Divide and conquer.
Some "experts" have decided that I AM to pick sides.
And I have.
ME v all of you.
Dreams have been described as dress rehearsals for real life, opportunities to gratify wishes, and a form of nocturnal therapy. A new theory aims to make sense of it all.
Verified by Psychology Today
Posted Sep 02, 2014
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On the one hand, meaningful relationships can help us thrive. This is the finding of a study by psychologists Brooke Feeney and Nancy Collins, and it's consistent with work firmly establishing that individuals with supportive, rewarding relationships report higher levels of well-being.
On the other hand, however, new research has also found that we are increasingly more dismissive of others, and taking a more avoidant stance in relationships.
So are we less invested in relationships than we used to be? Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan and her colleagues investigated whether the social landscape has shifted among university students over a 20-plus year time span. Technically speaking, they wanted to see if “attachment styles” among this population has changed significantly. The attachment paradigm offers a framework to understand relationships, and to explain differences in how people connect with others.
Attachment grows out of the relationship between infants and their caregiver, with particular respect to responsiveness and availability. Early attachment lays the foundation for how we perceive ourselves and others as we grow into adults. Generally speaking, individuals who experience loving and consistent early caregiving develop secure attachment, while those who receive harsh and/or inconsistent treatment from their early caregivers develop insecure attachment. Subsequent research has demonstrated that attachment to caregivers in early childhood parallels the dynamics in adult romantic relationships, and also influences relationships with friends and coworkers. In addition, attachment styles are relatively stable over time, but vulnerable to environmental influences such as negative life events.
There are four attachment styles that are organized along positive views of self and other:
Together, the dismissing, preoccupied, and fearful styles comprise insecure attachment.
In order to pursue the question of whether adult attachment status has changed significantly among American college student over time, Konrath and her team conducted a meta-analysis of responses to a measure of attachment styles among this group from the late 1980s through 2011. The authors note that the college population hasn't changed considerably on key demographic variables, including socioeconomic status and racial composition. In the final tally, the study included 94 samples consisting of 25,243 individuals over this 20-plus year time period.
The results were striking:
What might account for the significant rise in Dismissing attachment? The authors offer several speculations, based on complementary research:
First, they argue that children may be receiving less investment from their caregivers due to increases in divorce and the participation of women in the labor force. Similarly, extended families are less integrated in households than they used to be. The researchers also note that single-family homes tend to have less parental supervision and control, an environmental tenor that may foster Dismissing attachment.
Konrath and her colleagues also point to media usage, citing that exposure among children increased from nearly 7.5 hours per day in the 1990s to 11 hours on average by the 2000s. There is also research suggesting that we are becoming more disconnected in this age of super-connectivity, as people invest more in their online “selves” than actual offline relationships. Along similar lines, Americans are spending less time with their families and communities, and thus have less by the way of social support than previously. The lack of quality social support is believed to an important determining factor in Dismissing attachment.
The authors also speculate that the poor economy and military conflicts may have uniquely contributed to the rise of Dismissing attachment styles: Nearly 90% of college seniors in the early 1990s were employed within a year of graduation, a rate which had plummeted to roughly 70% by 2011. They assert that an increase in Dismissing attachment styles may reflect a coping strategy against these challenging conditions.
Konrath and her colleagues conclude their report by acknowledging the troublesome nature of these findings. But, they add, it offers an opportunity to better understand the nature of social connections, and to better foster them in today's world. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote, “Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.” In other words, let's not forget that relationships are the stuff of life.
Dr. Mehta is the author of the forthcoming book Paleo Love: How Our Stone Age Bodies Complicate Modern Relationships.
Connect with Dr. Mehta on the web at: drvinitamehta.com and on twitter and Pinterest! And you can find Dr. Mehta's other Psychology Today posts here.
Vinita Mehta, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in Washington, DC, and an expert on relationships, managing anxiety and stress, and building health and resilience. Dr. Mehta provides speaking engagements for your organization and psychotherapy for adults. She has successfully worked with individuals struggling with depression, anxiety, and life transitions, with a growing specialization in recovery from trauma and abuse.
Divide and conquer.
Some "experts" have decided that I AM to pick sides.
And I have.
ME v all of you.
Women have been fed a steady diet of men are abusive, insensitive, immature, etc., etc...
...combined with the "men are done" crap.
Are we really that surprised that men and women have lower opinions of each other today?
When you identify with someone or something, you take it
as essential to your sense of wellbeing. This makes you
hurt when it goes out of your life. Don't identify.
Retain your moral automomy.
Thanks for the blog post. Where can I exactly find the two studies the author refers to? Most likely, I missed the full citation and doi's of the studies by scrolling down the piece. Not citing the work the post is based on would be unprofessional and plagiarism, right?
Best,
Conrad
Why sacrifice yourself to another person’s selfish desire and lose your freedom. Just stay single
I think its because the world is bigger place now. People can afford to be picky in what they settle for.
Also, divorce has become common place. I have known people who were married for as little as six weeks (really, I'm not exaggerating). People don't seem to understand that relationships are hard work - and that's when they are good.
Cultural changes in Anglophone countries are significant and important. We have become a hyper-competitive-individualist culture and we know from the psych research that competitive people are less empathetic, less altruistic and less trusting. Explains the increasingly large percentage of people who like themselves but not others.
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Best Regards,
We do not need ROMANTIC relationships to be happy! That is not true! I gave up that kind of relationship as if it were an addiction, and everything has been better ever since. I have never been so healthy and happy.
I posted that too quickly. I meant to add that, ever since I decided that having one primary relationship was out of the question, every other relationship in my life has been better, from family to friends to colleagues to strangers.
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