Jeffrey David Green

Jeffrey David Green
Virginia Commonwealth University | VCU · Department of Psychology

PhD social psychology

About

94
Publications
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4,340
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Publications

Publications (94)
Article
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Background Safety precautions and activity restrictions were common in the early, pre-vaccine phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that higher levels of participation in potentially risky social and other activities would be associated with greater life satisfaction and perceived meaning in life. At the same time, prosocial COVID-preven...
Article
Autobiographical memories activated by the senses, particularly smell and taste, can be among the most potent and influential, an experience labelled the Proust Effect. Contemporary research has helped to explain the physiological, neurological, and psychological reasons underlying this phenomenon. Nostalgic memories triggered by taste and smell ar...
Article
Intellectual humility (IH) likely is most challenging when individuals are confronted with existential threats, a state we label existential humility (EH). Existential humility includes holding cherished beliefs regarding the meaning of life and death loosely enough to revise in light of evidence, as well as lower defensiveness following existentia...
Article
Nostalgia evoked through various experiences (e.g., scents, music) has been shown to enhance emotional well-being and reduce social pain. We propose that reading a familiar book similarly can elicit nostalgia, and provide emotional benefits through narrative transportation beyond that of reading a new book. We tested the relationship between readin...
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In three studies, we examined food as an elicitor of nostalgia. Study 1 participants visualised eating either a nostalgic or regularly consumed food. Study 2 participants visualised consuming 12 foods. Study 3 participants consumed 12 flavour samples. Following their food experiences, all participants responded to questions regarding the profile of...
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We tested the relationships between attachment related anxiety and avoidance and interpersonal distance with significant others (mother, father, close friend, love target), as well as, the childhood self. One hundred seventy four university students (85 male and 89 female; average age was 23.90 years, SD = 4.42; 24 [13.8%] were married) participate...
Article
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According to self-regulation theories, affect plays a crucial role in driving goal-directed behaviors throughout employees’ work lives. Yet past work presents inconsistent results regarding the effects of positive and negative affect with theory heavily relying on understanding the separate, unique effects of each affective experience. In the curre...
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Physical distance regulation in interpersonal communications is a key component of the quality of close relationships. This distance is regulated differently in various individuals and psychological states. Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have been reported to prefer a larger distance. The present study aimed to compare the Heal...
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Do provider perceptions of patient free will and treatment related self-control influence treatment recommendations and do such perceptions differ due to race? If so, such bias may be a mechanism for racial disparities in medical treatment recommendations. We hypothesized: (1) greater perceived patient free will would indirectly effect treatment re...
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Nostalgia is a fond longing for the past that has been shown to increase feelings of meaning, social connectedness, and self-continuity. Although nostalgia for personal memories provides intra- and interpersonal benefits, there may be negative consequences of group-based nostalgia on the perception and acceptance of others. The presented research e...
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Religions have long offered existential security by making life meaningful and psychologically solving the problem of death. However, the mechanisms involved in such terror management processes have yet to be fully explored. In three studies, we examined how a meaningful life and a meaningful death serve the terror management function of managing t...
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Attachment theory posits that patterns of interaction derived from the attachment system provide a starting point for understanding how people both receive and provide care. Extending this theory to human-animal interactions provides insights into how human psychology affects pets, such as pet obesity. The goal of this study was to determine how at...
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Does nostalgia for one’s time at university predict current intentions to engage with the university? In Study 1, United States participants’ nostalgia for their university experience (university nostalgia) at a southern public university predicted stronger intentions to socialize with fellow alumni, attend a future reunion, volunteer for their uni...
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This article seeks to develop theoretical convergences between the science of nostalgia and the science of heroism. We take four approaches in forging a conceptual relationship between these two phenomena. First, we examine the definitions of nostalgia and heroism from scholars, laypeople, and across cultures, noting how the history of defining the...
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Pets play an important role in their owners’ lives and are often viewed as family members. However, research on human-animal relationships suggests that pet owners often receive relatively less emotional support when experiencing grief after the death of a beloved pet, a phenomenon known as disenfranchised grief. In this internet-based survey study...
