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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1409537

Attachment and Propensity for Reporting Compassionate Opportunities and Behaviour in Everyday Life

Provisionally accepted
Deanna Varley Deanna Varley *Chase S. Sherwell Chase S. Sherwell James Kirby James Kirby
  • The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Researchers have identified links between anxious and avoidant attachments and difficulties with self-compassion, giving others compassion, and receiving compassion. However, while compassion requires both awareness of opportunities for compassion and compassionate action, little is known about attachment-related differences in reporting compassionate opportunities. Further, most research relies on retrospective-reports that may not accurately assess compassionate behaviours in everyday life. Method:Consequently, we collected 2757 experience sampling survey responses from 125 participants (95 women, 27 men, 3 non-binary, Mage = 18.74, SDage = 1.66) to investigate whether attachment anxiety, avoidance, or their interaction were associated with differences in propensity for reporting compassionate opportunities, actions, and emotional responses to opportunities in everyday life across self-compassion, giving compassion, and receiving compassion. Results: Anxiety was associated with greater likelihood of reporting all types of compassionate opportunities and less positive responses to opportunities to receive compassion. Avoidance was associated with less likelihood of reporting opportunities to give and receive compassion and less positive responses to opportunities to give compassion.Those high in anxiety but simultaneously low in avoidance reported fewer selfcompassionate actions, but we identified no further differences in compassionate action.Discussion: This study highlights the potential role of awareness of compassionate opportunities in attachment-related differences in compassion.

    Keywords: Attachment, compassion, Experience Sampling Method, Prosocial Behavior, Ecological momentary assessment (EMA)

    Received: 30 Mar 2024; Accepted: 28 Jun 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Varley, Sherwell and Kirby. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Deanna Varley, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.