SELF-CONCEPT CLARITY FOLLOWING MARITAL DISSOLUTION: INVESTIGATING THE ROLES OF ATTACHMENT ANXIETY AND DAILY SOCIAL BEHAVIORS

Abstract

Self-concept clarity refers to the extent to which people feel certain about who they are as a person, and during periods of stress, including stressful interpersonal or social upheavals, this sense of clarity is often in flux and highly disturbed. The present honors thesis aims to investigate whether variability in daily social behaviors mediates the association between attachment insecurity and changes in self-concept clarity across a five-month recovery period following marital separation. One hundred and twenty adults who had recently separated from their marital partner were examined over five months, with data gathered at three different timepoints a month apart. In order to objectively measure social integration, participants wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR; Mehl et al., 2001) throughout the weekend of each assessment time point. The EAR is a widely validated assessment tool that allows for the calculation of an objective social integration composite, by capturing social behaviors as they naturally occur in one's daily life. We hypothesized that higher levels of attachment anxiety or avoidance would predict lower social integration in the months following marital dissolution and social integration in turn would be associated with lower self-concept recovery as it acts as a mediator of the relationship between attachment orientation and LOSROS. Our results did not reveal a mediation relationship, but a correlation between social integration and LOSROS was shown across the 5-month study period.