 and 2. The mothers in Study 1 were recruited from a study of emotional development during late childhood and had children between the ages of 9 and 11 years. We decided to have the undergraduates imagine a future 1-year-old baby because (a) given students’ age, we thought it would be easier for them to imagine an infant than a 9- to 11-year-old child, and (b) empirical evidence indicates that infants reliably elicit responses from childless adults (e.g. Leerkes & Siepak, 2006; Senese et al., 2013). Future research could match the age of the target children.

Strengths, Limitations, and Future Directions

The present studies offer a novel first step in examining effects of priming on parenting constructs and highlight the strengths of integrating both implicit and explicit measures of these constructs. Specifically, the use of task-based implicit measures limits social desirability effects that may arise in studies using self-report measures alone; further, our findings suggest that security priming may operate in part by shifting implicit cognition or implicit emotional associations—a possibility that merits further investigation. The limitations of the present studies also point to several constructive directions for future research. Most importantly, as with most priming studies to date, potential impacts on observed behavior were not assessed. Thus, a critical next step for future research is to assess whether enhancing the felt sense of security can alter parenting behaviors (e.g., sensitivity) via improvements in parental attitudes. Another limitation is that the outcome measures (implicit and explicit attitudes) were only measured after the priming manipulation. Thus, despite random assignment to conditions, we cannot rule out the possibility of group differences in attitudes prior to the experimental manipulation.

Additionally, the present studies cannot speak to why priming was ineffective for childless young adults. Future research could further test the possibility that effects are developmental, emerging only when adults are actively thinking of having children, are expecting, or have had children of their own, as our results here suggest. Alternately, it is possible that imagining a future child lacked the degree of emotional salience or specificity needed to observe potential effects; future work could use more salient stimuli, such as videos of crying infants, which have been successfully used to elicit emotional responses in childless adults (e.g., Leerkes & Siepak, 2006). Future work could also examine whether security priming enhances parenting-related variables more relevant to students, such as the desire to have children in the future (e.g., Rholes et al., 1997). In addition, neither study included a formal manipulation check; therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility that the prime did not increase felt security among students, resulting in null findings. Nevertheless, many previous studies have successfully demonstrated effects of security priming on outcomes such as empathy in similar undergraduate samples (see Gillath & Karantzas, 2019).

The sample sizes in both studies were moderate, which may have limited power to detect smaller effects. Future research with larger samples of parents and students is warranted. Further, this initial sample of parents included only mothers (note that although the original study included fathers, the sample size was too small to make meaningful comparisons, and simply combining fathers with mothers would introduce unwanted noise in the analyses). This is an all-too-common limitation in parenting research that can be fruitfully addressed in future work examining security priming with fathers. Given the unique parenting processes associated with fatherhood (e.g., Rohner & Veneziano, 2001), it is likely that effects of security priming may differ for mothers and fathers.

Conclusions

The present research is an important first step in advancing the attachment priming literature to examine parenting constructs. Building on extensive correlational findings, this research provides initial evidence for a causal link between security and parenting attitudes. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we show significant positive effects of security priming on mothers’ implicit (and in certain cases, explicit) attitudes toward their children.

Although it is premature to suggest implications for parenting interventions from the present work, it is notable that parents higher in self-reported security demonstrate more positive attitudes and behavior toward children (Jones et al., 2015; van IJzendoorn, 1995); thus, it seems reasonable to explore potential benefits of enhancing caregivers’ own attachment security for parenting. One method of doing so could be repeated security priming (see Carnelley & Rowe, 2007; Gillath et al., 2008; Hudson & Fraley, 2018), among other possible approaches, including individual therapy; some parenting programs also attempt to enhance maternal security as part of a broader intervention (e.g., Powell et al., 2016; Slade et al., 2018). This research lays the groundwork for further investigation of the ways in which enhancing attachment security may be consequential for parenting.

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Melissa Sturge-Apple for sharing her child-focused version of the Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT-Child) with us. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F32HD102119 to JS. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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