Article
Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for one's past, can serve as a resource for individuals coping with discomforting experiences. The experience of bereavement poses psychological and physical risks. In a longitudinal study, we examined whether dispositional nostalgia predicted reductions in distress associated with the death of a loved one. Undergra...
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Selective reporting practices (SRPs)—adding, dropping, or altering study elements when preparing reports for publication—are thought to increase false positives in scientific research. Yet analyses of SRPs have been limited to self-reports or analyses of pre-registered and published studies. To assess SRPs in social psychological research more broa...
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Two studies examined how envy influences prosocial and antisocial behavior. In Experiment 1, participants in an envious state (relative to a neutral state) were less helpful: They picked up fewer dropped pencils in their immediate vicinity. We expanded upon these findings by examining how envy affected both helping and harming behavior in a competi...
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How accurate are retrospective self-views? Though elevated views of the self are ubiquitous, there may be a notable exception: the past self. A diminished past self implies growth and development of the present self. One class of college students was followed across four years. Students rated their personal growth, purpose in life, self-esteem, and...
Chapter
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For over two decades, psychological scientists have conducted empirical research on self-regulation and self-control. Our chapter reviews the current empirical research surrounding self-regulation and free will as it relates to religion and spirituality. First, we review the influence of religion/spirituality on free will belief. Research suggests...
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Anticipated nostalgia is a new construct that has received limited empirical attention. It concerns the anticipation of having nostalgic feelings for one’s present and future experiences. In three studies, we assessed its prevalence, content, emotional profile, and implications for self-regulation and psychological functioning. Study 1 revealed tha...
Article
Individuals seek to affirm their belonging in many ways, but will they change even strongly held attitudes to do so? Attitude alignment is one mechanism by which individuals maintain ongoing relationships. We tested whether individuals would engage in greater attitude alignment (shifting their attitudes to match a romantic partner's attitudes) foll...
Article
A dyadic approach to studying relationship dynamics yields considerably more insights than examining each partner separately. Yet relatively little research has examined dyadic models of commitment, despite commitment being essential to relationship persistence. Accordingly, we tested a dyadic version of the investment model of commitment. In two c...
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Although the benefits of human-animal interactions (especially pets and companion animals) for humans are becoming increasingly well-known and implemented, less work has been done examining how such interactions affect the animal. Understanding the owner-animal dynamic is more important than ever as the quality of this relationship may affect the l...
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Two experiments examined how exposure to superhero images influences both prosociality and meaning in life. In Experiment 1 (N = 246) exposed individuals to scenes with superhero images or neutral images. Individuals primed with superhero images reported greater helping intentions relative to the control group, which, in turn, were associated with...
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Attachment theory is a useful lens through which to examine both perceptions and selection of companion animals. Study 1 compared perceptions of dogs and cats, and found that dogs were perceived as having more positive relationship qualities and secure attachment-related characteristics, whereas cats were perceived as having more negative relations...
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Four studies tested the proposition that mindfulness and its training fostered prosociality toward ostracized strangers. In discovery Study 1, dispositional mindfulness predicted greater empathic concern for, and more helping behavior toward, an ostracized stranger. Using an experimental design, Study 2 revealed that very briefly instructed mindful...
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Do people self-enhance by dwelling in righteous anger in an effort to preserve their self-views as pillars of morality? We addressed this question in two experiments. Participants read a story about an injustice (experiencing righteous anger) or grocery shopping (experiencing neutral emotion), indicated their interest in reading injustice-relevant...
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Building on principles of evolutionary psychology and sociometer theory, we propose that people feel worse about the extent to which they have forgiven when their forgiveness level increases their risk of exploitation or their risk of spoiling a valuable relationship. We predicted that people would feel worse about their forgiveness level when they...
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When others disagree with us, we like them more if they shift their attitude toward ours (i.e., engage in attitude alignment), but why? This article examined the effects of partner attitude alignment on dyadic (trust, inferred attraction) and personal (respect, perceived reasoning ability) evaluations. In two experiments, participants received feed...
