No Man Is an Island: The Need to Belong and Dismissing Avoidant Attachment Style

The need to belong theory proposes that all human beings need social connections. However, dismissive avoidant individuals claim to be comfortable without close relationships and appear to be indifferent to how other people think of them. The current studies examined the association between dismissing avoidant attachment and the desire to feel accepted by others. In Study 1, high-dismissive participants reported experiencing higher than average levels of positive affect and state self-esteem after learning that other participants accepted them. In Study 2, high-dismissive participants felt better about themselves and experienced higher levels of positive affect after learning that in the future they would be successful in interpersonal relative to independent domains or controls. The results of these studies suggest that dismissive avoidants do not represent a counterexample to the hypothesis that all human beings have a fundamental need and desire to belong.