Attached

with Paula Niedenthal from Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-
Ferrand, France, found a unique way of measuring the vigilance to
social cues of the anxious attachment style. They used a “morph
movie” technique—a computerized movie in which a face initially
displays a specific emotional expression (e.g., anger) and gradually
evolves into one displaying a neutral expression. Participants were
asked to stop the movie at the frame at which they believed the
original emotion had dissipated. They found that people with an
anxious attachment style were more likely to perceive the offset of
emotion earlier than other people. Also, when the task was reversed—
starting with a neutral face and gradually moving to a pronounced
expression—more anxious individuals perceived the onset of the
emotion earlier. These findings suggest that people with an anxious
attachment style are indeed more vigilant to changes in others’
emotional expression and can have a higher degree of accuracy and
sensitivity to other people’s cues. However, this finding comes with a
caveat. The study showed that people with an anxious attachment style
tend to jump to conclusions very quickly, and when they do, they tend to
misinterpret people’s emotional state. Only when the experiment was
designed in such a way that anxious participants had to wait a little
longer—they couldn’t react immediately when they spotted a change,
but had to wait a little longer—and get more information before making
a judgment did they have an advantage over other participants. This is
an important lesson for someone with an anxious attachment style: If
you just wait a little longer before reacting and jumping to conclusions,
you will have an uncanny ability to decipher the world around you and
use it to your advantage. But shoot from the hip, and you’re all over the
place making misjudgments and hurting yourself.
Once activated, they are often consumed with thoughts that have a
single purpose: to reestablish closeness with their partner. These
thoughts are called activating strategies.
Activating strategies are any thoughts or feelings that compel you to
get close, physically or emotionally, to your partner. Once he or she
responds to you in a way that reestablishes security, you can revert
back to your calm, normal self.