Language use in the Adult Attachment Interview: Evidence for attachmentspecific emotion regulation

Adult attachment classification is traditionally based on qualitative coding of participants’ discourse about their attachment history. Word count-based analyses have proven useful for assessing emotional states from narrative. To expand the understanding of how language is used in emotion regulation processes related to attachment, the authors assess 102 college-aged adults’ language on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Autonomous adults use more emotion words and, in particular, negative emotion words. Preoccupied adults use more anger words. Disorganized adults use more experientially connected language and more death/dying words, but also use more second-person pronouns when discussing loss. Language use during the AAI explains variability in self-reported emotional distress above and beyond attachment classifications. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to emotion and attachment. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal research suggest that the quality of parent–child relationships in infancy and childhood contributes to the development of adults’ internal working models (IWMs) of attachment—that is, the mental representations people hold about the nature of caregivers’ and partners’ responsiveness (e.g., Waters, Merrick, Treboux, Crowell, & Albersheim, 2000). Importantly, IWMs Jessica L. Borelli, Department of Psychology, Pomona College; Daryn H. David, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine; Anne Rifkin-Graboi, Department of Psychology, Singapore Institute of Clinical Science, Singapore, Singapore; David A. Sbarra and Matthias R. Mehl, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona; Linda C. Mayes, Child Study Center, Yale University. The authors wish to thank Brian Clark, Zachary Feldman, Melinda Gonzalez, Natasha Haradhvala, Susanna Isaacson, Claire Laubacher, Erika McCarty, Marcy McGaugh, Jessica Meyer, Kelly Miller, Meredith Kovary, Kizzann Ramsook, Jo Rifkin, John Shumate, Jessica Stern, Jessica West, and Drew Westcott for their assistance in interview transcription and editing. Correspondence should be addressed to Jessica L. Borelli, Department of Psychology, Pomona College, 647 N. College Way, Claremont, CA 91711, e-mail: jessica. [email protected]. assessed via the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1996) appear especially predictive of psychological functioning and behavior within close interpersonal relationships and, as expected, differ from IWMs regarding the workplace (Crowell et al., 1996). Indeed, over the last 20 years, a large body of research has documented that individual differences in IWMs assessed via the AAI guide emotion regulation as well as adults’ behaviors in close relationships and during periods of heightened stress (Roisman, Tsai, & Chiang, 2004; Roisman et al., 2007). IWMs as assessed by the AAI are robustly associated with both intraindividual (e.g., psychological adjustment, Fonagy et al., 1996) and interpersonal adjustment (e.g., romantic relationship quality, Roisman et al., 2007; parenting sensitivity, De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997). A different but increasingly important method for assessing variability in emotion regulation strategies during discourse involves an analysis of both the content and style of adults’ language use (Pennebaker & Francis,