A recent study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships explores how adolescent attachment styles influence brain activity in adulthood during social interactions. The findings reveal that securely attached adolescents exhibit increased brain activity in regions associated with emotion, cognition, and reward when holding hands with a romantic partner or even a stranger. These results suggest that the quality of attachment in adolescence can shape adult responses to social support at a neural level.
Attachment theory posits that early relationships with caregivers form the blueprint for future social interactions. It argues that children develop attachment strategies based on their caregiver’s responsiveness, which later influences their emotional and social behaviors. Securely attached individuals generally feel comfortable with intimacy and are adept at forming close relationships. In contrast, those with insecure attachments may experience difficulty trusting others and maintaining relationships.
Previous research predominantly concentrated on adult attachment without much emphasis on its developmental trajectory from adolescence. Moreover, while existing studies highlighted the neural mechanisms underlying social interactions and attachment, there was a gap in understanding these processes from a developmental perspective.
“I’m broadly interested in social support and more importantly, how people utilize social resources to combat stress,” said study author Jingrun Lin, a PhD candidate at the University of Virginia. “In my previous work, one’s willingness to seek support in the presence of social others was linked to better health outcomes years later. In this paper, I want to understand its developmental root, and in other words, how attachment-related experience in adolescence shapes support seeking processes in adult relationships.”
To explore these dynamics, the study utilized a longitudinal design, following participants initially recruited during adolescence and then reassessed in adulthood approximately ten years later.
At the onset, during their mid-teens, participants underwent the Adult Attachment Interview , a well-established method that assesses one’s state of mind regarding attachment through detailed narratives about childhood relationships with caregivers. This interview evaluates participants’ coherence, emotional balance, and perspective on their attachment experiences, providing a measure of their attachment security or insecurity.
In the second phase of the study, conducted when participants were in their mid-twenties, the same individuals were invited to participate in an fMRI study to measure brain responses under social support conditions. This part of the study involved three experimental conditions: holding the hand of a romantic partner, holding the hand of a stranger, and being alone without handholding. These conditions were designed to mimic varying levels of social support and proximity, allowing researchers to observe how these situations influenced brain activity in areas known to be associated with stress, reward, and emotional regulation.
The fMRI tasks were specifically set up to involve a threat of shock, which simulated a stressful situation where the support of another person might modulate the brain’s threat response. By comparing brain activity across different handholding conditions, researchers could discern how attachment styles established in adolescence impacted the brain’s response to potential threats when different levels of social support were available.
The final sample included 85 participants, with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, who completed both the AAI and the fMRI tasks.
Individuals who had higher levels of secure attachment during their teenage years demonstrated increased brain activity in adulthood under conditions of social support. When these adults anticipated a threat while holding the hand of their partner, there was heightened activation in the posterior cingulate cortex — a brain region associated with empathy and perspective taking — compared to when they were alone. This suggests that secure attachment enhances the brain’s ability to engage empathetic and social processing circuits in the presence of supportive relationships.
Furthermore, when these securely attached individuals held the hand of a stranger while anticipating a threat, they exhibited increased activation not only in the posterior cingulate cortex but also in other areas such as the lateral occipital cortex, middle and inferior frontal gyrus, right pallidum/putamen, and insular cortex. This indicates a broader neural readiness to process social and emotional information, even with less familiar individuals.
“Attachment related experience in adolescence can shape how people respond to their partners’ support neurally as adults. Adolescents who were securely attached found handholding as rewarding, evidenced by increased activation in reward related circuitry, even with strangers,” Lin told PsyPost.
Adults who had higher levels of preoccupied attachment in adolescence, in contrast, showed decreased activation in regions like the lateral occipital cortex and the frontal pole — areas linked to cognitive control and perception — when holding the hand of a stranger compared to being alone. Interestingly, this reduction in neural activity did not occur when these individuals were with a partner, suggesting that the familiarity of the relationship might buffer the negative neural effects typically associated with preoccupied attachment.
“Our study found that adolescents who were securely attached showed increased activation in regions associated with cognitive control during partner hand-holding compared to being alone in adulthood, and this is in the opposite direction from our hypothesis,” Lin noted. “One interpretation is that our study employed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) to measure adolescent attachment; more recently, researchers argued that that AAI status is a reflection of emotion regulation in the context of discussing attachment-related experiences.”
“If the AAI in adolescence measures teens’ autonomy, it makes sense for adolescents who were more self-regulated to show reduced neural reactivity in regions implicated in cognitive control when they were alone compared to when they were with a relational partner or stranger. We encourage future researchers to similarly consider the difference between attachment experience in childhood versus adolescence, measurement and/or scales selected, and their implications for research findings.”
These findings highlight the lasting influence of adolescent attachment on the adult brain’s response to social support. But the study is not without limitations. The sample size, although adequate, was relatively modest, which might affect the generalizability of the findings. Future research could include a larger, more diverse sample and examine other forms of social interaction. Additionally, exploring other developmental stages and the potential changes in attachment styles over time could provide deeper insights into the dynamic nature of human social interactions.
“I aim to examine social support and its linkage to physical and mental health using a multi-level approach,” Lin said. “My next line of work will focus on understanding the role of social support and health, via a behavioral ecology perspective and through a computerized foraging game.”
The study, “Does attachment in adolescence predict neural responses to handholding in adulthood? A functional magnetic resonance imaging study,” was authored by Jingrun Lin, Jessica A. Stern, Joseph P. Allen, and James A. Coan.