Article
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Meaning is a central feature of human life. Our overarching proposition is that self-regulation helps facilitate meaning in life. We propose that purposeful, effortful, and directive actions that regulate selfish impulses are necessary to continually develop a sense of meaning in life. We explain how self-regulatory processes map onto this process:...
Article
Terror management theory suggests that humans invest in cultural worldviews that allay mortality-related anxiety by promising death transcendence. Many religious individuals adhere to belief in literal immortality – believing that one will live on after death. Across two studies (n = 1137), we explored the terror management function of such beliefs...
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We describe a model in which guilt and shame associate with reactions to wrongdoing among perpetrators of interpersonal harm. Individuals who reported wronging another person (N = 410) completed measures of perceived transgression severity, guilt and shame, and possible reactions to perpetration of wrongdoing (i.e., forgiving, punishing, and excusi...
Article
The mnemic neglect model predicts and accounts for selective memory for social feedback as a function of various feedback properties. At the heart of the model is the mnemic neglect effect (MNE), defined as inferior recall for self-threatening feedback compared to other kinds of feedback. The effect emerges both in mundane realism and minimal feedb...
Article
Media multitasking during homework completion has reached epidemic proportions in the modern educational environment. There is a crucial need to resolve the paradox of why students engage in these behaviors, even though they are linked to self-control and performance decrements. We evaluate the proposition that student media multitasking decisions...
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A central feature of meaning in life is a consideration of more than oneself. We extend this logic to suggest that altruistically motivated prosociality - acting in ways that benefit others - is a self-transcending action that may provide meaning in life. Study 1 provided evidence of a relationship between self-reported prosocial behavior and meani...
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Humility is marked by the regulation of selfish impulses for the sake of others, including holding a modest view of one’s beliefs (and their relative strengths and weaknesses). In three studies, we evaluated the extent to which humility attenuates negative attitudes, behavioral intentions, and behaviors toward religious out-group members. In Study...
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We interact frequently with individuals with religious beliefs that vary from our own. Although we may naturally prefer interacting with religiously similar others, individuals vary in their attitudes toward religiously dissimilar others. In the present set of studies, we examined how variability in quest religiousness affects religious tolerance....
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Forty children between the ages of 8 and 18 years, who were admitted to a hospital pediatric unit, were randomly assigned to an animal-assisted intervention (AAI) or an active control condition (working on an age-appropriate jigsaw puzzle). Ratings of pain and anxiety were taken both pre- and post-condition. The attachment Questionnaire and Family...
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Close relationships are a source of meaning in life. Interpersonal offenses can disrupt one’s sense of meaning within close relationships. To restore a sense of meaning, people may employ relational repair strategies such as forgiveness. We hypothesized that forgiveness is a meaning-making mechanism because it helps repair relationships, thus resto...
Chapter
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Though transgressions among married couples have received the most attention by researchers, transgressions occur in all types of relationships in which individuals are interdependent. There are a range of physical (e.g., stress reactivity, sleep quality), mental (e.g., anxiety, depression), and relationship (e.g., satisfaction, accommodation) heal...
Article
In two studies, the authors examined how threat induced by reminders of mortality would moderate the effect of political orientation on moral judgments. In Study 1, university students (n = 113) categorized their political orientation, were randomly assigned to complete a fear of death or public speaking scale, and then completed a moral foundation...
Chapter
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Bona Sforza was a queen of Poland in the sixteenth century and a notorious mother-in-law. Her son eventually became King Sigismund II and married his mistress Barbara Radziwill. A mere five months after the wedding, Barbara died of a mysterious illness, and it was rumored that she was poisoned by her treacherous mother-in-law, Bona. What if the rum...
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Past research suggests that a lower waist-to-chest ratio (WCR) in men (i.e., narrower waist and broader chest) is viewed as attractive by women. However, little work has directly examined why low WCRs are preferred. The current work merged insights from theory and past research to develop a model examining perceived dominance, fitness, and protecti...
