Prior evidence suggests that an individual's attachment orientation is linked to the health and health-related biology of his/her romantic relationship partners. The current study examined whether this effect extends to parent-child relationships. Specifically, we investigated the association between maternal attachment anxiety and avoidance and diurnal cortisol of offspring. In a sample of 138 youth with asthma and their primary caregivers, caregivers reported their attachment orientations, and their children (aged 10-17) supplied four saliva samples per day over four days to assess diurnal cortisol patterns. Growth curve analyses revealed no links to caregiver attachment anxiety, but caregiver attachment avoidance was significantly associated with children's diurnal cortisol slopes, such that greater attachment avoidance predicted flatter diurnal cortisol slopes. Maternal warmth did not mediate this link. These results support the possibility that an individual's adult attachment orientation may "get under the skin" of family members to influence their health-related biology. Future research should seek to determine the causal direction of this association and mechanisms of this effect.
Numerous studies document the benefits of social connection for both psychological and physical health, but less research exists on how social connection can be fostered in people’s day-to-day lives. One potential way people might build connection is through attending live events (e.g., going to a concert, wine tasting, book reading, fitness class, etc.). This project used machine learning to identify which characteristics of live events reliably predict feelings of social connectedness following event attendance. Across 1,551 longitudinal surveys of event-specific characteristics and experiences across a variety of event types, the strongest predictors of feeling socially connected were events that were in-person (versus virtual), involved active participation (versus passive participation), and those that were attended with others (versus alone), above and beyond baseline reports of socioemotional factors (e.g., loneliness, subjective happiness) and other individual differences (e.g., demographics, personality). These findings suggest that attending in-person, engaging events is a promising pathway through which people may build social connection with others.
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