A daily diary study found that anxious and attached people tended to be more depressed and have lower self-esteem on days when they felt their partner liked them more. Relationship satisfaction was not affected. Rather, anxious and attached participants tended to feel more resentful and curious, and were more likely to retaliate. The paper was published in. personality journal.
Phubbing is the act of ignoring or paying less attention to the person who is physically present because you are focused on your phone. This word is a combination of “telephone” and “sneer”. This can happen during conversations, meals, meetings, dates, family time, or any situation where someone keeps checking messages, social media, notifications, and other phone content.
Phubbing tends to make the other person feel unimportant, rejected, or emotionally disconnected. In romantic relationships, frequent snapping can reduce relationship satisfaction and increase conflict. In friendships and family relationships, communication can become shallow or interrupted. Sometimes we intentionally bully others, but most of the time we do it without thinking because cell phones are designed to get attention.
Study author Katherine B. Carnelly and colleagues found that perceptions of partner shenanigans are associated with poorer relationship functioning. Phubbing behavior tends to evoke negative emotions, so partners may retaliate against perceived phubbing by operating their smartphones in their partner’s presence. They conducted a study investigating how adult attachment style moderates the relationship between perceived name-calling on the one hand and relationship satisfaction, anger/dissatisfaction, personal well-being, and desire for retaliation on the other.
Adult attachment refers to the emotional bonds that people form with significant others, especially intimate partners, and includes needs for intimacy, security, support, and comfort. Attachment avoidance is a tendency to maintain emotional distance and dependence on independence, whereas attachment anxiety is a tendency to be extremely worried about being rejected, abandoned, or not loved enough.
These authors conducted a daily diary study. A daily diary study is a type of research design in which participants repeatedly report their experiences, emotions, behaviors, or events over a period of time each day, allowing researchers to study short-term psychological changes and developments in participants’ environments.
The participants in this daily diary study were 196 people who were recruited through online forums, social media, and word of mouth for the study on “Mobile phone use in romantic relationships.” They were required to be an adult living with their current partner and have been in a romantic relationship for at least 6 months. The average age of participants was 36 years. Of these, 144 were female and 168 identified as heterosexual/heterosexual. Fifty-four percent of participants were employed full-time and 11% were students.
Participants were asked to complete 10 short diary entries in the form of daily Qualtrics surveys over 10 days, including a baseline survey. Participants completed an average of 7.91 daily diary entries. For this, they either received £6 as a payment or were entered into a draw to win one of two £50 Amazon vouchers.
The daily diary asked about daily perceived phubbing (four items adapted from the phubbing scale), relationship satisfaction (satisfaction subscale of the Perceived Relationship Quality Component Inventory), self-esteem (“I have high self-esteem”), depressed/anxious mood (four-item patient health questionnaire), anger (e.g., “Today I felt angry”), and reactions to being phubbed (six questions about how I felt). respondents), whether they retaliated (“I picked up my phone and used it”), and why (options were “to get back at my partner,” “I was bored,” “to seek support from others,” and “to seek approval from others”). Participants also completed a baseline assessment of adult attachment anxiety and avoidance (ECR-12 scale).
The results showed that, on average across all participants, days in which people felt more negative about their partner were associated with lower relationship satisfaction, more anxious mood, and more anger. But when we looked specifically at attachment styles, a different pattern emerged.
On days when they felt their partner liked them more, participants with more pronounced attachment anxiety tended to report more depressed mood and lower self-esteem. However, daily relationship satisfaction was not significantly affected by phubbing.
In these situations, participants with more pronounced attachment anxiety tended to report more resentment, curiosity, and retaliation in response to harassment. The frequency of reported reasons for retaliation tended to depend on a person’s attachment pattern. People with more pronounced attachment anxiety tended to retaliate to seek support and approval from others, whereas people with higher levels of attachment avoidance tended to retaliate solely to gain approval from others. Interestingly, people high in attachment avoidance actually report lower levels of conflict with phubbing than those low in attachment avoidance.
These results contribute to scientific understanding of how adult attachment patterns influence couple interactions in modern society. However, it should be noted that the sample was predominantly female and heterosexual, so the results may not be fully generalizable to more diverse populations. Furthermore, all data were self-reported, leaving room for reporting bias to influence the results.
The paper, “Attachment, Partner Harassment, and Retaliation: A Daily Diary Study,” was authored by Katherine B. Carnelly, Claire M. Hart, Laura M. Vowels, and Tessa Tejas Thomas.
