RESEARCHERS
4 the researchers behind it — Smartphones added a status bar to every relationship — online, last seen, read at 9:47pm — and turned ordinary uncertainty into something you can watc
Brunel University London
Known for:Research linking attachment style to Facebook-related jealousy and partner surveillance
Key findings
Across two separate samples, higher attachment anxiety predicted more Facebook surveillance of a partner while higher attachment avoidance predicted less; the anxiety-surveillance link was explained in part by lower trust and greater day-to-day jealousy in a week-long diary study. ↗
The Ohio State University
Known for:Research on relational uncertainty, attachment, and partner surveillance on social networking sites
Key findings
Relationship uncertainty, more than any confirmed partner behavior, predicted partner surveillance on Facebook; attachment anxiety was what drove that uncertainty upward in the first place, replicating and extending earlier attachment-and-surveillance findings. ↗
University of Michigan (now Arizona State University)
Known for:Coining 'electronic intrusion' and tracing it to attachment anxiety across college and high-school dating relationships
Key findings
Among college students in dating relationships, reading a partner's private messages, tracking their whereabouts, and monitoring who they talk to — all without permission — was predicted by attachment anxiety in both men and women. ↗
Extending the same construct to 703 high-school students, higher attachment anxiety again predicted more frequent electronic intrusion — reading messages, monitoring whereabouts, and pressuring a partner for constant contact — for both girls and boys. ↗
Reichman University (Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya)
Known for:Co-developing (with Phillip Shaver) the regulatory model of adult attachment — mapping how anxious and avoidant hyperactivating and deactivating strategies produce specific cognitive distortions including negative intent attribution and catastrophizing
Key findings
With Phillip Shaver, Mikulincer demonstrated experimentally that priming secure-base representations — even subliminally — reduced hostile attributions and increased tolerance toward out-group members, showing that attachment-driven distortions are malleable states rather than fixed traits. ↗
With Phillip Shaver, Mikulincer synthesized the adult attachment field in Attachment in Adulthood, cataloguing how the hyperactivating strategy of anxious attachment generates systematic cognitive distortions: hypervigilance to rejection cues, mind reading biased toward negative intent, catastrophizing minor disruptions, and 'people always leave' schemas maintained by confirmation bias. ↗