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Humans are notoriously resistant to changing their longstanding beliefs and often act defensively when they encounter individuals holding divergent beliefs. We introduce a meaning-based approach to humility (e.g., reduced defensiveness) with the claim that the desire for meaning motivates individuals to ardently defend their central beliefs. We pro...
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Can scents evoke nostalgia; what might be the psychological implications of such an evocation? Participants sampled 12 scents and rated the extent to which each scent was familiar, arousing and autobiographically relevant, as well as the extent to which each scent elicited nostalgia. Participants who were high (compared to low) in nostalgia pronene...
Article
Two experiments extended terror management theory to investigate forgiveness in close relationships. We hypothesized that mortality salience would elicit less forgiveness in less committed relationships. In Experiment 1, participants were primed with either mortality salience or a physical pain control condition, recalled a recent hurtful interpers...
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Does attitude alignment predict attraction? Would you like a stranger more who shifts her/his attitudes to more closely align with yours? In pairs, participants (N = 77) discussed social issues about which they disagreed and received false feedback on whether the partner engaged in attitude alignment (shifted her/his attitudes toward the participan...
Data
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Prevailing wisdom across the body of research regarding social ties suggests that quantity matters. However, this logic is less applicable in formal networking groups, which have a bounded (and stable) membership. In such a setting, we argue that the quality of an entrepreneur's relationship with the networking group is what matters. Accordingly, w...
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Prior research suggests that people frequently mispredict their own and other people's emotional responses. In a longitudinal study, both members of 104 couples predicted the degree to which they (affective forecast) and their partner (empathic forecast) would experience sadness in response to 20 relationship transgres-sions, in both victim and per...
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Forgiveness and justice are related virtues but they may exert divergent effects on moral judgments. Participants were primed with either forgiveness or retributive justice and made moral judgments of individuals. Experiment 1 demonstrated that religious participants recalling an experience of forgiveness reported more favorable attitudes toward mo...
Article
Past research has examined the link of attachment anxiety and avoidance with exploration in adults, though results have been inconsistent and have relied primarily on self-reports. We hypothesized that the presence of the attachment figure (i.e., romantic partner) would play a critical moderating role on exploration duration and enjoyment. Eighty-s...
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Negative self-referent information about central traits is recalled relatively poorly. Such mnemic neglect-a form of self-protective memory-entails the selective processing of threatening information. Here, we hypothesize a specific mechanism whereby it occurs: nonthreatening information gets integrated with stored self-knowledge, whereas threateni...
Article
In two cross-national studies, we investigated the existence of a perpetrator–victim account estimation bias and how this bias can be reduced or eliminated when estimating the perpetrator's use of a mixed account; that is, an account in which the perpetrator not only apologizes but also explains mitigating and justifiable circumstances. Japanese an...
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Research has found that a substantial portion of human cognition occurs beyond conscious awareness to satisfy the superordinate goal of maintaining meaning. Three experiments used a newly developed method to examine the features of meaning and how individuals automatically defend against threats to meaning. In Experiment 1, individuals who sublimin...
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We provide evidence that self-focused attention (both dispositional and situationally induced) affects the evaluation of a benefactor. Specifically, self-focused attention distinguishes between gratitude and indebtedness. In Study 1, gratitude correlated negatively with dispositional public self-focused attention and social anxiety, whereas indebte...
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The autobiographical memory literature has established that people remember poorly unpleasant, relative to pleasant, life events. We complemented this literature with a theoretical model – the mnemic neglect model – and an experimental paradigm that exerts tight control over the to-be-remembered material. Participants recall poorly self-threatening...
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We present a model of relational spirituality and forgiveness that considers how a victim’s spirituality affects his or her experience of and response to a transgression. In 2 studies, we investigate the psychometric properties of the Similarity of the Offender’s Spirituality Scale (SOS), which assesses the extent to which the victim sees the offen...
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Do individuals’ perceptions of their interdependence with the natural environment affect their environmental behaviors? From the perspective of interdependence theory, we introduce a scale to measure commitment to the natural environment. In Study 1, higher levels of commitment to the environment and greater inclusion of nature in the self separate...
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People selectively forget feedback that threatens central self-conceptions, a phenomenon labeled mnemic neglect. Such forgetting serves to protect the self-system, but its rigid application may be associated with liabilities such as failing to learn about one's weaknesses. Two experiments tested the extent to which mnemic neglect is rigid or flexib...
Article
The authors investigated the associations between attachment, empathy, rumination, forgiveness, and depressive symptoms via the framework of attachment theory. Participants (N = 221; 141 F and 80 M) completed a battery of questionnaires. We hypothesized that (a) anxious and avoidant attachment would be negatively linked to dispositional forgiveness...
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When people selectively forget feedback that threatens the self (mnemic neglect), are those memories permanently lost or potentially recoverable? In two experiments, participants processed feedback pertaining either to themselves or to another person. Feedback consisted of a mixture of positive and negative behaviors exemplifying traits that were b...
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Building on attribution and interdependence theories, two experiments tested the hypothesis that close friends of victims (third parties) are less forgiving than the victims themselves (first parties). In Experiment 1, individuals imagined a scenario in which either their romantic partner or the romantic partner of a close friend committed the iden...
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Researchers have previously reported a negative association between romantic involvement and the discrepancy between the actual self and the ideal self. The authors present a schema-based model of romantic involvement and self-discrepancy to help explain this association, focusing on the impact of terminated relationships--"ghosts from the past." I...
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Normal adults recall poorly social feedback that refers to them, is negative, and pertains to core self-aspects. This phenomenon, dubbed the mnemic neglect effect, is equivalent to inhibitory repression. It is instigated under conditions of high self-threat, it implicates not-thinking during encoding, and it involves memories that are recoverable w...
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Growing evidence shows that attitudes can exist on a bivariate rather than a bipolar plane. This conceptualization provides a more dynamic approach to studying how attitudinal ambivalence (i. e., evaluating an attitude object as both positive and negative) affects smoking-related behaviors. Based on a sample of 157 college smokers, we obtained prel...
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The mnemic neglect effect is the phenomenon of disproportionately poor recall for threatening (rather than non-threatening) feedback that refers to the self (rather than another person). Does trait modifiability moderate mnemic neglect? We hypothesized that mnemic neglect will be present for feedback on unmodifiable traits, but absent for feedback...
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According to the mnemic neglect model, people are threatened by feedback that has unfavorable implications for their central self-aspects, and, as a result, they recall it poorly. What is the locus of such poor recall (i.e., mnemic neglect)? Experiment 1 examined the role of information inconsistency. If mnemic neglect is due to expectancy violatio...
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The mnemic neglect model (formerly the inconsistency – negativity neglect model, Sedikides & Green, 2000) contends that people recall self-referent feedback more poorly than other-referent feedback when it carries negative implications for central self-aspects, because such feedback is perceived as threatening. We tested the prediction that partici...
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Research addressing the influence of happy mood on self-focused attention has yielded inconsistent results. Some studies found that happy mood decreased self-focus relative to sad mood. Other studies did not detect a significant difference between happy and neutral mood, and still other studies found that happy mood, relative to neutral mood, incre...
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An experiment tested the hypothesis that self-schemas shape social perception when the target description is ambiguous. On the basis of a pretest, we derived a target description that was ambiguous on independence–dependence (i.e., the target, Chris, was rated as equally likely to be independent or dependent). Participants classified as independenc...
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How do individuals remember feedback that is inconsistent or negative? According to the inconsistency-negativity resolution model, individuals are motivated to reduce uncertainty and resolve inconsistency even when threat to self is potential. They more deeply process and better remember negative self- than other-referent information. According to...
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It was predicted that attachment is associated with exploration in adults. An exploration scale that measures willingness to explore the physical, social, and intellectual environments was constructed. Study 1 measured chronic attachment patterns and found that both anxiety and avoidance correlated negatively with the desire to explore. Study 2 pri...